The Backlog: Invincible VS

 

Ironically this game is relatively newer than the stuff I usually review but I had to play it much later than I wanted to cause I was in the hospital for a brain surgery when it released. And fair warning, I am going to discuss the story at some point but I will state another warning before that as the last topic for anyone who wants to avoid spoilers.

Now to talk about the gameplay. Interesting thing is the way this game overall feels pretty newbie friendly compared to a lot of other fighting games. For instance there is no motions you have to put into the game in order to do special moves. There is a special move button where you just have to push a single direction while hitting it in order to do different moves. Honestly in a 3 character team game this is probably a good thing, because you don't have to memorize movement motions for 3 separate characters at the same time. Normally move motions don't bother me in 1v1 games but they can kind of be annoying in team oriented games.

One newbie friendly thing I find kind of annoying though is the auto combo that goes off if you just mash the light attack button that ends with you unleashing a meter of your special bar on the enemy. Because it's too easy to accidentally do super moves when you didn't intend to and I found this kind of weird when it was a thing in Dragon Ball Fighter Z.

Cecil is my overall favorite character to play as...

Most of the in game counter methods are relatively simple too but the one called Counter Tag is kind of annoying because it is a counter to something that it feels like doesn't happen too often. Basically when your opponent tags their partner in mid combo you can hit them with a counter, but this is something the enemy AI doesn't really do in the game.

The arcade ladders are mostly standard to what you see in fighting games in general though there is no boss character in this game at all. Because the main enemy from the story mode is something you never technically fight, which I'll discuss that more when I talk about the story. With arcade the one weird thing though is the highest arcade mode is automatically set to the hardest difficulty, has more opponents than any other arcade ladder, and it functions like a survival mode where your health doesn't reset after every match. I was thinking the harder difficulties weren't as crazy as most other fighting games but not getting your health back after the fight makes this kind of a crazy obstacle.

The other thing about the arcade mode is when you win you get an ending for whoever you set as the first member of your team. The endings aren't terrible but they basically are just the character throwing out an opinion about the going ons in the Invincible series and have absolutely zero things to do with the story of the actual game itself. So my overall opinion on the game for those who don't want to hear me talk about the story? I'd say it's good. It's not spectacular but if you're into fighting games and need another one, it wouldn't be terrible.

Spoiler aside from story... if Anissa wins she steps on you!

Now onto talking about the story, so if you don't want spoilers stop reading now. The story seemed kind of interesting. The villains are a race of aliens who aren't viltramites that force a couple of the series villains and viltramites to team up with the heroes temporarily since well they kidnapped everyone to copy their powers and the viltramites might not become good guys but they're not going to just let something like that slide.

The problem is the story ends on a cliffhanger, which I assume means they thought they could release more of the story as DLC or a full expansions, but... we all know that with the way the industry behaves that if the game isn't exceptionally successful that's not going to happen. So the villains are in the middle of an invasion of earth at the end of the story and we have no idea what's going to happen in response to that.

And while the story isn't terrible. It's not as good as the story modes some other fighting games have come up with, it's more of just something that happens quickly as an excuse to line up the battles you have to fight during it. Which ironically doesn't even have you actually fight the villains, because you're fighting them after they transformed themselves into the other existing characters to copy their power.

So keep that in mind if you're interested in the game based on what I've had to say. Until next time everybody, happy gaming!