Injustice Character Tips: Bane

Injustice was released in April 2013.  It is a 2D fighting game based off of the DC comic book universe.  Most people will recognize Batman and others from his story such as the Joker and Bane.  There are a lot of more obscure characters though such as Solomon Grundy, Deathstroke, and Shazam for the DC fans.

Injustice has a lot of good points to it.  The combat is a lot of fun and fast paced.  The characters are pretty diverse and interesting.  The graphics are very good and the menus are easily navigable.  The single player experience is also pretty good.  The storyline is interesting and the campaign has you play as a large number of different characters, allowing you to experiment with each one while slowly getting harder.  Gameplay itself is rewarding and precision button inputs are very important, resulting in ??? being a very difficult input.  The stage transitions are a lot of fun to watch and do good damage but are sufficiently hard enough to perform that they aren’t a drawback to the actual fighting.

Bane has the most damaging attacks in the game, which is offset by his slow speed and the cooldown of his venom (B on the Xbox).  Bane has a lot of trouble against faster opponents, just like any slow character in any fighting game other than Soulcalibur.  His venom does armor his bull rush attack though, which can easily punish ranged attackers.  The key to playing Bane is using his venom.  You should use level 1, and then when it’s about to run out, turn it up to level 2, and when that is about to run out, turn it up to level 3.  Of course, when level 3 runs out you’re going to have a tough time.  Not only will Bane do pretty much no damage from any of his attacks, but he will also receive more damage.  During this period, back away from the opponent and block as many attacks as you can.  It is pointless to attack unless you see an opening, which you can use to knock back the opponent.

Bane’s key moves are his bull rush ??X, and his two special grabs.  The first is a standard one with a hard button input ???A, and the second is an anti air throw ??X.  I have never really been able to use Bane’s other special moves.  They just leave Bane open since they have massive recovery frames and they don’t do much damage.  They also aren’t useful for combos unless you can stick them on the end of something because Bane takes too long to be ready to do anything after them.  Bane’s best three combos are X,X,Y which is quick, does a lot of damage and has a lot of knockback, ?X,X which is a quick low attack, and ?X,Y which does a good amount of damage, knocks down the opponent, has a quick start up and is a natural change up.

You have to stay on the offensive with Bane when using his venom.  You only have so much time while he’s actually a decent character.  Once that runs out he’s back to being an awful  slow character.  ??X as well as ???A can be meter burned for a lot of additional damage.  However, Bane’s super move at level 3 venom does a massive amount of damage, dealing almost 3/4 damage of an entire health bar.  It is also a grab and has range.  Just be careful as the opponent can jump over it.  Also, make sure that your level 3 will not run out before the attack ends, or your damage output will be reduced to almost nothing (I learned that the hard way). A good idea is to use Bane’s ?A to knock the opponent down and then hit them with ???A on wakeup.  Since it’s a grab, it will be very hard for them to escape it.  Just be careful, as this is a difficult button input to master.

You can do well with Bane, though he still suffers against faster characters.  The key is waiting for the opponent to attack and using Bane’s armor to get off big damage on them. Yes it’s a trade off, but you will always come out on top.  Becoming a blocking master is also recommended.  Practice with him, get his button inputs down, figure out a few combos, and you should do pretty well.  Bane also makes an excellent player to annihilate less experienced players, since they do not block often.  Good luck.

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