Injustice: Gods Among Us - Archived Review

Originally published September, 2013.

It’s been over a month since the game has come out, and in the fighting game sense, that’s long enough to warrant a Late Bird Review. The longevity of hype for fighting games rarely lasts very long as most players get into it long enough to learn a few characters and then decide to go back to the games they were already playing. The select few that keep playing get better at it and begin to dominate the online community. Once that has happened, fighting games tend to lose steam and attention except by those who really stick it out. And personally, Injustice: Gods Among Us is worth sticking around. Aside from a terribly generic and vague title that tells you nothing about what you’re getting (not that Blazblue: Calamity Trigger is much better), Injustice is an experience that is able to appropriately incorporate DC Comic’s heroes and villains into a fighting system similar to Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and even a little bit of Dead or Alive.

Story

For those that don’t already know, Injusticewas made by NetherRealm Studios—the same company that made the fantastic remake/sequel a of Mortal Kombat couple years ago. One of the things that set Mortal Kombat apart from most other fighting games was that it had a fully fleshed out story mode. Most other fighting games say they have a story mode, but rarely does that result in much story telling. Usually it consists of a few specific character fights and then an end cinematic or character art with some text. Even games by the Arc system team who have made Blazblue and Persona 4 Arena make story modes that are more reminiscent of visual novels with lengthy bits of story told through text and some fights sprinkled in.Mortal Kombat told its story dramatically through fully voiced characters sharing dialogue with one another and with justifying the random fights between characters, albeit with some silly reasons. NetherRealm Studios obviously came into this with frame of mind because, although the story doesn’t go on nearly as long as MK’s did, it still has a lot of the flair and appreciation that MK had in its tale.

Overall, the story is pretty good, though it runs into some of the issues one might expect from a comic book tale. The premise is that, in an alternate world, Superman has finally snapped after circumstances conspired against him and he has become the dictator of a police state society, which encompasses the entire world. All of the heroes and some of the villains have joined up with him in his totalitarian rule out of convenience and fear, while the dissenters have disappeared into the shadows and become insurgents. It takes no time at all for the situation to become exacerbated when earth’s heroes cross over into this reality and are forced to clean up the mess.

Certain things about the story end up being very ridiculous and stupid. The reasons as to why Superman would snap are only stupid after the game decides to get specific, but thankfully it doesn’t linger on the thought. The same can be said about its justification for as to why anyone like Green Arrow would be able to survive a beatdown from Superman. There’s even a part where Bane, of all characters, shows up and shoots an AK-47, which looks extremely awkward the whole time. There are plenty of these stupid moments that make you just laugh at the absurdity, but they at least don’t linger and the story moves on to more important issues.

There are the fair share of dramatic and poignant moments as well with unlikely allies and even the deaths of certain characters. The overall storytelling of this game is very good despite the fact that it’s trying to tell a ridiculous inter-dimensional comic book tale, which is often wrought with exposition and silly dialogue; most of the time that they could stop and talk about the situation or be confused, they switch topics and move on. It ends up spending a lot of time building toward a plotpoint that eventually goes nowhere until the new plan brings a very quick and abrupt end to the game, but it’s still worth seeing the whole way through, which will only take a few hours to complete.

Mechanics/Gameplay

Being a fighting game, a fair amount of what is necessary to understand before determining whether or not you like the game is how the mechanics work. Though this was made by the Mortal Kombat team, the game only shares a few traits with the game. The combo rhythms and special move inputs are very similar, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. Blocking is no longer relegated to a separate button, the characters are not all teleporting ninjas, the health system is more similar to Darkstalkers or Killer Instinct with a constantly moving battle, there are items in the environment with which the characters can interact, and there are stage transitions similar to those found in Dead or Alive that allow for you to send your opponent through the environment to change the background and score some bonus damage.

Obviously there a lot of different inspirations found in the game that, for the most part, work to the game’s benefit. A feature that most will feel right at home with will be the use of the super meter for the extravagant super moves and enhanced versions of the character specific special moves. Most reviews have said this game is similar to Street Fighter, but it seems more along the lines ofBlazblue and Marvel vs Capcom in terms of its controls. The main reason is that there are three primary buttons used for the attacks while the fourth is relegated to a character specific trait ability that helps make each character a little more unique. For some characters, the ability isn’t anything more than a simple boost or instant combo. However, for other characters, such as Bane, it completely determines how well you will be able to use the character. The level of detail put into each character makes each one more unique and it’s pretty satisfying to see the various DC heroes and villains fight one another with their flashy moves.

What helps make things more exciting and interesting, at the cost of balancing, is the interactable environments. The level of damage done from being able to grab objects in the environment or to send opponents through the edges of the fight screen causes a lot of balancing issues. Going to specific maps and using the environment properly can help determine the outcome of a fight without practicing any character specific combos. This will likely be frustrating for most fighters who want a fair and balanced experience from a typical one on one battle, but, personally, it makes things a little more interesting and gives players an opportunity to mix things up and make the fighting game veterans sweat a little bit. It can be frustrating being a newcomer going up against the more experienced, so having these super damaging and dramatic methods of evening the score adds a nice little spice to the mix. Besides, it’s pretty satisfying being able to send Superman through 20 floors of a skyscraper.

That being said, there are some things about the mechanics that benefit the new players a little too much beyond simply a background that causes damage. More than a third of the characters have a “keep-away” style available to them. In other words, these characters have moves that allow them to cause damage from a great distance, preventing the characters that need to get close to cause much damage. There aren’t exactly enough ways for other characters to get around this so there are a lot of new players that choose this strategy but never really get better. It really only ends up hurting the beginners as the experienced can find a way around this strategy while the newbies will likely get frustrated having to face this all the time.

Not to mention, typically with these players, the disconnect rate is a little bit higher when playing online. “Rage-quitting” is a common action that is frowned-upon in the fighting game community, but as it often happens when a new game comes out, a lot of these keep-away spammers will forcibly disconnect their system before taking a loss in the match to maintain their victory ratio. This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if the multiplayer set-up was better. Injustice is definitely a step-up in comparison to Mortal Kombat’s online experience, but there have still been better online multiplayer lobbies and infrastructure.

Simple things like being able to set your search preferences when looking for opponents or rooms would be greatly appreciated in any fighting game. While the recent patches have made the experience a little easier, it can be very difficult to find a match of reasonable connectivity or even a match at all. You will likely have to wait a while for a match when using the quick search features; if you’re lucky enough to find another player, lag is still a frequent problem, and not being able to limit search results can make it all the more frustrating. Just being able to block other players who disconnect frequently or ruin your experience so they don’t show up in your search results is a simple request that could easily fix a few issues with this game’s lobby system.

The original lobby systems of Blazblue: CT as well as the lobby system of Soul Caliber 5 are the two best examples of online multiplayer designs that work well to improve the user experience when you aren’t in combat. Blazblue’s is very simple and allows you to just keep looking for opponents without having to wait forever for nothing. Soul Caliber’s manages to be both efficient and user friendly so it’s not too confusing to figure out how to set up a match which is whereInjustice fails. The multiplayer menus aren’t exactly user friendly in that there are a lot of features that go unexplained and it can be difficult to set up the scenario you like. Yet, even with all these criticisms, it’s still fun to play online. Modes like King of the Hill and Survivor are cool ways to see other players’ strategies while waiting for your chance to become the champion of a room for a brief period of time.

Outside of multiplayer, the game is still loaded with content and features for players to explore. Most fighting games tend to run out of content once players have explored the Arcade mode and Story mode, but the team at NetherRealm studios have proven with this game and Mortal Kombatthat they are all about adding extra modes and challenges to keep players interested. There are a ton of small features for you to unlock by playing the game and its various modes. While most of these features are very superficial and don’t benefit the gameplay much, it gives you something to shoot for outside of the challenges.

Speaking of challenges, there are various challenges that the game provides to keep things interesting both in the form of an in game challenge and entire modes. In many of the battles you will encounter both online and offline, the game will give you a challenge before the match starts with the promise of extra experience points if you succeed. Some are simple like “throw the opponent and win the match” while others are a little more difficult like “perform a combo that does more than 50% damage”. It’s a small but cool method of giving players something to aim for to make the match more interesting.

Then there are the various battle modes and S.T.A.R. Labs scenarios for you to try. S.T.A.R. Labs is a mode that encompasses multiple missions for players to try. These missions consist of tutorial like scenarios, specific battle scenarios, and mini-games that break away from typical gameplay of fighting games. While it seems superfluous at times, it provides enough rewards as well as some additional story writing to make things interesting and change up the flow of the game. When you’re done with the labs, you can check out the various battle modes that help with your training. The modes can range from “villain opponents only” to “slowly deteriorating life” to “random buffs/debuffs”. With all these modes to go through, you will be hard-pressed to find yourself without anything to do in the game.

Presentation

Injustice is hit or miss when it comes to its presentation. Small things like the way characters move when they fight as well as the fabric textures of their outfits are really intricate and detailed. But then the faces of characters or the textures of interactive backgrounds can look really blurry. One of the screen transitions involves crashing into a helicopter and, each time it happens, the helicopter just looks terrible. It’s unfortunate because little touches like this would be ignored if the game didn’t bring so much attention to it in certain spots. Even in the first few minutes of the story, you will notice how everyone and everything that does not take place immediately on the battle screen, like nameless NPCs, will look terrible by comparison.

Not to mention some of the characters are done no favors by the engine. Wonder Woman and Raven in particular must have been injected with testosterone or something because their shoulders have broadened and their facial features are extremely angular for female characters. That certainly doesn’t prevent them from having humongous bosoms, which starts up a whole other conversation in regards to how women are presented in video games, but at least they’re wearing more clothes than the characters in Mortal Kombat. In other words, some of the characters have really cool designs and are well represented in the game, while others seem like they could have used a little more work.

Where the characters really have attention done is in there move set and how the environment looks. As it was mentioned before, there are certain textures in the background that just look bad. However, where the background shines is how the environment reacts to the battle with the dynamic transitions. Being able to send the opponent through the background to a brand new stage is just cool and it looks amazing each time, even if it can go on for a little long. The only thing that is more satisfying to see are the ridiculous super moves that the characters have. Some of them are fairly simple like Superman’s smash that sends the opponent into orbit, but it still manages to be just about as satisfying as Bane’s horrifically painful looking back-breaker combo.

Part of what makes the supers and transitions so satisfying is the sound. The sound effects are really satisfying to listen to with the various special move noises and smashes. The way the music swells with the transitions and super moves certainly helps with the impact of the moves. It’s too bad that the rest of the time, the music is mostly forgettable. The orchestral soundtrack tends to just play in the background and go unnoticed until one of these special moves occur. The only track that stands out is in Atlantis where it sounds similar the climactic music from Roger Rabbit, but, for the most part, you can play your own music over it for a more exciting and satisfying experience.

Conclusion

As an overall package, Injustice is not quite as ground breaking and surprising as Mortal Kombatwas when it was rebooted, but this doesn’t make it an inferior game. Injustice is different enough from MK to make it stand apart in a way that makes it feel like just as fresh and new of an experience to be viewed on its own merits. In some ways, MK is better as an overall package, but the combat is so satisfying that Injustice comes out as a game that is more fun and addicting to play; not to mention it has multiplayer that actually works, for the most part. While it feels like there could still be more added to the character roster, along with some small touches like personal interactions between characters that have a history or some different victory poses and sayings, Injustice has a lot to offer and is well worth any person who has an invested interest in either DCcharacters or fighting games.]]>