There have been several attempts to bring the world of comic-turned-animated series Invincible into the world video games, and Invincible VS is the latest of these, and one that seemingly made a lot of sense.
Invincible VS could’ve, and maybe should’ve, been a lot more. For a universe that’s known for relentless battling and beating the crap out of each other, a fighting game set in the franchise feels like a no-brainer, but it’s unfortunately barebones in enough areas that it just feels like a big missed opportunity in an otherwise representative tag team fighter.
Hit or miss
Invincible VS is an extension of the Prime Video series’ universe, featuring most (but not all) of the same actors, and a similar visual style. Its excruciatingly short story mode amounts to what feels like a “what if” episode of the cartoon, and not much else.
The majority of the cast is from the show (like JK Simmons as Omni-Man), but there’s also a couple of soundalikes playing other crucial roles, like Aleks Le (Daredevil in Marvel Rivals, among many other big anime roles) filling in for Steven Yeun as Invincible. Le did a solid job approximating Yeun, but it’s still very noticeably not him. The same can be said for Walton Goggins’ Cecil, and Seth Rogen’s Allen the Alien. Amazon’s relentless need for having big-name actors for several roles didn’t pan out when it came to bringing some of them aboard for this game.
I finished the story mode in about 75 minutes, which is just wickedly short, even for a fighting game’s campaign. Its runtime consists of a few well-animated cutscenes interspersed between some very random battles featuring a wide array of characters from the series. It’s described as a “standalone narrative set in the Invincible universe,” but I kind of expected more from it, considering it was written by one of the producers and writers from the show.
Other than the titular hero, familiar playable characters include Omni-Man, Atom Eve, Rex Splode, Conquest, and several others, including an original character named Ella Mental. I wish that Ella Mental’s inclusion was utilized more as a sort of a lens into the player viewpoint for the events happening around her, but instead, she’s just haphazardly thrown in with the rest of them as “just another Earth hero,” which is unfortunately fitting for how inconsequential the actual story’s events felt. What little cutscene animations the game has are awesome, but they don’t really go anywhere or tell anything substantial at all.
I’m a fan of the Prime Video series, so I’m familiar with all of the characters in the game. I feel like it definitely lacks some of the cartoon’s flair, and especially its trademark sense of humor, so it ended up feeling like a missed opportunity to expand on the IP in a meaningful way. Maybe a fighting game isn’t the right avenue for what I was personally looking for.
In the same vein, the game suffers a bit from something similar to the show: too many same-y characters. There are several Viltrumites in the starting roster, and even beyond those, many characters’ movesets resort to just variations of punches, kicks, and flight. Some of the more fun ones to play are Cecil with his gadgets or Dupli-Kate with her ability to, well, you guessed it, but the majority of the roster feels like slightly different-feeling versions of the same powers and abilities.
Thankfully, Invincible VS does include the game’s trademark blood and guts. Characters get painted red the longer they stay in a fight, and overkilling an enemy with a special attack yields gory results like exploding their head or having their body parts pop off in a whimsical way.
Swing and a miss
Mechanically, Invincible VS is a three-vs-three tag team fighter in the vein of games like Marvel vs. Capcom. It has a lot of similar features and also borrows a lot of ideas from other games in the genre, like tag attacks, snapbacks, and assist breakers. Tagging out characters who are weak to regain health, using meter to break armor, and countering attacks properly are all a part of the depth the combat offers.
Combos follow an easy-to-learn, hard-to-master design with light, medium, heavy, and special attacks mapped to the face buttons on the controller. The complexity comes from managing resource meters to use breakers and powerful abilities and different attack combos, and top players may find some fun in learning specific tag attacks and powered-up finishers.
The game is already confirmed destined for the highest level of play at EVO, just a few months after its initial launch, so far be it from me to say it does or doesn’t have potential as an FGC mainstay. That’s yet to be seen. But for filthy casuals like myself, there’s some enjoyment to be had in learning each character’s movesets and unlocking new outfits and other cosmetics while mastering them.
Online modes include Ranked and Casual play at launch, and there are already planned DLC fighters coming in 2026 (Universa and The Immortal with two more in the pipeline), so the game will be iterated on and improved over time with more content. But at launch, the gameplay offerings leave something to be desired, even if the fighting itself feels as strong as you’d expect from some of the devs who worked on Killer Instinct.
Once the story wraps up before you even realize it began, you can further hone your skills in Arcade mode, where each character has their own mini storyline and ending to unlock. This also feels somewhat tacked on and lackluster. But the bulk of the playtime will be against other players (online or offline), as you may expect from a fighting game, and I think the game is fun enough on its own in that regard once you master its familiar mechanics. At $50, though, it’s also a bit of a tough sell.
I can’t help but feel like Invincible VS was a missed opportunity with such a beloved IP. It could’ve been so much bigger and so much more, especially with many of the same actors and some of the same production crew as the show working on the game, lending their talents to create something more interesting. But strictly as a competitive fighting game using licensed IP, it feels like a serviceable new release.
