“xDefiant” has every chance to make a name for itself among shooters

• “xDefiant” is a new shooter from Ubisoft, and today, after a long wait, it is officially released on next-gen and PC.

• One of its strengths is the lack of SBMM in casual games.

The shooter world has been in decline for some time now. With the exception of the likes of Valorant, Counter Strike, Fortnite or Apex Legends (all of which are competitive games), the world of arcade shooters hasn’t been doing well for some time. Endgame, a great game, failed; “Battlefield” hasn’t been renewed in three years (though it looks like there will be news someday), and “Call of Duty” isn’t as compelling as it once was. And that’s why Ubisof has a great opportunity with the new shooter xDefiant. free to play coming today to next-gen devices and PCs.

xD-what? xDefiant. This is the name given to a new name that we were able to try out a few months ago and it left a very pleasant taste in our mouth. This is a traditional arcade shooter with a strong flavor of the old Call of Duty, albeit with some twists hero shooter

. Not so much because there are heroes, but because there are factions, and each faction has a number of active and passive abilities that we can use to our advantage.

It smells like CoD because it comes from CoD.. While Ubisoft is the company behind the game, the person leading its development is none other than Mark Rubin. If his name is unknown, perhaps the fact that he was an executive producer at Infinity Ward until 2015, which is why he worked on games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, tells us a different story. Essentially, xDefiant took what they loved about shooters of yesteryear and applied it to it.

What can we expect? As a shooter, the game will offer us 24 types of weapons, 44 accessories, grenades, 14 maps and five game modes. There are machine guns, submachine guns, snipers; mousetrap type cards to beat each other even in the DPR, slightly more open cards to play slower; and factions. Factions, as we have already said, will give us passive and active abilities, but weapons do not depend on the faction.

It’s a fast-paced game that’s surprisingly fun and very familiar. We said it on first impressions: playing xDefiant felt like playing CoD of yesteryear. Everything about mobility, gunplay, the “arcade atmosphere” that was present in previous installments – it’s all there in xDefiant, and until it launches and we see how it is received, the ingredients are there .

The Key to Matchmaking. One of the most criticized things about the current Call of Duty is skill-based matchmaking (SBMM, also known as skill matching). Simply put, this system matches users based on how good or bad they are.

The problem is that this makes the game frustrating because with two minimally good games, the system starts matching you with Chuck Norris, Jason Statham and Rambo. This causes you to lose many times, so the system starts pairing you with the worst players, thus falling into a loop of frustration and doubt.

xDefiant will not have SBMM in casual games. Yes, this will happen in competitive games, but not in casual games. Instead, the system will prioritize other aspects such as latency, region, input device, and platform. In the case of competitive games, Ranking Points (RP) will be taken into account. In addition, it is worth noting that the lobby will be constant between games.

Money money. How do I play free to play, xDefiant will have multiple cosmetics-based monetization systems. It won’t have mechanics. pay to win and, according to Ubisoft, all game-affecting content that can be purchased can also be obtained by playing. An example is the DedSec faction, which is blocked in the early stages of the game. It can be unlocked by paying or playing until you reach 700,000 experience points.

We will have a battle pass (with two sections: free and paid), character and weapon cosmetics, faction unlocks, character card backgrounds, character animations and emoticon packs.

What about the future? Ubisoft has ambitious plans for a new shooter. The preseason, which starts today, will last six weeks. Then, every three months, a season will be released, which will include three maps, three types of weapons, a new faction and a new battle pass. This is not a small thing. It’s a fast paced environment and keeping all the content up to date is definitely a challenge.

Available platforms. The new shooter from Ubisoft will be available to play today, May 21, at 19:00 Spanish peninsular time. The game will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Ubisoft Connect.

Images | Ubisoft

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