Invincible VS Review

Let’s get this out of the way at the top: I am not a fan of Invincible. The show, the comic, none of it. I don’t have anything against the series, it’s just never been on my radar outside of the occasional meme of Omni-Man pointing at his temples popping up on my timeline. What I am a fan of is fighting games of all shapes and sizes. The Marvel vs. Capcom series in particular holds a special place in my heart. I’ve never been good at those games, but the over-the-top nature of a big ol’ crossover event got me hooked on them and made me fall in love with tag team fighters in general, skill level be damned. This love, combined with the knowledge that part of the development team at Quarter Up made my favorite fighting game, Killer Instinct (2013), has made me increasingly excited for Invincible VS despite no connection whatsoever to the IP.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been this torn on a fighting game in quite some time.

Invincible VS feels like two distinct halves that make an uneven whole. The core fighting game here is incredibly fun to play! It’s a 3v3 combat system on a 2D plane, with a focus on tagging between characters to get out of sticky situations and extend combos. If you’ve played a Marvel vs. Capcom game or Dragon Ball FighterZ, that base is very familiar. What sets this game apart from its inspirations is all the little twists on the formula that solve a bunch of gripes people have had since first realizing how truly broken Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was.

A slightly simplified version of the combo meter from Killer Instinct is present, filling up as hits land on your opponent. Smack them when that meter is full, and they’ll fall out of the combo to the ground, resetting the situation. When combined with the overall high-damage nature of attacks, this ensures that you’ll never be sitting there for many seconds at a time, watching impotently as your characters get beat up. There’s also a small amount of that Killer Instinct “glue” in each combo, as tagging to a teammate mid-combo will cause the incoming character to home in on the opponent, ensuring that most combos will continue even if your timing of special moves is slightly imperfect.

A fun swerve is that the combo meter can also be decreased a small amount with each Active Tag, encouraging use of your whole team rather than relying on one strong character. As the Fighting Game Community currently sits with a decent amount of apprehension about the upcoming Marvel Tokon’s system of focusing on a single lead character, it’s very satisfying and comforting to see a tag fighter double down on the genre’s intended appeal of going through each teammate in every combo. 

New and interesting defensive options are also present and welcome to keep matches from feeling completely one-sided. Traditional pushblocking is present, allowing you to shove the opponent away a little when their pressure is too great and you feel like you can’t press a single button, but expanding on that idea is the Heroic Strike. It’s a universal move that can only be performed while blocking, but functions similarly to the armored Focus Attacks/Drive Impacts from Street Fighter, allowing you to easily retaliate against opponents who won’t stop mashing. If you’re tired of being tied up in endless combos due to the Active Tag system extending them, Counter Tags give you the chance to “parry” an incoming Active Tag and cut your opponent’s combo short. Assist Breakers round out the suite by being the tag team equivalent of a combo breaker. Spend most of your Boost (EX move) gauge and convert half of a benched character’s health to recoverable health, and they’ll come in to rescue your lead.

All of these additions are smart ways to keep the fast, frenetic nature of a tag fighter from feeling like uncontrollable chaos. It’s the fighting game subgenre that has always been the least approachable, and Invincible VS does everything right system-wise to welcome in newcomers and let them feel like they can easily perform flashy offensive strings and rewarding defensive maneuvers without taking away depth for hardcore players. A simplified, pad-centric control scheme is the default, but there’s an entirely optional “motion” control scheme for those who can’t shake the muscle memory of things like anti-air attacks being performed with a “Z” motion. Everyone is welcome.

As brilliant as the multiplayer core is, however, even describing the single-player offerings as “thin” might be a bit charitable.

The story mode has been marketed as “like watching an episode of the television show”. The problem is, it’s like watching an episode of the show. One. There’s around 25 minutes of original animation (3D, rather than hand-drawn) that’s been created for the game which is usually gorgeous and full of action. Those videos have been interspersed with playable fights to provide an experience a little over an hour long. Even dying several times since it was the first thing I hopped into after completing the tutorial, my story mode playthrough clocked in at an even 90 minutes. I don’t hate the idea of “playing through an episode of the show” being the basis for a fighting game’s main single-player content, but the singular episode on offer feels incomplete on its own. Technically a whole story arc is told, but it’s a rather boring “This is all one big misunderstanding!” what-if scenario that feels like the first chapter of something bigger. Perhaps that bigger story will be finished elsewhere in the comic and/or show, but as a gateway to the IP (the whole point of a licensed video game), I was left with a hollow feeling instead of an eagerness to dive into more Invincible.

Arcade mode is the only other way to play the game on your own, offering a traditional ladder-style experience. Unfortunately, the presentation here might be a bit too traditional. Fight a series of computer-controlled teams, attempt to earn a high score from the point system and rank up on the online leaderboard, and end by receiving a short, barely-animated “cutscene” as a reward. Those cutscenes don’t appear to be very interesting, as all the ones I’ve unlocked so far have amounted to “I’m [so-and-so], and this is why I’m a hero/villain”. I can’t imagine such obvious statements will do much for Invincible fans coming to this game for character lore, as even I reacted with “Yeah Ella, I knew that you’re a hero, I played the story mode”. There’s no lead-in stories or custom between-fight interactions, so the whole affair feels lacking in comparison to a game like Street Fighter that has at least told full character stories by frugally using static images for multiple iterations now .

It’s a shame that there’s so little for casual players to sink their teeth into offline, as the presentation that’ll draw many in is fantastic. The art direction is beautiful, having a Spider-Verse-esque style that’s arguably more appealing than the show. The soundtrack is absolutely bumpin’, leaning towards energetic electronic beats while also flirting with lighter, melodic styles as a good superhero story should. Voice acting from both people who worked on the show and their stand-ins is excellent across the board. I may never tire of hearing Aleks Le scream “Just fucking die!!!” every time Invincible does a level 3 super. Seemingly every possible combination of characters has personalized voice lines and banter with each other, which made me interested in the relationships and world of Invincible in the way the single-player modes themselves never did. 

This is the wildest possible game to release right after the Fighting Game Community spent weeks analyzing if fighting games are good “products”. After much discussion on the topic, most people came to the same conclusion: “Hell no. But, we like ‘em anyways.” More importantly, old-school fighting game releases just don’t cut it anymore, at least as full-price games. A compromise needs to be reached between developer/publisher and the player: Either offer enough content for the gradual onboarding to feel on par with any other video game, worthy of a player’s time and monetary investment, or dramatically reduce the barrier of entry. Invincible VS sits firmly in that decidedly un-creamy center, being a slightly budget-priced game at $50, but offering very little single-player content and throwing players into the deep end after a tutorial that essentially just tells them what the buttons do.

Most people who buy a fighting game stay offline, diving into every corner of its various single-player modes instead of dealing with the stress of having their ass beat in online matches. With the game’s licensed IP being a fairly wide-reaching and casual one, I feel that it’s misguided to leave these players wanting, and the cultural exchange will likely be one-way. I’m sure plenty of FGC members will be inspired to watch the Invincible show or start reading the comics, but I can’t imagine many hardcore Invincible fans will be converted into fighting game players after spending fifty hard-earned dollars for what may only amount to a few hours of gameplay in their eyes.

Invincible VS is clearly a game by the FGC for the FGC, which results in a double-edged sword. It serves as an incredibly fun and satisfying tool for competition, featuring just enough of that modern fighting game sanding of edges to welcome in new players, while also offering plenty of depth through playing chicken with the combo meter and a combo breaker-esque system of Heroic Strikes, Counter Tags, and Assist Breakers. Disappointingly, this focus on creating a game for tournament players seems to be what has caused the single-player offerings to suffer. The presentation is brilliantly flashy the whole way through, but after playing through a mediocre “episode” of the show and reaching disappointing arcade mode endings, the casual audience is left with little to do in the game other than rematching the CPU in standard matches over and over.

I’ve been rooting for Quarter Up and this game since its announcement, and I’d love to see a dedicated competitive scene latch onto its wonderfully thoughtful tag team system for years to come. Sadly, I just can’t imagine that Invincible VS will stick the landing with many Offline Warriors.