IS X GON' GIVE IT TO YA?

Worlds collide and bullets fly in XDefiant, Ubisoft's promising free-to-play crossover shooter. Dashiell Wood deploys to find out if it has what it takes

The cel-shaded visuals might have failed to impress when this one debuted as 'Tom Clancy's XDefiant' back in 2021, but, after almost two years of radio silence, Ubisoft's foray into the world of competitive shooters has returned with a shiny fresh coat of paint.

Ditching the cartoony punk-rock inspired art direction in favour of a more grounded feel, XDefiant is now gunning for a place among today's hardcore military greats.

The overhaul isn't purely cosmetic, though, and the quiet removal of the Tom Clancy moniker is emblematic of a wider change in course. Built around a unique faction system, what was initially revealed to be a roster containing four groups from across the Clancy-verse has grown to encompass some of Ubisoft's other most popular properties.

Thanks to new arrivals repping Watch Dogs' DedSec and Far Cry 6's Libertad, XDefiant has 1 XDefiant excels at providing dense, multilayered playgrounds. 2 Urban maps are filled with alleys and tight corners morphed into a full-on crossover shooter with plenty of room for future expansion. Still, in a competitive climate where countless other free-to-play titles have failed to find a footing, it is going to need more than a tangential connection to these big names in order to make much of a dent.

PICK AND MIX

Fortunately, after spending several enjoyable hours defying enemy teams with bullets in a beta build, we can say the foundations being laid here are already extremely promising. Positioned as something of a throwback to the mechanics of older Call Of Duty titles, everything is built around a style of arcade shooting that we haven't seen in a major release since 2018's Black Ops 4. That might seem like a step backwards at first, but when you're darting around the battlefield in these high-intensity firefights the minute-to-minute action feels anything but dated.