Invincible has been one of my favourite modern superhero stories in recent years. Despite being built around aliens, superheroes and world-ending battles, it’s a deeply personal story about flawed people. But those flawed people spend a whole lot of time in world-ending punch-ups. That makes Invincible VS a natural fit — the first major game built around this universe and a chance to step into a brand new story.
I’m pleased to say, Invincible VS is great — fighting feels impactful (literally). The story is a bit short and doesn’t really break new ground, but if you’re here to beat up your friends on the couch, then this is a good time.
Getting Your Knuckles Dirty
I’ll be the first to say, I’m not a huge competitive fighting game player. I’m pretty casual, but I enjoy them. I play Mortal Kombat each release, and the Dragonball fighting games have always been a personal favourite. But tying a fighting game to a franchise or story I love is a great way to get me excited.
While I’m not perfectly mapping my combos and air juggles, playing through Invincible Vs’ storyline, and then playing some couch versus matches, the game makes it easy to feel powerful. You have a mixture of light, medium and heavy attacks, as well as specials and throws. These attacks flow nicely together into very fluid animations, even when you don’t have all of the combos memorised.
I think the biggest win for me is how each hero and villain feels pretty unique. Yes there are more than a few flavours of “dude who punches really hard”. But for every one of them there is a character like Atom Eve who can create weapons out of thin air, or Rex Splode, who flips and kicks while tossing explosives. A lot of care has been put into making the fighting match the characters from the story.
Nothing Is Safe
Each battle in Invincible Vs takes place on a single stage. Much like the TV show, fights feel like you’re going to the point of exhaustion and burning every resource to win. As the battles progress, the surrounding buildings, mountains and environments are all steadily destroyed. Couple that with characters that get visibly bloody, with damaged costumes and more frantic voice lines, and it makes each bout feel like a real brawl.
While the characters look really great, and the fights are flashy, it’s a shame only a small handful of the show’s voice actors are in the cast. The voice actors covering Invincible, Allen the Alien, Rex Splode and Powerplex are all good soundalikes, but are no replacement for the show’s amazing cast.
Heroes and Villains — A Roster Built For Chaos
The hero selection in Invincible VS is where most players will get their kicks. The 18 heroes and villains range from centre stage, like Invincible and Atom Eve, to more background figures, like Battle Beast, Titan, and even Cecil getting involved.
Going into a match of Invincible VS, you aren’t choosing a hero, you’re actually choosing three. These choices give you cool support moves where the secondary hero can jump in and deal some damage, or you can swap to a backup mid-fight. I found that through the campaign and my games, having a mixture of tank-style heavy hitters, speedy characters and some range made for a great combo.
When your backup characters are in reserve, they slowly heal some of the damage they’ve taken. So there is a great tactical balance to swapping at the right time to let Omni-Man soak up some damage while Invincible heals from a big fight.
I played a few couch matches with my wife, and while multiplayer is pretty bare bones, the fast-paced 3v3 battles still made for a fun way to settle scores.
The heroes are very true to their oh-so-violent origins. Don’t believe me? Just look at some of these BRUTAL finishing moves! (Graphic Warning)
Straight Outta The Comic Pages (Kinda)
The story of Invincible VS is serviceable, but it’s nothing to write home about. All up, the story mode was around an hour and a half for me to roll credits on. Without spoilers, it’s a pretty simple justification for having heroes and villains from across the Invincible universe fight one another. There are some really cool match-ups, including some characters that don’t survive all that long into the core show. Having them fight some late-game powerhouses is very interesting.
Unfortunately, the later 30 minutes or so of the story mode feel like they’re just padding extra fights by rotating who is butting heads with whom at any one time. As I said, it’s a short story… but it could’ve got away with being even shorter.
I’m pleased to say that as the credits roll there is a nice little teaser, hopefully setting up continued chapters and some more missions down the line.
Should I play Invincible VS?
Overall, Invincible VS looks the part, the finishing moves are flashy, and it does a great job of making even a relative novice feel like a superhero. It’s held back by a short, simple story, and its longevity will likely depend on community support and post-launch updates.
Invincible VS nails the fantasy of superpowered brawling, even if its story mode lands a weaker punch. If you’re after brutal couch battles and comic-book chaos, this is an easy recommendation.
Quest Daily scores Invincible VS:
7/10
Invincible VS is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. It retails for around $75 AUD.
A copy of Invincible Vs was supplied to Quest Daily for this review.
