Invincible VS review – Fast-paced, fun, and rather brutal

After dipping its toes into the genre by having Omni-Man appear as a DLC fighter in Mortal Kombat 1, the Invincible franchise how has its very own fighting game, Invincible VS. So, if you’ve ever wanted to pit the titular Invincible against his girlfriend Atom Eve, or face off against Allen the Alien as Battle Beast, you now have an outlet to do so. It’s just a shame there isn’t a little more meat to it.

Invincible VS brings together 17 characters from the Invincible universe that you already know and love, while also introducing a new character, Ella Mental. And indeed, if you are a fan of the franchise, chances are your first port of call here will be Story Mode, which presents an original narrative created for the game. It’s quite clever, bringing all the characters together in a creative way, and giving you a little time with each to help you get used to how they play. It’s just a shame it’s so brief.

You’ll be done with the Story Mode of Invincible VS in little over an hour, and even worse, it ends with its affairs unresolved. Presumably more story content is going to be added in the future, otherwise the effort put into it will feel like a bit of a waste. Still, it is fun while it lasts, and it perfectly captures the essence of the Amazon TV show, despite it not featuring all of the original voice actors.

Outside of story mode, Arcade Mode here has various “ladders”, letting you chose how many fights you want to take part in before witnessing an ending. But other than that there are no more options outside of choosing the difficulty. The game’s training options are light, too, with you just able to play through a tutorial or engage in a practice session. Needless to say, it’s a shame that modes such as Score Attack, Time Attack, Survival and Combo Trials haven’t been given some consideration.

Like many fighting games, then, any long-term fun here will be derived by facing off against opponents locally or online. When it comes to the latter, both casual and ranked matches are available, and you can also create or join a lobby. Thanks to rollback netcode, playing online is typically an enjoyable experience, too, though it’s not entirely free of the odd hiccup when your connection isn’t the best.

Of course, all of this wouldn’t matter if the fighting action at the core of Invincible VS wasn’t up to scratch. The good news is that thanks to the game’s developer, Quarter Up, being led by former key members of the Killer Instinct (2013) development team, it delivers fun, fast-paced and rather brutal fighting action. And while you will find yourself engaging in some one-on-one fights during Story Mode, it’s tag-focused, so you’ll be choosing three characters and switching between them during battle to overcome your opponent.

Those who are familiar with fighting games such as Guilty Gear will be in their element here, as Invincible VS has a similar system in which you can chain normal attacks together as long as you’re moving upwards. So, you can start with weak attacks and then progress up to medium, strong and then special, or you can start elsewhere, with special attacks even chaining into super moves. To make the game accessible to newcomers, it also has an auto-combo feature, allowing you to simply keep tapping the light attack button to perform a destructive string of attacks dependent on your Super Gauge.

Ultimately, Invincible VS is easy to pick up but somewhat harder to master, with plenty of advanced manoeuvres available for more serious players, allowing them to break out of combos and more. There are benefits to manually performing combos, too, rather than relying on the auto-combo system. Skilled players will be able to perform longer combo strings, tagging in other members of their team to extend them even further and inflict even more damage on their opponents.

The gameplay at the core of Invincible VS is solid, then. It’s just a shame that there aren’t more modes and options. It would be nice if you could choose to take part in one-on-one fights like you often do in Story Mode, for example. And not having modes such as Combo Trials and Survival in this day and age just feels like an oversight. Add in the fact that Story Mode comes to an abrupt end, and you have a game that’s certainly entertaining, but not as fleshed out as it should be.