Injustice Gods Among Us Review

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.

Like any game, Injustice also has its bad points.  The single player challenges are atrociously annoying, especially if there’s a certain character you want to do the missions with but they’re stuck at the end and you would have to play through everyone’s missions to get to them.  I pretty much steered clear of those.  The interactive objects in each stage was also a good idea, but I believe it went wrong.  Some stages are better than others, but a lot of stages has some object that continually comes back, allowing for it to be used again and again.  One example is the little tank at the courtyard of the Hall of Justice.  These objects do a lot of damage and are unblockable, so they can really break a match.  There is no better example of this than the hanging pig carcass in the mess hall of the Asylum (Either of the two).  My friends and I simply call this, “The Meat”.  Any match that takes place in this room (unless a truce is made) will devolve into the two players pushing the meat at each other and attempting to dodge it.  Whoever thought that putting something that is unblockable, causes heavy damage, never disappears, and swings back and forth with a lot of range was a good idea… you made the wrong decision.  Also, certain characters will be put a disadvantage on certain maps.  For example, the Flash will leap off of something to attack an opponent, and he can keep doing this indefinitely, while stronger characters throw it once and then it’s gone.  The reverse is true for some things that physically weaker characters will just jump off of rather than causing damage with them.

Character balance also could use some adjustment.  Solomon Grundy seems very weak to me since he is so slow.  Balancing slow and fast characters has always been one of the greatest challenges for fighting games, and Injustice is also a victim.  No fighting game has balanced character speed like Soulcalibur did.  Of course, being a 2D game, Injustice does not have access to the solutions Soulcalibur did.  Still, it is a shame that I can play better with Cat Woman or the Flash when I haven’t practiced with them, than when I use Solomon Grundy whom I have practiced with.  As a person who actually uses slow characters, I would like a bit of balancing to be done.  On a separate note, I’m having trouble seeing anything good about Ares.

Since this game is from the makers of Mortal Kombat, I would also like to see more brutality.  I understand going for the teen rating, but I honestly think that this game would sell better if it took a lesson from its bloodier brethren.

Despite its drawbacks, Injustice delivers a solid experience.  As a fighting game fan, I can honestly say that I enjoyed it a lot.  Be careful though, without people to play it with, it will quickly lose its play value.

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