FINALLY! There's actually gonna be some competition for Call of Duty as XDefiant is arriving to the scene. It's a Ubisoft-developed, first person shooter that's supposed to give the feel of an OG Call of Duty. I got the chance to play the closed beta and the gameplay felt very refreshing but also very familiar. I compared the game to if Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 4 had a baby...it has the special abilities and tacticals similar to Black Ops 4, with the movement and gunplay of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. The aim assist isn't nearly as strong as current day Call of Duty and the increases pace of place allows for higher skill ceilings. Additionally, the time-to-kill feels very fair (4-5 bullets) and every enemy has a health bar above them. It's a small feature that I've grown to love so much.
The best part about XDefiant? It's gonna be free-to-play which is a massive W. Now, there's legit no barrier to entry if you wanna give this game a whirl. It'll feature no skills-based matchmaking in it's public matches and they'll be a separate ranked mode for players looking to sweat. There's no specific release day yet, but I imagine it's going to be dropping in the fall of 2023.
Now I'm not exactly sure if it's going to completely take over Call of Duty - but the closed beta was promising. The gunplay was fun but they need to add some elements like a prestige system or some over-arching progression system to really get me hooked. I never understood why Call of Duty removed traditional prestiging in their multiplayer games as it was easily one of my favorite features. There was nothing like flexing that gold cross from Call of Duty 4...
Also, part of me always believes that gamers have inherently moved away from traditional multiplayer-style games. I'm talking deathmatch, domination, etc. For those of us that have been around the scene for a while, we've been playing this style since the early Halo days. Battle Royale have completely took over since Fortnite exploded on the scene. After traditional multiplayer games, you don't feel a sense of progress or accomplishment like you do after clutching up a BR win. Somehow, someway XDefiant has to capture that euphoric feeling of getting a battle royale win. A lot easier said than done...
In closing, XDefiant really blew me away with how smooth and quick the gameplay felt during the closed beta. The game will only get better over time, but if they want to seriously compete with CoD, then they got their work cut out for them. Regardless, it's already a much better game than BF2042. Granted that's not saying much but it's saying something.
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