Invincible VS Review: A bloody good time

Though you'll get the most out of this if you enjoy both fighters and the Invincible TV series.

Invincible VS is a 3v3 fighter from Quarter Up, a Skybound studio made up of a bunch of former developers of 2013’s Killer Instinct. Fans of that fighter likely have their interest piqued by that tidbit alone; fans of Amazon’s Invincible TV series fall into that same camp.

While I dabble in fighters — Mortal Kombat is my favourite, hands-down — Invincible VS offers up a gory good time, though it does tend to feel repetitive fairly quickly.

With online play tricky to test during a pre-release window, I jumped straight into Invincible VS‘ tutorial to get the basics. A 3v3 fighter, quite a lot of mechanics rely upon a tag team system that lets you break combo chains, create some of your own, or simply switch from one active fighter to another. On top of that, Invincible VS makes use of a light, medium, and heavy attack, combined with a character special. On top of this, a boost meter will let you amplify some attacks, or even launch into an overkill move from level 3. As per usual, I found it easier to control characters and their move sets using my DualSense’s d-pad, though I imagine a compatible fight stick would make things even easier.

I then went into story mode, which in retrospect was a bit of a mistake. The likes of Mortal Kombat makes me expect a really, really strong showing from a fighter in this mode, and Invincible VS almost seems purpose-built for it given its long-running comic book and animated series. Instead, the 90-minute experience is lazily slapped together, using an overdone trope to get everyone in the same place and fighting one another, regardless of allegiance.

Story mode is a mixture of pre-rendered videos, in-engine cutscenes and actual fights, but Quarter Up has made some strange decisions when it comes to the presentation of all three. First of all, you can see some pretty noticeable artifacting in some of the videos. That’s combined with a huge framerate change, resembling something like Into the Spider-Verse, in most of its in-engine stuff. The bouncing around different visual styles is jarring and takes you out of the action.

Short, loading screens between transitions are also distracting, alongside rather long pauses after a battle is actually finished — these aren’t huge issues at the end of the day, of course, but they are noticeable.

Once jumping into arcade mode, I realised I should really have focused on its ladders because they have more of an actual story — or at least, an ending — and showcase the brutality that Invincible is known for. There, and in its other modes, you’ll see heads explode thanks to some truly graphic overkills, or entire bodies atomised in others.

It’s here, though, that you’ll begin to notice the repetition — it’s either one or the other, heads or entire bodies. That same feeling of sameishness reverberates through VS‘ roster, which features 18 characters but only three or four real archetypes. It’s admittedly difficult to build a bunch of diverse styles around so many Viltrumites.

At the end of this day, this one is for those who love fighters, or those who love Invincible. Bonus points if you’re in both camps. Invincible VS is available now on Windows PC, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PS5.

Invincible VS was reviewed using a promotional code on PS5, as provided by the publisher. Code was also provided on Windows PC via Steam. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.