When I first discovered the Invincible TV Series on Amazon Prime Video a few years ago after hearing my friends rave about it, I was completely blown away by its boundary-pushing, hyper-violent, yet heartfelt narrative, not to mention its memorable cast of heroes and villains that I constantly feared any one of them might die a gruesome, series-exiting death at any moment.
Even then, however, if you had told me that Invincible co-creator Robert Kirkman’s production company Skybound Entertainment would seemingly out of nowhere wrangle together a dev team built from the original members of 2013’s Killer Instinct team to create the 3v3 tag fighter Invincible VS, I wouldn’t have believed you. But here we are, and what a treat it’s been so far!
Spearheaded by Executive Producer Mike Willette, former Lead Producer of the now defunct Double Helix Games team that gave us the revival of Killer Instinct (along with Willette himself as the voice of both the announcer and Jago), as well as the reboot of Strider the following year, developer Quarter Up’s new game is the perfect 3-way-marriage between Marvel vs. Capcom’s quintessential superhero tag-team mechanics, Killer Instinct’s near-relentless combos and dark atmospheric mood, and Mortal Kombat’s graphic gory-ness taken to the point of absurdity. All of the above has been lovingly wrapped in the warm, blood-spattered blanket of an original episode taken straight out of the Invincible universe, with Robert Kirkman’s blessing.
Unshackled from the budget constraints of a typical TV episode, every character, realm and stage featured in Invincible VS has been faithfully realized by Skybound in three dimensions, both in gameplay and cinematics, which is a short way of saying that the world of Invincible has NEVER looked better, especially in-game at 60 frames-per-second. Additionally, the easily recognizable pedigree of Killer Instinct 2013 is on full display, explaining in large part how Invincible VS captures the splashy, fluid-yet-intentionally-choppy movement style that punctuates every strike, block, slash, and generous gush of blood.
“The world of Invincible has NEVER looked better, especially in-game at 60 frames-per-second.”
And hoo-boy, there is a LOT of blood. So much so that Invincible VS even has a “Streamer Mode” that can be toggled on to remove much of the explosive gore, such as decapitations, exploding heads and graphic dismemberment.
According to Quarter Up, the events of Invincible VS are indeed canon and take place “between later episodes in Invincible Season 3.” Without spoiling anything, Quarter Up’s decision to set the game in this particular moment in the Invincible saga clarifies why certain fan-favourites from future episodes aren’t present in Invincible VS’s base roster of 18-characters, but it doesn’t quite cover up the omissions of some characters that have been around since the series’ start (if you know, then you know. Hopefully, an upcoming, already announced Year 1 Character Pass will address that, along with some future campaign DLC, because the ominous ending is sure to provoke many questions.
Fans concerned about Invincible VS’s story not living up to the rest of the series because it’s a video game need not be worried. Developed as a “playable episode,” Invincible TV series writer Helen Leigh has crafted Invincible VS as a standalone tale in conjunction with Narrative Director Mike Rogers and the involvement of Robert Kirkman himself, and at no point during my two playthroughs of the campaign did I feel that I was experiencing a story that was lesser-than or a throwaway “monster of the week” episode.
Even more impressive are the many interactions and subtle lore drops that occur between characters during face-offs, clashes, trash-talking, and actual fights, frequently making nods and winks to events in the TV show (similar to how the recent Mortal Kombat and Injustice games from NetherRealm Studios do with their respective casts). Breathing life into it all are the excellent voice talents, many of whom are voice acting royalty that have reprised their roles from the series, including J.K. Simmons as Omni-Man, Michael Dorn as Battle Beast, Phil LaMarr as Lucan, and Gillian Jacobs as Atom Eve.
Even the soundalikes are top-notch; within minutes of playing the game, I had already forgotten I wasn’t hearing Steven Yeun as Mark or Seth Rogen as Allen the Alien (a testament to the talents of actors Aleks Le and James Adomian, respectively). The new character who is currently exclusive to Invincible VS, Ella Mental (played by rapper/singer Tierra Whack), falters somewhat, as by virtue of being new, she has no history with the rest of the cast to bounce off of, but she’s alright.
It bears mentioning that there is more for players to experience offline apart from Story Mode. Invincible VS has a fully-fledged Arcade mode that players can complete with every character in the game, after which they’ll be treated to a brief victory vignette with that character’s voiceover (the first character selected in the trio determines whose ending will be shown).
“The genius of Invincible VS’s combat is that it keeps things simple with two basic tenets.”
Solo players can select fighting ladders of 5, 7, 10 or 12 opponent teams in order to play for a short, long or very long time, and can challenge themselves with four difficulty levels, including “Viltrumite.” There’s also plenty for players to unlock both online and offline in general, including concept art, character designs, unlockable soundtracks for the game’s jukebox, online profile badges, and so on.
Moving on to gameplay, Invincible VS is designed to be a 3v3 tag fighter that is easy to jump into and have fun with, but also empowers the player to layer greater levels of mastery on top as they gradually familiarize themselves with the game’s characters and gameplay mechanics. It has the trappings of an MvC game, but is purposely less intense and more focused on tag-team mechanics, an emphasis that both Skybound and Quarter Up clearly hope will make the game more accessible to a wider range of players, particularly with the full weight of the Invincible IP behind it.
Having said that, I highly recommend to anyone playing for the first time or players like myself who have lapsed to devote their first 20-25 minutes to playing and completing the game’s brief Tutorial Mode, which simply and effectively teaches players the existence of the game’s fundamentals, including Normals, Specials, Boosted Specials, Supers, Ultimates, Tag Assists, Counter Tags, and more.
While there’s nothing wrong with just jumping in with a trio of characters and slapping and/or mashing buttons, players will begin to feel even more like badass superheroes once they understand the overall potential of each of their characters’ move sets and learn the many ways in which they can call in their teammates and/or swap their on-screen fighters to keep their combos going. Or they can master breaking their opponent’s combos in order to start a combo-chain of their own.
The genius of Invincible VS’s combat is that it keeps things simple with two basic tenets: 1) Mashing the “Light” button with any character will perform an auto-combo, and if “super-meter” (which is energy built up from combo attacks) is available it will auto-chain into a Super attack as well, making for an easy, dependable entry point to start one’s attack.
2) A hierarchy referred to as “The Magic Chain” largely dictates the order of what can combo into what – Normal Light attacks combo into normal Medium attacks, normal Mediums combo into Heavy attacks, Heavy attacks can combo into Special Attacks and Specials can combo into Supers. As long as the attacks are “up the chain,” players can combo into them, and in some situations, they can combo back down the chain as well.
“I personally found that the simplicity of the default controls made the game feel less intimidating, helping me to get through the learning curve and find the fun faster.”
As a result, Invincible VS players are less fixated on memorizing specific moves, but rather are focused on more standardized, straightforward button combinations and directionals that are not only easier to remember but also easier to pull off consistently (provided you are not using the Street Fighter 2-inspired “Motion” control scheme or the more advanced “Leverless” button layout). I personally found that the simplicity of the default controls made the game feel less intimidating, helping me to get through the learning curve and find the fun faster.
That brings us to the question that many players will want to know before fully diving in:
“Gamepad or Joystick?” Well, they’ll be pleased to know that Invincible VS not only allows for full re-mapping of all the action buttons on one’s gamepad, fight stick or aforementioned leverless joystick to their desired arrangement, but also that Quarter Up even provides a recommended default layout card for each input type in order to save players the mental gymnastics needed to come up with a signature button layout all by themselves. The cards are included with the physical edition, and hopefully can be added to the digital version in an upcoming download or patch.
During the review period, I managed to participate in a three-hour, unranked online session with other journalists across North America, Latin America and even Europe, and I didn’t experience any notable latency or glitches while playing. Full disclosure, I hadn’t had the review code for very long and had no idea what I was doing for the first two hours, but at no time did I feel that lag was playing any part in my losses.
“I could literally spend another hour praising Invincible VS’s audio.”
They were entirely the result of my clumsiness and lack of experience with the game, and being honest, I actually won most of my matches despite that. The online performance should have come as no surprise, as Invincible VS features rollback netcode as standard, but the fact that even the thought of latency never entered my mind until hours after the session had ended is truly saying something.
I could literally spend another hour praising Invincible VS’s audio. The spatter of blood, the ringing in one’s ears after taking a superhuman punch to the jaw, the crack of bones, an exploding skull, and the sonic booms that erupt every time Mark, Nolan or the Viltrumites break the sound barrier are all signs that Quarter Up’s sound and foley team has the atmosphere of Invincible on lock, and also that they might be sickos. Meanwhile, American electronic music duo The Glitch Mob brings the vibe, with a truly bespoke, “strut-worthy” opening menu theme and a banging jungle and drum ’n’ bass soundtrack that matches its various destructible stages perfectly.
One need only look up any of Mike Willette’s many interviews or vidocs leading up to the imminent release Invincible VS to see how serious he and the Quarter UP team are working to ensure that their game is worthy earning the respect of the international Fighting Game Community (FGC), with the fundamental building blocks of local, online and ranked play already in place and working as of this writing.
But what’s truly exciting is playing the game, seeing and feeling that energy, passion, and excitement in practically every element of the game’s overall execution as the official launch approaches, which, for me, so far has been near-flawless. Fans of MvC, Mortal Kombat, Injustice, Killer Instinct, and, of course, Invincible owe it to themselves to pick up this game and give it a try.
