Riot’s spin-off fighting game with the terrible name, 2XKO, is getting a closed beta in a few months and, to entice fans to sign up, the developers have released a new video showing off pink-haired League Of Legends bruiser Vi doing some biffing. I know you like biffing, so I’m telling you about this despite being unable to reliably write the title of this free-to-play wrecker without carefully typing it out like my mum composing an email with a single forefinger.
“2XKO’s Closed Beta starts September 9, available globally on PC,” said Riot in a press release on social media. “After Closed Beta begins, our goal is to keep the game online, outside of any necessary maintenance. This is a huge step for us. We’ll be deploying our backend systems at a larger scale for the first time, so things might be bumpy at first, but we’ll improve as we go.”
You can sign up here if you are eager to batter Vi for all her baffling choices in Arcane’s disappointingly disjointed second season. The beta will only happen on PC, so feel free to be a smug wretch to your long-suffering Xbox friends, although Riot do say that any progression made on PC will cross over to console if you decide to play on multiple platforms.
2KXO was– excuse me, I mean 2OXK was – sorry, 2XOK was… FUCK. The fighting game formerly known as Project L was revealed during the EVO fighting game championship in 2019, even though rumours and leaks outed the game not too long after Riot bought Rising Thunder developer Radiant Entertainment way back in 2016. The game was given its untypeable moniker last year, on the logic that it is a tag-team fighter in which you field 2x brawlers, and that those 2x brawlers will presumably KO somebody. 2… X… K… O, see?
I know. I hate it too. But if you’re legitimately interested in the game’s ins and outs, Riot have an admittedly thorough breakdown of a previous alpha which shows various features, including how the tag team assists will work, as well as clues to how battle-passy things will get when it comes to unlocking cosmetics. This is something that will be interesting to witness, because cosmetics in a fighting game need to be interesting without obscuring or distracting from the clarity of the action. Will I be able to dress up as a cleanly defined Santa, for example? Only time will tell.
