I didn’t expect much from a licensed comic book fighter, but Quarter Up completely lost the plot. Invincible VS hits like an absolute freight train. It trades a massive launch roster for incredibly heavy, fast-paced 3v3 tag combat that genuinely rivals the golden era of Marvel vs. Capcom. If you’re wondering whether to buy in now or wait for more updates beyond the 18-fighter “Season 0” lineup, the answer depends entirely on what you want out of it. If you want endless offline content and deep combo trials, you’ll hit a wall early. But if you want a highly responsive, hyper-violent brawler with flawless rollback netcode that actually respects your hours in the lab, it’s worth the asking price today.
Quarter Up brought in veteran developers from the 2013 Killer Instinct reboot. And, that pedigree is immediately apparent when you get your hands on the controls. This isn’t a sloppy cash-in. The studio built a ground-up competitive engine. I lost my first two hours just getting beat down in online lobbies. Trying to figure out how to escape the corner pressure. The game strips away complicated directional inputs in favour of a single-button special option. This means anyone can throw a fireball on day one. But surviving against someone who understands how to manage their Boost Gauge is a completely different story.
You can’t button-mash your way out of a coordinated three-character assault. You have to learn the timing and learn your assists. From the opening bell, you can’t just swing wild. You have to think three steps ahead before committing to a hard knockdown. Once you realize that every missed input results in a brutal punishment, the entire pace changes. I started playing much more defensively, relying on quick jabs to open up my opponents.
A Bloody Foundation Built for Tag-Team Brawls
The combat centres around the Magic Series ruleset. This lets you chain normal attacks from light to heavy before launching your opponent into the air. It sounds simple, but the skill ceiling blows wide open once you factor in the active tag tools. Sending an off-screen partner in to extend a combo or break an incoming string requires serious timing.
When I played my first few matches as Mark Grayson, I kept mistaking the pacing for a slower neutral game and paid for it immediately. Invincible VS punishes you for hesitating. You need to press the advantage or eat a devastating punish. A single button handles special moves in the default control scheme, though you swap to traditional motion inputs if you prefer to squeeze out a slight damage increase. Holding the special button burns meter from your Boost Gauge for an EX version, stripping away input barriers so you focus on spacing and team synergy.
I highly recommend jumping into the menu immediately to remap your assist calls; keeping your fingers resting naturally on the tag buttons saves your match when you need to burn meter for a Counter Tag escape. The defensive options give you plenty of ways out of trouble, provided you have the resources to burn. Pushblocking shoves aggressive opponents back to mid-screen, giving you a second to breathe. I was one move away from closing out a match against a Viltrumite when a well-timed Pushblock stopped me cold. In came Atom Eve, and my entire squad was wiped before I could do a thing about it. The learning curve hurts, but the payoff is real, especially when you finally execute that perfect three-character synergy you practiced.
Eighteen Fighters Bring Serious Variety to the Roster
Eighteen characters seems light for a 3v3 brawler, but the sheer variety keeps the matchups from getting stale. Every fighter fills a specific archetype with unique tools. Battle Beast relies on heavy super armour to bulldoze through projectiles, shrugging off damage that would stagger the rest of the cast. Dupli-Kate functions as a relentless rushdown summoner who fills the screen with clones, turning the neutral game into an absolute nightmare for anyone trying to zone her out.
Ella Mental is a brand new original character built for this game, bringing a completely different zoning toolkit to the mix with psychic traps and delayed projectiles. Holding your heavy attack absorbs incoming pressure and instantly converts it into energy for your screen-filling Ultimate. The resulting damage is absurd. Round-ending strikes literally decapitate opponents, leaving buckets of blood across the stage that rival the Amazon Prime show’s goriest moments.
The violence never seems tacked on. Anyone who’s read the comics or watched the show knows that’s just the source material doing its job. If neither side finishes the job before the clock runs out, the game triggers Sudden Death. Instead of awarding the win to the health leader, both fighters lose health continuously, forcing you to go on the offensive to survive.
I ended up in a Sudden Death scenario playing as Omni-Man, desperately chasing down a highly mobile Red Rush opponent as my health bar vanished. It turns a boring timeout into a desperate scramble. I honestly want to see more fighting games adopt this rule. The character select screen looks a bit sparse right now. Though, the team captured the individual kits perfectly. This makes sure no two characters play exactly alike.
The Story Mode Captures the Tone but Ends Too Soon
The story campaign drops you right around the end of Season 3. Pulling the original voice cast back into the booth. J.K. Simmons returns as Omni-Man, and Aleks Le takes over Mark Grayson, providing performances that sound exactly like the television show. The cutscenes bookend the arcade ladders cleanly. Giving you a reason to push through the offline content and learn the core gameplay without relying on a static text box. The downside is how quickly it wraps up.
The story mode ends before you’re ready for it to. Leaving you with a basic arcade ladder and standard versus modes. You won’t find combo trials or expansive lore galleries here. Quarter Up clearly prioritized the rollback netcode and tournament viability over single-player extras. Online matches run beautifully. I consistently pulled off exact frame traps on wireless connections without the ping ruining the match. Finding a match takes seconds, and the rematch button loads you back into the fight almost instantly. The developers implemented a robust training mode with frame data and hitbox viewers, which softens the blow of missing combo trials.
You can set the AI dummy to record and playback specific block strings, letting you figure out exactly where the gaps are in your opponent’s pressure. It gives you the necessary tools to improve, but gamers looking for a sprawling, forty-hour story-driven adventure like the recent Mortal Kombat entries will walk away disappointed. The lack of robust offline offerings definitely hurts the overall package, especially at full price. This is a competitive game first and foremost, and it clearly expects you to dedicate the vast majority of your time fighting real people online.
Invincible VS Deserves a Spot in the Fighting Game Rotation
Invincible VS does exactly what it sets out to do. It provides a fast, aggressive, and highly technical brawler that strips out input barriers without sacrificing complexity. The 18-character roster limits team variety, and the offline content runs dry after a weekend. But the combat cycle itself pulls you right back in. If you want a tag fighter that understands exactly how a superhero brawl should function, Quarter Up brought the goods.
The launch price runs a bit high for a “Season 0” release, especially considering the inevitable paid character DLC that will follow. However, the foundational combat is so strong that I find myself playing every evening just to run a few sets online. You don’t need to memorize massive input strings to play competently, but you absolutely have to understand the underlying strategy to win consistently. It bridges the gap between casual comic fans and hardcore fighting game veterans.
The roster will grow over time, but the core engine is already operating at peak capacity. It proves that a licensed property can still hold its own on the competitive circuit. If you have the patience to take a few beatings as you learn the ropes, you’ll uncover an incredibly technical fighter that refuses to hold your hand. It lacks the bloated side diversions of its genre rivals, but it captures the exact feeling of stepping into a high-stakes superhero rivalry. Just make sure your block string defence is ready before you jump into ranked matchmaking.
Invincible VS
Summary
Invincible VS sacrifices deep offline modes and a massive starting roster to provide a highly responsive, fiercely competitive 3v3 tag brawler. The 18-character lineup offers excellent variety, and the rollback netcode ensures online matches run flawlessly. If you want a technical fighting game that respects your time and nails the hyper-violent tone of the television series, this is an easy recommendation.
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