Xdefiant Download Beta
Cameron Fluet
It's not purely a Call of Duty-like game, though: There's a Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch-ish escort mode, and special abilities that don't all have CoD gadget analogues. One faction's ultimate is a flamethrower.
My Xperience with XDefiant's closed beta has definitely been sweatier than my usual experience in today's Modern Warfare 2. There's no skill-based matchmaking in casual XDefiant matches, so the scoreboards typically have 30-plus kill monsters at the top followed by the rest of us under-20 scrubs. I've had some frustrating games where I get disintegrated from a different angle after nearly every spawn, but also some pleasant streaks of my own. Very brief streaks, but fun.
This closed beta was scheduled to end on April 23 at 11 pm Pacific, but it's been extended until April 25, so there's still time to give XDefiant a try if you can get in before then. You can register on the official site for a chance to participate, and players who are already in the beta may be able to invite you, as well. (I used my invites already, sorry.)
XDefiant features a variety of factions and classes, each with their own unique abilities and weapons. It is set in the Ubisoft universe, map locations are based on multiple Ubisoft titles' in-game locations. Players engage in fast-paced, team-based multiplayer matches across a variety of maps and game modes.[1]
XDefiant was announced by Ubisoft in July 2021.[5] A closed Insider test of a pre-alpha version of XDefiant occurred in North America in 2021.[6] A second Insider test was held in February 2023.[7] A closed beta test began on 13 April and ended on 23 April.[8] In March 2022, the game was rebranded as a part of the Ubisoft Originals brand, dropping the Tom Clancy's universe title, and is expected to feature characters from other Ubisoft franchises, including those from the Tom Clancy's universe, as previously mentioned.[9]
On 17 April 2023, shortly after the launch of the game's closed beta, XDefiant became one of the top games to be streamed on the Twitch streaming platform, gaining around 50k viewers and passing the combined popularity of Warzone 2.0 and Modern Warfare II.[10]
During the Ubisoft Forward presentation on 12 June 2023, Ubisoft announced an open session, which started on 20 June for closed beta test participants (21 June for all players) and ended on 23 June. A Public Test Session was announced for PC only starting on 28 September and ending on 29 September.[11] Ubisoft planned the game to release in early-to-mid October.[12] The Year 1 Roadmap includes four seasons with 12 new weapons, maps, balance, and 4 characters update.[13][14] After the session "surfaced some inconsistencies in the game experience", director Mark Rubin announced that XDefiant's release was delayed temporarily.[15] Season 1 was announced along with a release date of July 2 in the Ubisoft Forward 2024 event. Content includes 3 maps, with one map coming out per month, 3 new weapons, a new faction (GSK (from Rainbow Six: Siege), Capture the Flag mode, ranked progression rewards, and more in-store items and bundles. They also revealed an XDebrief event which will be centered on the new season, which will occur a day before the season's release.[16]
XDefiant was released on May 21, 2024. On its launch day, it achieved 1 million unique players within two and a half hours. The milestone makes it Ubisoft's fastest game to reach 1 million unique players. 48 hours after launch, XDefiant had just over 3 million unique players and around 300,000 concurrent players across all platforms. Despite initial server issues causing many players to wait in the menu, these problems were resolved approximately eight to ten hours after launch.[17][18] By June, it had accumulated 11 million players.[19]
I got some hands-on time with XDefiant, Ubisoft's franchise-blending free-to-play shooter, ahead of its upcoming beta, and I'm of two minds about it. I was honestly quite impressed with its gunplay. It's shaping up to be a sharp FPS with a nice variety of guns that feel good to use and customize, though my preview only gave me time to dabble in the lowest-level weapon attachments. But I find myself with neutral or negative feelings about almost everything else, which makes me wonder if anything about it is good enough to pull players away from the likes of Counter-Strike or Overwatch 2, especially when XDefiant seems to be standing on the shoulders of those giants.
My enjoyment varied wildly between maps, modes, and factions, which are basically classes. There will be five factions at launch with a new one coming in every three-month season, and each faction has one fixed ultimate plus two active abilities to choose from. So a loadout consists of whatever guns and attachments you want, the ultimate for your chosen faction, and your preferred ability, and you can change all of these mid-match. I quickly gravitated to the invisible suit of Splinter Cell's Echelon faction, and so did a lot of other people in my player pool because it turns out that becoming very hard to see is extremely powerful in a game that's mechanically adjacent to CS:GO. I also saw a lot of the Dedsec faction from Watch Dogs, particularly the spider drone that completely stops you from Playing The Video Game once it latches on like a mechanical Alien facehugger that you can barely see or hear coming.
The flamethrower-equipped Cleaners from The Division specialize in area denial. Far Cry 6's freedom fighters can overheal themselves (very strong) or put down brief healing fields for allies (much less strong). Ghost Recon's Phantoms are the tanks of the bunch and can deploy shields to hide behind. Most of these factions will feel familiar, not just to fans of Ubisoft's franchises but also to regular purveyors of today's competitive-minded shooters. And it is interesting to see these abilities revisited within an arena FPS sandbox with a TTK this low, but it feels like they often get in the way of gunplay rather than elevating it.
For starters, you die so quickly that it's almost impossible to use most abilities reactively, which clashes with the message I got from my brief chat with some XDefiant devs. What good is a heal when it doesn't meaningfully change how many bullets it takes to kill you or your teammates? If a good player gets the first shot on you, you will never have time to pop your overheal, or invis-suit, or whatever before you die, and you're better off shooting back anyway. You freakin' drop in this game. Basically all weapons kill in fractions of a second, especially if you're hitting headshots. XDefiant has the fast, kill-die-respawn, meat-grinder pacing of something like Call of Duty. That's not inherently a bad thing, but this low TTK seems to conflict with the abilities that XDefiant is largely built around (and is perhaps not a perfect fit for payload gameplay either).
For this reason, I'd say I had the most fun with the Hot Shot mode, which is basically Kill Confirmed where the leading player gets a movement speed buff while also being marked and extra visible for enemies. It felt like Hot Shot did the best job of embracing and leveraging fast, chaotic engagements while giving players a compelling reason to coordinate their movements. XDefiant felt more like an arena shooter in these moments, which was nice.
The abilities are just kind of here, and I don't entirely know why. The gunplay of XDefiant is telling me to peek carefully, control weapon spray, maintain map awareness, strafe effectively, lead shots based on consistent movement speed and hitbox size, and play in my weapon's effective range. And it's pretty good at that! Skill expression is further layered in through wrinkles like the slide, slide jump, and reload cancels. But almost every time I tried to focus on the FPS principles that make up the bones of the genre XDefiant wants to occupy, I'd get shut down by what felt like some extraneous bullshit.
I don't think the map design is helping either. Here again, my experience varied a lot. Some maps felt nicely sized and tightly focused, while others felt way too big for 6v6. I mean absurdly oversized, and with a ridiculous number of paths, bits of cover, and vantage points for a game that claims to focus on the three-lane fundamentals of arena shooters. Obviously, I didn't have much time to learn the maps, and maybe pre-beta lag or wonky spawning made things worse, but it felt truly impossible to predict enemy movements and approaches on several maps. It's like trying to staple rain to a tree. I also played payload on a more linear map that seemed to greatly favor the defending team in its checkpoint placement and overall pathing, and I say that after experiencing it as an attacker and defender.
Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible."}), " -0-10/js/authorBio.js"); } else console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); Austin WoodSocial Links NavigationAustin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.
The Closed Beta was an event that ran from April 13, 2023 to April 25, 2023. The purpose of the Closed Beta was to gather more player feedback and data concerning balancing and gameplay adjustments for Ubisoft to make in development. The Closed Beta featured a sample of weaponry, maps and modes in the game.
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