When I heard rumblings that a game based on Invincible was in the works, I had a fairly clear vision of what they would look like. I figure it would be some kind of superhero action-adventure game set somewhere in the comic book universe. I was absolutely not expecting a tag team brawler, but that’s what we’re getting with Invincible Vs.
I’m very much okay with that after playing a few rounds for myself following the Xbox Games Showcase this past weekend. Invincible Vs aims to be a very approachable fighting game that can be as casual or hardcore as you want.
The idea here is simple: It’s your basic 2D fighting game where players choose teams of three heroes that they can tag between on the fly. If Marvel vs. Capcom comes to mind when I say that, that’s partially accurate, but there’s a lot more to it than that. In fact, everything I’m about to describe will probably make a lot more sense to you when I tell you that the new studio developing it is largely made up of the devs who made Killer Instinct.
The core combat has me juggling attacks and special on my four face buttons. I can perform grabs and counters by pressing different buttons together, keeping all the basics centralized to one place. I could pick up the basics of fighting very quickly, as the team built its combo system to be fairly approachable. For instance, if I just hammer my light attack, I’ll perform an instant special of sorts. You don’t have to memorize long combo strings to pull off something that looks cool.
The complexity builds from there. On the right side of my controller, I can dash with the bumper. If I hop into the air and hold the right trigger, I can perform an even longer dash that more or less lets me fly for a moment. That movement system adds some superheroic action to the mix, as there’s huge potential for sky high aerial combos and dodging here.
The left side of the controller is all about weapons in partners. Holding the left trigger will tag a friend in, but pressing the bumper will send someone in for a mid-combo attack, not dissimilar to the way Mortal Kombat 1 and its Kameos work. Switching characters is important, because a fighter will essentially crash out if their combo meter gets too high. Tagging in a friend resets it, allowing them to create much longer chains.
That might leave you worried that Invincible Vs is the kind of fighting game where you can get stuck in a never-ending juggle, but that’s not the case. That’s where the studio’s Killer Instinct experience really shows. Blocking and countering are very important, as a big attack can be canceled out with the right timing. There’s still some skill involved there, though, as players can get tricky with their attack timings, even hitting intentional fake outs that can cause an opponent to block too early and leave them vulnerable. There’s a delicate balance between offense and defense here that leads to a lot of momentum shifts in fast-paced fights.
And those brawls are brutal as hell too. Keeping in the spirit of the comic, Invincible Vs approaches Mortal Kombat levels of hyper violence. When a player hits a character that’s at low health with a special attack that would kill them, it essentially turns into a fatality. I watched characters like Bulletproof get straight up beheaded by the likes of Atom Eve. Even the level I was playing on didn’t make it out unscathed, as it deteriorated more and more with each round. This isn’t a fighting game about friendly sparing between competitive friends; it’s about people who really want to kill one another.
After playing a few rounds and getting the hang of its tricks, I’m eager to get back in and see how much deeper it goes. It still feels a little more on the casual side to me, and I wonder how high its competitive ceiling will be in the long run, but I get the sense that there’s more to the project. For instance, it seems like it will feature some form of story mode that features an original narrative set in the comic universe. If it can deliver that on top of strong brawling that calls both Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct to mind, Skybound Games may just have a blood-soaked hit on its hands.
Invincible Vs launches in 2026 for Xbox Series X/S and PC.
