Invincible Vs Players Don’t Seem to Understand Its Most Critical Defensive Tool

Invincible Vs has combos and mechanics galore. A few stray hits can lead to an extended juggle where multiple fighters are screaming their various battle cries as they tag in to lay the smack down. Like most tag games, it can be an absolute mess that finds beauty in the chaos. With its license and focus on spectacle, it, much like Mortal Kombat, is aimed a little more squarely at casuals when compared to many other fighting games. But those new players aren’t being served well, as many of them are seemingly failing to grasp its most basic defensive techniques, one that is leading to a ton of lopsided bouts of bloodshed.

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Counter Tagging is a core part of the experience that lets the defending player break out of a flurry of attacks if they can read when the opponent will sub to a different fighter during a combo. It’s not particularly hard to read since these swaps are reactable and often come at the same time for most heroes. There are multiple mind games, too, as the aggressor can bait out a Counter Tag and punish accordingly or just use a heavy attack to throw off their opponent’s Counter Tag timing.

Invincible Vs’ Counter Tags Are Not to Be Ignored

But those layers hardly matter if players are rarely Counter Tagging or not doing it at all. Online matches in the game’s first week have been awash with impatient scrubs not understanding how Counter Tags work. This crucial blind spot has meant these early days have been plagued with extended touch-of-death sequences that can turn a single fighter into goop with just one or two combos. It’s not exactly a great time for either side. This was also prevalent during the beta, too, but that was only a short period of time in a game that wasn’t out yet. The depth that comes from baiting Counter Tags and playing around them is vital to the experience, and battles are much more shallow when this system is ignored by one side.

These newcomers are seemingly depending solely on regular breakers to get out of a jam, which only makes things worse for them. Instead of merely sucking meter like in most other games, breaking in Invincible Vs drains a lot of temporary health from an assist, making careless breaks a death sentence and something that further inhibits those with a limited defensive arsenal.

Invincible Vs Has a Poor Tutorial, Though

This is indeed a personal failing for those unwilling to study the tutorial, but it speaks more to how unfit the game’s current tutorial is. Its explainers are filled with skinny, hard-to-read text. The buttons don’t change for custom inputs. A few systems aren’t even explained. And it’s not always clear why a mechanic is useful. For example, forcing an opponent to swap to another character using a Snap Back seems inconsequential until it becomes clear that it’s best used after a breaker when an enemy assist has taken a huge health cut.

Counter Tags should be highlighted since they are so key to this game’s balletic beatdowns. A more thorough tutorial would walk players through these mechanics more effectively or maybe even have mini-games designed around them. This deficiency is extra frustrating because the AI doesn’t even regularly use Active Tags much regardless of the difficulty; the game consistently fails to teach its players in just about every mode and highlight what’s important.

Ideally, the game would notice if players are failing to utilize its systems and possibly corral those lost souls with a helpful popup or tip. 2013’s Killer Instinct — which many of Invincible Vs’ developers previously worked on — had its inventive “Shadow” fighter system that created an AI copy of a player’s habits, and not only does Invincible Vs not have that feature, it doesn’t use that sort of learning model to more appropriately teach the game.

It’s important for every fighting game to effectively explain its mechanics but doubly so for ones that are going to have a more casual audience. With the popular Prime Video animated series currently running through its fourth season, Invincible Vs could not have come out a better time, as more eyeballs are naturally going to be on the brand right now. And given the show’s broad appeal, these eyeballs probably weren’t also recently combing through Evo Japan footage or the latest episode of the Tekken-centric Heatspeak podcast. A sizeable portion of these Invincible fans are probably going to gravitate to Invincible Vs because of the game’s flashy violence and ties to the comic and TV series and not because of their affinity for fighting games. And because of this, they need to be eased into the game and shown the ropes.

The last two Mortal Kombat games were built to smoothly work with these less hardcore players, and Invincible Vs should have modeled itself after those titles. NetherRealm Studios has made in-depth tutorials that carefully explain each mechanic and cleverly use color to convey meaning. Important terms in the text boxes — which are actually readable — are highlighted in bolder colors to emphasize their importance, while the concept of startup, active, and recovery frames are concisely explained through various colors. There are also demos complete with an on-screen controller to carefully walk players through each step if they’re having trouble. Combined with combo trials and character-specific guides, the last two Mortal Kombat titles and Injustice 2 were built to ease players in. MK11 and MK1 both sold incredibly well — over 15 million and 8 million copies, respectively — and had to appeal to casuals to hit those astronomical numbers.

Getting a trio of superpowered fighters turned into paste because of insufficient tutorialization is not going to lead to Invincible Vs hitting its full potential. If developer Quarter Up is going to try and court more casual players with a known license, simple control scheme, story-based campaign, and some eye-catching gore, it needs to actually lend a more helpful hand to those who want to jump on board. So while it is frustrating to see players online still not get something as pivotal as the Counter Tag system, it’s a symptom of a much deeper issue the studio should address sooner rather than later. Even with all the game has going for it, it’s not, well, invincible.

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