It seems now more than ever, Robert Kirkman, Corey Walker, and Ryan Ottley‘s Invincible is one of the top superhero franchises in the pop culture space. After the animated series hit Prime Video in 2021, more and more fans have come to be fans of Mark Grayson’s violent coming-of-age superhero story. The folks at Skybound had the brilliant idea when starting their game division with a fighting game. Superhero comics have a long history in the Fighting Game genre, with the benchmark being Capcom’s Marvel series, leading into its Marvel Vs. Capcom series. Invincible VS takes inspiration from those games and from Netherealm Studios’ games (Mortal Kombat and Injustice) to make their own 3 x 3 tag team fighting game that does right by the genre and its inspirations.
Screenshot captured on PlayStation 5
So let me start where most fans of the comics and the show might like the best, the story mode. It’s not that long, as I was able to finish in one evening. It feels consistent with the storytelling style of the show. The story does a good job of putting all these characters in one place and not killing each other instantly. It also gives the player a chance to play with a good number of the roster of fighters in different team combinations. The story mode is also how the new character, Ella Mental (voiced by recording artist Tierra Whack), fits in well with our Global Guardians. The story works well in how it’s told, if you want to know how and where it might fit into the show. It works well as a non-canon that could be a canon story at this time.
Screenshot captured on PlayStation 5
The story mode will not teach you how to play the game, and it’s not that difficult to get through, especially if you’re familiar with playing Fighting Games at all. The arcade mode, where you play a set number of fights, with a larger number at higher levels of difficulty. It’s pretty straightforward and is set up to be like how’d you play a Fighting Game in the arcade versus computer-controlled opponents. Once you finish the last battle, you get an ending for your lead character, mostly static images with text. The images are pretty good, and the endings, from what I’ve seen, are okay, but no big wow events happen, and there’s no big, surprising final fight boss or team. I think they should’ve had something like the full-screen battles in the MvC series or an overpowered boss like Shao Khan in the MK games.
The real selling point for this game is playing online, but I’m going to be honest, you need to do training mode first before you even think about going online to fight people, even in casual matches. Invincible VS has a basic setup of using the four face buttons on a standard controller with Light, Medium, Heavy attacks, and then a Special attack button. The shoulder buttons are used for important things, with your left ones handling Tag functions and the Right ones doing dash and boost. Everything is easy to reach and use in terms of control. I haven’t tried the game with a stick since the demo I played in NYCC, and I haven’t used my leverless stick yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
Screenshot captured on PlayStation 5
Back to Training Mode, it does a great job of teaching you how to play the game. The super basics are easy to get, but the strategy of this game is learning its movement from super jumps, hops, and dashes, but also its counter system based on blocks, tag reversals, and combo-breaking tag functions. This stuff, I’d say, is the hardest to get if you don’t play these games often, as even as a person who has been playing fighters for 35 years, most of this is going to a lot of practice. Some of the timing for all this is pretty tight, but regarding combos and being creative in how you beat the breaks off of your opponents, there’s a lot you can do. The discovery in this game is a lot of fun, and you start to figure out just what attacks can lead to each other.
Now, the online might be the biggest struggle. There weren’t a lot of people I got a chance to play against before Invincible VS was officially released, as I had some long matchmaking wait times, but I truly suggest starting in casual first, even if you have some experience. During the earlier open beta, there were a lot of Invincible fans jumping into this space and getting very frustrated and rage-quitting all the time. Unlike Mortal Kombat, there aren’t super fun fatalities to look at. While the super attacks are cool and the game has pretty brutal finishers with the characters exploding into parts and blood, most of the time you’re getting hit with long combo strings where you won’t get to do anything if you don’t know how to counter them.
That can really affect your enjoyment if you’re not used to this or honestly don’t like losing. I don’t want to finish this review without talking about graphics and sound. Invincible VS is kind of comic-inspired/animation-inspired 3D models. It has a good look to where it’s rendered and a bit shiny that feels like playing with action figures instead of trying to look like a cartoon, like how Dragon Ball FighterZ or 2XKO looks. The effects animation for attacks, special moves, and super move cutscenes does a great job of bringing in the comic book elements like motion lines and close-up panel graphic elements. For a first game from Skybound Games and being made by Quarter Up from folks who made the 2013 Killer Instinct, you can feel these folks know what they are doing in making a good fighting game.
Screenshot captured on PlayStation 5
Invincible VS also has a lot of voice cast from the show, and ties it in well to what you expect the characters to sound like. It’s familiar to how it felt when first playing X-Men: Children of the Atom and hearing the voices from that show in that game back in 1994. In such a now crowded landscape of the Fighting Game genre right now, this game isn’t the most impressive, but I think it does give you a good time while you play it. It also doesn’t cost as much as other games currently, which helps too. With a good first season of DLC characters on the way, I look forward to seeing how this game does with the casual and hardcore fighting game community, as I think it’s a good game to have in your collection.
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