Developers at Riot Games sought to make 2XKO a new fighting game that’s fun, deep, and accessible. The trouble is that they focused on “accessible” to the point that they seemingly forgot about the fun and deep parts of the idea.
The fighting game genre has long dealt with gatekeeping issues. The learning curve for major releases has often been steep, something that has made games inaccessible and the community insular.
Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 tore the proverbial band-aid off in this regard. Even though piecemeal efforts to make the games accessible frustrated purposeful gatekeepers of the genre, the mainline entries in the biggest series gave players a streamlined version of these experiences. Instead of drilling combos for hours, newbies could use a series of simplified, context-sensitive inputs to execute combos.
In the minds of the purists, this allows newbies to simply mash their way to victory. It’s not necessarily true in Street Fighter 6 or Tekken 8. But the idea of being able to effortlessly execute elaborate, life-clearing combos is the reality of 2XKO.
2XKO makes everyone good, so nobody’s good
There’s a scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas where musical prodigy Schroeder is being directed on Christmas music by the overbearing Lucy. He slides down the artistic totem pole from playing Beethoven, to improv jazz, to Jingle Bells with a single finger and a scowl. Much to Schroeder’s chagrin, it’s that last tune that gets Lucy’s approval.
That’s the experience many players are going to have with 2XKO.
With a single button, players can quite literally mash their way to an 11-hit combo with Yasuo. If players are feeling particularly daring, and have the meter to spare, they can press a second button to end the combo with a super move. It’s equal parts effective and unfulfilling, with dazzling, high-flying combinations feeling less fulfilling than a throw.
The mantra that was put forward in promotional appearances by 2XKO developers is that the game will be easy to learn and hard to master. The trouble is that the game is oversimplified to the point where it’s not just easy to master; mastery is inexorably given to the player at the start.
The truest demonstration of this is the fact that assists can still be used even after someone is knocked out. So if players make egregious errors to have one of their 2XKO characters knocked out early, they won’t even have to adjust their play to compensate for it.
This isn’t to say that the game doesn’t require skill. An Evo champion is still going to be able to control space and mitigate risk much better than a casual player. But that’s what skill is going to look like in 2XKO, rather than full parries for comeback victories or brilliant adjustments to take advantage of a juicy counter-hit. Skill is comparatively better footsies and spacing to mash through the same combo that literally everyone else who touches the game uses.
The kicker is how the game’s visual elements remain unpolished. Landing hits doesn’t feel impactful and cinematics before supers just aren’t on par with those seen with competitors. While that’s something that could be radically improved by the time of launch, it only adds to the monotony of 2XKO’s alpha gameplay.
Can 2XKO still be a good game?
Not everything is wrong with 2XKO, however, and there may yet remain hope that this can become a good game, in time.
From a technical perspective, the game might just have the smoothest netcode of any fighting game ever released. Though the sample size is small, playing 2XKO on a PlayStation 5 feels excellent. Crossplay is generally celebrated in gaming, and with 2XKO’s server-side rollback, dealing with high-ping players from another platform shouldn’t be as much of an issue as it has at times been in the past.
On the aesthetic end, the game is positioned to look phenomenal. While the animations are underwhelming and the UI is bare-boned, the character models all look excellent and richly detailed.
The pieces are here for a strong fighting game experience, but the question is whether developer Riot Games can get it across the finish line.
