Over the last couple of years, Invincible has gained a massive following, this is largely thanks to its animated series on Amazon Prime. Since its 2021 release date, I often found myself asking ‘Who would win in a fight?’ This is a question that can finally be answered thanks to Skybound’s upcoming 2D fighting game, Invincible VS. As the name suggests, it’s based on the show and comic book of the same name, and in it, players will have the chance to fight one another while playing as iconic characters from the series. Ahead of its April 30 release date, MonsterVine was invited to go hands-on with the game, which included all 16 characters that’ll be available at launch.
The build that I was able to toy around with was relatively simple. I was greeted with a cool loading screen of Invincible and Omni Man going head-to-head, and the second I pressed any button, I was thrown straight into the character selection menu. Despite being thrown right into it, I still had a wide variety of things to explore. With 18 characters and four different fighting styles, there was a lot for me to learn within a short amount of time.
Let’s break down the basics first. Each fighter is placed into one of four categories. There’s balanced, which means they’re good in just about every situation, and there’s Range, which are fighters who have a lot of projectile attacks. Then there’s Striker, these are your bruisers who love to get in your face and do a lot of damage, and last but not least, there’s Grappler. These fighters love to grab you and create chain combos the second they get their hands on you. If you were wondering, each character will also have two variant costumes that you can rotate between.
Though most were locked, there was also a wide range of fighting arenas I was able to pick from. Many of these featured well-known locations from the series, such as Titans’ penthouse, the Moon, the Himalayas, and more. Invincible VS adheres to many fighting game norms. You have a team of three you can tag in or call for help at any time, and your time is limited. If you tag someone in the fighter who just left, they can potentially recover some lost health if they stay out of the fight long enough.
The second I started throwing hands, I quickly noticed one thing. The game has a low barrier to entry but a high skill ceiling. This was a fighting game that I was able to pick up and understand fairly quickly. So if you’re someone who doesn’t play a lot of fighting games, you can pick up and do fairly well, thanks to the auto-combos built into each fighter. It’s nice to know that if you’re smart about blocking attacks properly, you can kick some serious butt with those alone.
But if you want to take things a step further, mastering combos isn’t all that challenging. Each character more or less plays the same when it comes to their standard kits. All it really takes is learning one or two basic combos, and then you can really focus on what you want to learn from there. Even though there wasn’t a lot that I was able to learn in my short amount of time with the game, I did see plenty of combos that left me speechless because of how effectively they were used against me.
If you’ve played fighting games, you’ll know that throughout the course of a fight, you’ll build up a power bar that allows you to perform various moves that you couldn’t do otherwise. Knowing when to use these moves can make all the difference in a fight. Because you can easily set up a combo that’ll automatically force a character back into the fight, which will prevent them from healing up, or if you really want to get aggressive with it, you can use it to help chain combos together to deal extra damage, and of course, use your ultimate move.
Despite being on the receiving end of about half of them, I loved watching each fighter’s ultimate move. Even though it may be a no-brainer, it was nice to see how each move reflected the character’s demeanor throughout the series.
There were a lot of little details about Invincible VS that I really enjoyed too. Of course, the first one was the unique dialogue I heard between specific characters right before the fight started. The other was seeing how battle-torn they get throughout the course of a match. At the start, they look just like how they do in the series. By the end of each fight, they become extremely worn out and even carry themselves like they’re about to die any second.
The one thing that really caught me by surprise was how brutal the game can be. It doesn’t take long for a lot of blood to start flying across the screen. If you get the groove going and find yourself in the middle of a combo or a heavy attack right before someone dies, your fighter will have the enemy player’s body exploding into what seems like a million pieces.
Invincible VS has a lot going for it. The art style is unique, but true to the series. It has a high mastery ceiling, is accessible to newcomers, and is great at teaching you to get to the roots of the game to truly master it. On top of all of that, it’s just as brutal as its show/comic book counterparts. The short time I’ve spent with the game has made me excited to see what it has to offer upon its release. Most importantly, I now know who in the Invisible Universe will win in a fight, and the answer is, whoever is playing against me. Invincible VS is scheduled to release on April 30 and will be playable on Xbox Series X|S, PC, and PlayStation 5.
