Invincible VS Review

I have a terrible relationship with tag fighters. I am one of those club-thumbed idiots who can barely focus on the buttons I am meant to push to make my punchy man do the right punches, let alone with his two friends kick-man and fireball girl waiting in the wings. This meant that when all my friends were grooving on with the Marvel vs. Capcom series, I was a rapt spectator reminding people that no, Venom is not just a black, gooey Spider-Man.

I thought sticking to the Mortal Kombat series would mean I was safely far away from tag team mechanics. But noooo, they eventually made their way to that series also. I had to Improvise, Adapt, Overcome, or whatever the Bear Grylls meme says. I realised finally that there were different kinds of tag fighter implementations, and the ones that had a lower end of mechanical demand worked with my feeble fighty-man mind.

Thank Christ, Invincible VS is exactly the kind of tag fighter I can fuck with.

Battle Beast aint a doctor, but he can fix a headache real quick

Jumping straight into the tutorial area, I had to get acquainted with what kind of fighting game this is. To my surprise, it is quite a modern one – unafraid to flex some of the more accessible options found in recent titles like Street Fighter 6. A standard three button system services your traditional light, medium, and heavy attack options, with staples such as jumping kicks and uppercuts present and accounted for – while a standardised Special button serves as a quick cornerstone for your flashier character goodies. Playing as Invincible himself you’ll get huge diving punches, Omni-Man will do brutal handclaps and the like, while Rex Splode will piff exploding crap across the screen. It essentially becomes a signature option between your combos, a handy button that will always do something speccy after a short directional input.

It initially felt like an affront to fighting games, where usually you need to keep an encyclopaedic list of specific button combinations in your frontal lobe at all times, but I quickly came to realise that my mental load could then be freed up to instead be more in tune with positioning, tag timing and combos. I was actually reacting better than I had in games for a long time, where my atrophied old man hands had become brutally good at Mortal Kombat 11 by memorising absurd combo strings and the most bullshit ways to start them, here I was actually able to read the game at large and react properly. It was freeing.

It is unmistakably an Invincible universe game

It helps that the game has a very cheeky approach to its combo system, introducing it with the flighty and fantastic options of The Auto Combo and the Magic Chain. Besides sounding like the title of a youth novel about a magical teenager, it’s actually a pretty simple but brilliant implementation, where an Auto Combo will occur if you manage to hit a repeated input at the appropriate range – rewarding you with an automatic super attack for one bar of meter for getting all them punches home. The Magic Chain however, involves you landing each of the attack options in sequence at the correct ranges and bearings, daring your fingers to jump to each neighbouring button at least once. You can absolutely rely on either of these to decent effect, but understanding the cutoff points of each and opting to drop the Auto Combo into a special attack and perhaps pick up with a Magic Chain in the air will give you a ton more expression.

It almost feels like you are darting in and out of a combat autopilot, knowing full well that you still need to react, block and move accordingly to not get your shit rocked by your opponent. Player choice plays an immense part in exploring the skill ceiling, with myself personally realising early on that the Auto Combo eating a bar of my super at each end was not a great choice when I have three health bars to cut through. Saving up a more devastating super attack for a hot enemy tag can turn the tide quickly, but only if you haven’t burned through all your bars already.

This getting out of hand!

With teams of three, you get a pretty broad range of options for your call ins. Each tag partner can be called to drop a signature hit, either to extend a combo or create some pressure, or can be called in to break an enemy combo and get yourself some breathing room. An active tag can also be done to entirely swap to another character, keeping the pressure on and giving your retreating fella a chance to restore some pending HP. Timing and management of your tags is important, but not critically so, meaning that a mistake may sting but it won’t leave you feeling like the fight is already lost.

Each fighter is categorised in a way that should hopefully clue you in to their strengths for team building, with the archetypes covering things like Range, Striker, Grappler and Balanced. For fighting nerds you’ll likely read between the lines and see who serves as a zoner and the like, but in the the thick of it you will mostly be trying to weave a little strategy between what to do to avoid a bladed ponytail or Allen the Aliens myriad of mid-combo grabs. When in doubt, go for someone with super armour and laugh through their outstretched hands.

Lucan really should have just let Allen enjoy the view in peace

As an Invincible game, it is dripping with the sauce. Battle arenas all pull from amazing locals within the series, with many appearing as instantly recognisable story locations for the singleplayer. Honestly, the campaign serves as little more than a flashy reason to try out the breadth of the game’s roster, but the way it is presented is so damn good I almost begrudged the times when the game demanded I pick up the controller and do the fight myself. The tale on hand does a great job of explaining why our heroes and villains are fighting each other, with a steeped helping of comic book panache and visual splendour to keep you seated for an hour or two – it’s just a bummer there isn’t more of it. But with 18 characters each sporting their own arcade mode and ending, you at least have a hearty bit of Invincible story telling to get through solo before you ruin friendships in the VS mode.

It helps that all the characters look beautifully realised, and the voice cast does a stellar job of mixing true to life portrayals with soundalikes. Newcomer Ella Mental is a quick favourite of mine, both for the goofy pun-based name and the breadth of amazing innate naturalist arse-kicking powers, but anyone who has sat down and imbibed any form of Invincible media will be quick to vibe with the cast. Even the concerning number of Viltrumites in the game end up being a blast with their massively unique playstyles, with Lucan’s wobbly tummy being a hilarious thing to watch as he grapples and throws people around savagely. Folks bark at each other during combat, with believable inter-character banter offering nods to their narrative relationships. I mean, if you are fighting your Dad you’d expect a little something.

The other thing that is unmistakably Invincible is the amount of brutality on display. It isn’t the likes of Mortal Kombat, with constantly shattering bones and exploding organs, but it absolutely is a case of seeing your fighter slowly end up with blood up to their elbows from the hapless sap at the end of their fists. Or caked with blood and bruised eyes when they are getting their arse kicked. It even reflects in both the in-game portrait and demeanour of the fighters, with my poor Allen barely scraping through a scuffle and looking downright worn down. Mad props to Quarter Up for realising a signature of the series in a way that almost seems tasteful, given the subject matter.

Final Thoughts

Invincible VS is a rare tag-team fighter that manages to bridge the gap between high-stakes strategy and accessible brawling. Instead of fighting the controls, you’re free to focus on the actual flow of combat – drinking in the Invincible pizazz and picking your moment, rather than drowning in finger-twisting complexity. It’s a beautifully realised adaptation that captures the show’s visceral energy perfectly and even though the customisation options are thin, the core gameplay is so liberating and fun that you’ll hardly care.

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher

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