Invincible VS might be hyperviolent, but the devs want to salve the sting of getting combo'd to death: 'We want you to be an active participant, even when you're getting hit'

If you've played Marvel vs Capcom, you may be aware of the touch of death: that most dreaded of fighting game combos where a single hit-confirm can take you from full health to the grave. It's an edge case, but an emblem of one of the big frustrations any arcade fighter novice has dealt with—getting hit in any game with a robust combo system means you'll spend a lot of time waiting and watching.

Mike Willette, once lead producer of 2013's stellar Killer Instinct reboot and now executive producer on Invincible VS, said the game is angled to balance out the breakneck pace of your average tag fighter with some tweaks that favor accessibility.

"Within our combo structure, there's opportunities to actually break out. We don't want you to be ive, we want you to be an active participant, even when you're getting hit … similar to KI, as you're doing attacks and specials and supers, it starts building up combo meter," he said. "When it gets all the way full, your opponent will drop out of your combo."

If you're on the receiving end, you can call on one of your assist characters (you select a team of three for any given match) to cancel out a combo if you're getting pummeled, but it'll cost a fair bit of meter. If you're doing the pummeling, that might be a buzzkill—but if you catch your opponent low on resources, you can spend some of your own to press the advantage.

Willette told me you can extend those combos by spending some meter, using a super, or tagging in an assist, the latter of which can be used to tie together huge combos that involve your entire team of three. Your opponent can counter-attack for free to escape as you transition characters, but if they mistime it, you'll get to bash them for even longer as they open themselves up.

If all that sounds like a lot of execution to worry about, Willette said that a basic combo is easy enough to spit out across the roster once you know your buttons.

"You have a magic chain system where you can go light, medium, to heavy attack. At the end of that, you can go into a special … you can do crouching heavy at the end, which is your launcher, and then you can pursue your opponent up into the air," he said. You can repeat that magic chain once airborne, so as long as you keep your combo meter in check, you can get some pretty lengthy combos strung together without learning what the hell a frame trap is.

Willette said the goal was to get players learning the basics and how to properly tag in their assists without much friction. New players "aren't gonna do as much damage" by using the magic chain repeatedly, but "they're still gonna feel good … it doesn't take away from the strategic depth."

Weak and reliable auto-combos are nothing new for fighting games, but they’ve helped games like Blazblue and Dragon Ball FighterZ feel more pick-up-and-play than their old-school counterparts. Frankly, there’s a long history of fighters experimenting with novel ideas to cut down on newbie frustration, and Invincible VS seems intent on cribbing the best ones and ignoring any that bring down the skill ceiling. After all, a good fighting game can’t make a bad player good, but it can make playing badly more fun. Given that the game hopes to attract both FGC obsessives and comic book loremasters who may have never played a fighter before, it seems like a bright choice.

Willette explained the ideal case scenario for new players: "For me, it's really about taking you and training you up on the tools and the vocabulary of Invincible VS so you feel comfortable playing in casuals and eventually in online ranked play. We want you to become an online warrior. That's where you're going to have the most fun, where you're gonna meet people, and where you're gonna see what fighting games have to offer."

Of course, it's possible you're just here for the digital equivalent of bashing your Invincible action figures into each other. There's lots you could spot in the reveal trailer to that end, from the return of familiar voice talent like JK Simmons to the fact that costumes get shredded and bloodstained as fights progress, but Willette mentioned a certain visual flourish that speaks to my soul as a Mortal Kombat apologist: overkills. As he put it, if you defeat an enemy with a super or certain special moves, that move "will actually kill,” with the character exploding into gore or otherwise getting obliterated. Why do they call this guy Invincible again?

Regardless, it speaks to the spectacle on offer—and the enduring popularity of Robert Kirkman's gargantuan comic run—that Invincible VS stands out even days after Marvel popped in with a slick tag fighter of its own. Here's hoping they're both great, and we can all agree never to go this long without spandex-based fighting games this long for a good while.