I Might Be Addicted...MAX REVIEWS: Invincible VS

Let's go. I didn't get a chance to do a review on the game. I think in terms of what the game is like offering and what I would say if I was like being critical about this, I'd give about like an 8 out of 10. It offers like a pretty impressive story mode. Even though it's not long, the quality of it is really high. And I think I'd prefer that than like a really boring characters just sitting around saying nothing to each other until you eventually get into a fight story mode, which happens a lot in big fighting game story modes that are like 3 to 6 hours. I kind of really dug that it was like an all kill or no filler like hour and a half where it's like, damn, this is really cool looking and this is actually like kind of neat. I really I sort of dig this. You know, the arcade mode stuff is okay. There's like a a decent amount of things that you can do in the game. The problem is is that many other fighting games like Street Fighter have effectively set up this giant swath of single player content that will expand and grow forever. In comparison to that, yeah, you know, you're not you're not getting something along those lines. But in terms of like what typically fighting games offer, I think it's pretty decent. Like the amount of things that it's giving you to do and what you can do with. I like that characters have their own like like little mini battle pass and you got to unlock stuff in all that way. I think that's kind of neat. Either way, I think the biggest thing to talk about is obviously like the gameplay of the game cuz they've already gone through one balance patch, right? One like adjustment patch. It's been a few weeks since the game's been out. Has it been a few weeks, maybe two weeks? No, it's definitely been like a little bit of time. I don't feel like it's been 2 weeks. Maybe we're at two to 3 weeks. And I've tried to play it as much as I can. I've got like about 30 hours into it and some odd others um with playing with the dudes and [ __ ] I haven't had a chance to sit here and just grind ranked a lot, but I have like gone into training mode and practiced a lot of stuff, which has been good feeling. I do think that the honeymoon phase of the game is actually working out pretty great. It's weird. The game has like an opening where you think there's actually not much to this and the combos are mad short and then you're you get this mind expansion moment of this stuff that can happen and people are discovering things like crazy and it's like, "Oh, this is getting pretty interesting now." And then it leads to like like wow now the gates are really open and we can do how much crazy stuff? How much crazy [ __ ] Whoa. It it seems very limited from first impression. Which is fine because it's like it seems like a very simple easy game and then by the time you get into it it's like oh this is actually pretty crazy. There's a lot of like ridiculous insane depth here. There is some like frustrators and there's some annoying things, you know, like some of the block string stuff and the fact that armor can be so powerful and armor on block with tag and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, there's some there's some goofy things that are in there, but I do like the fact that like there are powerful tools to deal with [ __ ] If there's one thing that I realized, this is kind of a low power versus game. How do you explain that, right? How do I explain what that means? Very few characters have complete screen encompassing beam moves, which is a Marvel vs. Capcom thing. Like in a lot of old versus games, characters have supers that cover the entire goddamn screen or cover the entire left to right or zip everywhere on the screen at any time. Like supers and when you use meter is hella powerful. Like and I started looking at even some competitive Marvel 3 and just like analyzing what I'm looking at and I'm like comparatively speaking. Yeah, in Invincible Versus isolate is kind of like a focused like movementbased game with normals that aren't even that huge. Some of the normals are good on some characters but not that good. In comparison to like Dragon Ball or Marvel, you really got to work for it in this game. You actually got to try like kind of hard to open people up. It seems like offense at times isn't as powerful as defense. Like it seems kind of hard to open people up and to get damage and stuff like that. It's weird how there's like unblockables for nearly everybody, but it doesn't really matter in that one opportunity you get to get to the unblockable. Did they have breaker? Did they have push block? Right? Could they could they snap and break after it? All that kind of stuff. Was it the right place, right time? Were they in the air? Did it not work? It's like it's very situational. It's very hard to get somebody just to like hold this type of [ __ ] And in traditional big versus games, you kind of got to hold this [ __ ] for like a little while. Anyway, even Cecil Assist open people up for free. Well, right. Because what do C Cecil and Eve assist provide? They don't open up people for free. They act as complete fail safes. They're like fallbacks. Because there's no beam beam assists in this game, dude. Across the board. There are very few assists that cover like the bottom part of the screen. Most of them go like in front and up. So many characters do not have the ability to like cover the bottom the bottom row like the the the the the playing field the the first third playing field cuz the versus games are the first third the medium the top like it's big and this sit the same way but there's no beam assist so there's no way to like cleverly approach in and now that you have a couple of characters that have beam assists right which is pretty much Eve pretty much Cecil people are jumping like crazy like people are constantly in the air and that's that's also a big versus thing you're not on the ground very much this game doesn't have traditional chicken blocking, meaning that you can't just jump and start blocking, you do get hit, you know? So, when you're when you're blocking in this game, you got to hold a block string. I think that a lot of the things that are in the game that are kind of like annoying right now are going to get ironed out. The nice part about it is that I love that I can tell when people are good at this [ __ ] You cannot just like play this game with low energy and have the game sort of like handhold for you and it just does the thing that you want. No, no, no, dude. You kind of got to work your ass off in neutral for certain things unless you have like even, you know, see so they help out a lot. You kind of got to work your ass off even when you get the hit, even if it's the perfect situation. We found like toss and all this nutty [ __ ] that's in this game, right? What I found is that it didn't actually matter that much because when you land a hit, it does not guarantee that they're going to die from that hit. There are several things that come into account between like boost and breaker and all this stuff that all have to like mystically align into place where it's like, "Oh, actually I had full boost when I did this [ __ ] Actually, I had full positioning for this. Actually, they did not have boost to break." Like all that kind of [ __ ] Even though people have insane ass combos, it was kind of cool that like, oh, it's neat to be able to do these things, but do they happen all the time? No. The situation has to be perfect. The only time it does happen, which is a little lopsided, is when your whole team is is fresh and you have a whole team on one side and you've knocked out two characters on their side. At that point, they cannot assist breaker anymore. What does it become? Combo video time. Literally becomes combo video time. If you have all three of your characters on one side and you've knocked out two characters on their end, bro, next hit you get, I am going to cook the [ __ ] out of you. It becomes a single player game. So, I think that's kind of funny. I think it's sort of like fascinating that like that I look for those moments really hard and I try to keep every character alive for the final round and I have two assists. It's like man going to get you. You know, it's a little imbalance that it's like even harder at that point to make a to make a comeback, especially if you get hit. Still though, I think it's neat that nobody really knows exactly how combos work, right? We have people that have figured [ __ ] out, but the actual implementation of that [ __ ] in matches, like live in matches, and to get all those circumstances to happen at the right time doesn't happen all the time. It legit does not happen all the time. The one criticism I do kind of have is that I think at the low level, the game's very mashy and fun, but it feels like limited. The mid to high level is actually mad cool. It's actually, wo, this is super cool. The problem is at the higher level, like over 8,000 points, over 9,000 points, and you start to see how like the game is played, there's a lot of waiting, there's not a lot of good incentivization to engage very much. It reminds me a lot of highlevel Dragon Ball fighters. A lot of highle DBFZ is jumping up and not committing and jumping up and double jumping and doing this. And every time they do this, they dash forward, there's an assist in, they go back, they wait for the assist to come back, they they disengage, like all that kind of stuff. It's just no commitment and wait for the big like Z assist or some [ __ ] to do some big nutty ass thing. And that is not that different especially with Eve and Cecil. It's not that much different how it works at the high level of invincible versus either which makes sense like pretty much as American Dragon Ball Fighters in many ways except this game doesn't have super dash. It doesn't just give you the hit, you know? You can't you got to go in and get that [ __ ] dude. Like you got to go in and and just get that [ __ ] It's weird how like patient play is very much rewarded and the game does not seem to be quite offensive oriented and I think there's a couple of reasons for that and it's like I'm not saying these are the fixes for them but movement's a little funny. I feel like most of the time characters can move backwards faster than they can move forwards. that literally for several characters, they dash their asses in and then call an assist and it doesn't work and they dash their asses back and they'll just utilize the entire screen space to go backwards and you can't you can barely chase them. Like you have to use boosted movement to get up there and get them, which is usually what I do, but I have to use boosted movement to chase them down. Like as of right now, you want to make yourself safe. You want to get yourself, you know, in a position that works and is good. So yeah, I I I see why it's playing out that way. It's not like it's super disinteresting. It really isn't cuz there's a lot of like really good play that you have to do in there to make that [ __ ] work. This is kind of the reason why I'm not really worried about like unblockables or something like that. Like dude, what are you getting opened up by when you're really good at this? It's going to be un unreactable mark overhead or uh a low mix in some way maybe or a hard knockdown specific situation, but how often does that [ __ ] actually happen when you get two people that are really good at resource management? And another criticism, tagging is too easy. Like raw tag is nuts. I think I think characters being able to just like raw tag in at any point. Granted, these are criticisms, but it's like the game is really fun. It's just like these are the the little things that I think are contributing to um it not being super high level. Like raw tagging in a character randomly in block strings and [ __ ] is crazy. That [ __ ] is crazy. And they like low profile and then low profile on the way in. And it's if they're if you're full screen, unless you have Mark with his super or his invincible punch, if you get full screen and back dash full screen and raw tag, dude, I think 90% of the roster is unable to do anything about it. It's a little like all over the place in that spot, which is not like the worst thing. Even with all these grievances, even with all these things that even people that play the [ __ ] out of this game will say that they are grievances. Maybe some people will make them seem like exacerbated, like really huge problems. You know what would be a huge problem with this game if it wasn't fun. And that's the thing, it's fun. It's clearly fun. Like most people are having a really good time finding cool [ __ ] with teams, finding cool combos you can do, finding cool ways to actually lock people down. There's so much room for interpretation that it feels like the developers, much less the game, does not tell you exactly how you should play it. A meta is evolving just because a meta will evolve no matter what. But it's changed several times over the past couple weeks. I did find a lot of the criticism the game was getting early on before anybody knew how to play it that it's inherently like everyone calls the game like scrubby and all this kind of stuff which seems like in inherently dismissive when it's like a lot of people were complaining about like dude this game lets you just mash assist while you're in a block string and there's any gap in that block string guess what happens the assist comes out it's insane and I'm like that's literally Marvel vscom 2 it's also Marvel 3. Yeah, I get it. The block strings aren't as defined in this and you got to find good ones. But dude, the majority of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is you sitting on down back and mashing your holy dick off of Psylock Assist or Capcom assist or cable or any anti-air like holding down back and mashing the [ __ ] out of it. It's also a huge part of NBC1 like sitting on down back and mashing the [ __ ] out of uh Colossus Assist and then you pick up for full combo. So to me to talk about like this this game is not inherently like versus game like which has been a lot of criticism too. I disagree dude. Several things in this game feel don't like they like they don't line up with Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but they are very much like old MVC games. It feels like a lot of fighting games in the past, like while aren't as much about problem solving as they are sheer reactions or guessing, where most of the interactions in the game are just going to come down to you either reacting or guessing to a specific situation instead of specifically solving a problem, trying to figure out what do I do in this scenario? What do I do against this character? What do I have that could actually do something against this? instead of that being thoroughly designed out to work in a specific way, it doesn't. Like, it all works in weird ways that do not line up with a lot of the traditional fighting game design that's out there right now. And I'll be real, there's a there's a reason why UNKs are kind of vibing with this [ __ ] right now because that's the way a lot of old versus games work, dude. It really is. So, again, I don't think everything's perfect. I want to see more changes like across the board for characters much less for the assists for uh movement stuff for some of the block string stuff. Yeah, I think that I think that stuff should all change. I think that'll just make everything feel better. But the foundation is like fun. I I just hope that like a few of the things that are across the board just become more usable as time goes on because right now it's like Mark and Eve and Cecil are just really good. You kind of build the entire team like around a shell in many ways. I think I would just like to see a bit more offense, you know, and especially when it comes to the actual meta/h high level of the game. I think offense being even more incentivized is cool. Does it mean we need more unblockables? Like, no, not necessarily. I I really hope they mess around with stuff where the boost gauge uh is always at a set level and always comes back at a set level until you tag them out. I think it would be very cool if boost worked in a way like what they do with Street Fighter 6 where depending on what you do, your actions have an impact on how that meter changes. I think that'd be neat. I think it would also be like really neat and and not a negative penalty sort of way where if people are disengaging a whole bunch where you literally don't get more boost gauge. I think there is definitely systems for them to mess around with there. I really do. I think there's like there's there's very easy ways to massage people to play the game differently. You have to incentivize offense, right? And that's just it. They have to incentivize tagging. You got to incentivize offense. Is the juice worth the squeeze? I think boost gauge is the way you do that. I really do. Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun with it. And I'm having a lot of fun that every single time we jump in and play, we find some new cool thing that I want to jump in and play online and try. If there's one thing that the online can be a little funky every once in a while, I'll have some good nights and I'll have some bad nights. I'll have some frustrating nights where it's just like what's happening and do I need to reset the game or some [ __ ] and other nights where it just feels great dude having a great time but this game is significantly different in an offline environment and I noticed this when I had to play against the guys like Mark's overhead became reactable the timing of it is like 20 to 25 frames or something like that but I was finding myself not being able to be opened up by [ __ ] nearly as much as online because the connection stability in some spots. So, I feel like this is a game that plays because it's so fast. This is a game that will be very different in an offline competitive environment compared to the online one. It actually was really cool to play this game offline. I'm actually very much looking forward to what's going to happen at Cobble Breaker.