XDefiant could be the ‘CoD Killer’ we’ve waited for—if it could land its shots

The XDefiant beta has come and gone, giving gamers a small taste of what many in the FPS sphere are calling “the Call of Duty killer.” With just weeks until the launch of Ubisoft’s free-to-play shooter, many tried their hand at reliving the glory days of CoD.

For me, those glory days were in 2009 with Modern Warfare 2, a game I sunk way too many hours into over the years. From the angles of Favela to the long sightlines of Wasteland, and the occasional one-on-one Rust Intervention quickscope battle, it was all highlights. If you tell me a new release wants to recapture those moments, I’m listening.

After putting hours into the XDefiant beta though, I’m not convinced.

There are a few things it gets right, which is giving me hope. But for a title hyped as the long-awaited “CoD killer,” it’s not hitting the mark.

The good: There’s Tom Clancy character here

One element of XDefiant I really enjoyed was the approach to factions and their abilities. While the game lost its Tom Clancy prefix long before its beta test launched, its roots in iconic franchise games like Splinter Cell, Far Cry, The Division, and Rainbow Six remain entrenched in the characters you control.

The beta test offered five different factions for operators to use, and with each having two different abilities to choose from and a game-changing ultra, just about every playstyle was catered for. Some were more popular than others, of course—my last few games of the beta consisted of five-on-five Echelon mirror matches—but in all reality, some of the factions are just a small tweak away from balanced.

I was also a big fan of the XDefiant maps. It offers an assortment of interesting locations offering a really strong mix of close-quarter combat and ranged contests. With near-instant respawn time and a short sprint back to the fight, the action was constant.

The weapon loadout system was also great, with intuitive displays and in-depth descriptions of just what your chosen attachments will do when equipped with your weapon. From damage to effective range to precise recoil direction, and above all was just how quickly I could change attachments at any point during a match.

My biggest problem with the beta came with hitting my shots, and I know half of them weren’t because of me (though a few may well have been).

The bad: XDefiant’s hit-reg needs real work

“Taffy, you might just not be good at the game,” some will say. Look, you’re probably right—my competitive FPS days are well behind me—but nevertheless, XDefiant’s beta contained some of the worst hit registration inaccuracies I’ve ever seen in all my years of gaming.

And I certainly wasn’t the only one.

From the practice arena to the main stage, I’ve never had such a troublesome time just outright landing shots onto enemy targets despite getting the drop on them.

Particularly bad were the shotguns, which felt like I was just rolling the dice and praying to RNG that enough pellets would find their mark even though I was within melee range when firing.

Yes, it’s a beta, and that’s what a beta test is for, but given desync and hit registration were at the top of Ubisoft’s to-do list following the closed alpha test in March 2023, it’s a worrying sign just weeks out from official release.

Related: XDefiant players couldn’t even shoot their targets if they wanted to during laggy beta

It’s also already falling into the same archetypes many other titles have suffered in regard to weapon types. The hitreg issues were enough to turn almost everyone away from shotguns, light machine guns fill a niche the game doesn’t possess so went untouched, pistols felt under-tuned, and sniper rifles felt slow and clunky compared to rival titles.

Coming from Destiny, where one to two weapon archetypes dominate all others in PvP, it was unfortunate to see XDefiant players adopt the same principles in sticking to just assault rifles and submachine guns out of necessity.

The ugly: It’s not knocking off CoD anytime soon

There’s no denying the comparisons XDefiant has to CoD, but it still feels like a battle other titles have tried and failed to win.

It’s grabbed elements of a variety of games and smacked them together, and in doing so, XDefiant isn’t bringing anything groundbreaking to the genre—at least not during this early beta offering.

The FPS genre is saturated with titles all vying for a seat at the table, and while XDefiant has its advantages, I don’t think it’s got what it takes to take on the big boys.

Will that stop me from returning, though? Not at all. In its best moments, it showed glimpses of those lost days of Modern Warfare 2 that I’ve struggled to find elsewhere, and I’m putting faith in Ubisoft’s hands that work on the title ahead of launch will see it finally fill that gap I and many others are craving.

And so, I’ll see you in the XDefiant lobbies as soon as it drops, giving the Ubisoft shooter another chance to maybe—just maybe—go from wannabe to true CoD killer.