Originally published August 2017

Over the past few weeks, I've put a lot of time into one game more than any other. Injustice 2 came out a couple of months ago and was the final straw that finally made me cave in and get a PS4. I have held for a while, but at last, there were at least 5 games that I wanted to get on the device that I couldn't get elsewhere, or get in a way that was more convenient.

Injustice 2 is the direct sequel to the 2013 game Injustice: Gods Among Us. Both of these are fighting games made by NeatherRealm Studios (the developers of Mortal Kombat) involving DC superheroes and villains. NeatherRealm has slowly become my favorite fighting game developer lately, as each game they have released in the past few years has been pretty consistent and improving in quality, as well as quantity. Since the last Injustice, another MK came out and when you compare those games to each other and Injustice 2, you can see how each game has clearly taught some design lessons to the studio that have helped them make each new game better. While I loved Mortal Kombat 9 for being a fantastic return for the series, I ended up preferring Injustice's style and moves a little more. They all have their inherent similarities, the but two franchises are different enough to pull a variety of audiences. With the release of Injustice 2, I know precisely where I stand in terms of preference.

The Short of It

What I've played

At the time of this review:

• Over 30 hours, including single-player and online multiplayer

• 1 Full playthrough of the story mode

• Over 100 Multiverse matches

• Release version - pre-DLC characters release to post-Sub-Zero release

Pros

• The combat feels way smoother than last time and combos are extremely satisfying to execute

• Some of the best-looking faces in video games

• Style is dramatic and fun as you would expect from an Injustice game

• Gear provides an incentive to keep playing

• Character roster is diverse and provides a lot of opportunities to play to your interests

• A ton of single-player content to keep you busy

• Story is entertaining

Cons

• The interface (especially around the gear) leaves a lot to be desired

• Gear, while a good incentive, is also a frustrating one

• DLC characters and content are expensive

• Does not explain enough

The Rest of It

Story

If there is one thing that NeatherRealm has established in the past few years, it is how to make a real story mode in a fighting game. In the past, fighting games have had convoluted and vague stories that are barely made up of anything other than a character's backstory and an ending, maybe a cutscene. Even for the fighting games with "story" modes, the stories told tend to be made of weird dialogue exchanges and excuses to have fights with one another. As much as I enjoyed Blazblue's story almost a decade ago, it was a wild and complicated one that I can barely recall.

NeatherRealm's games have gone in a different direction with how they tell their stories. As opposed to how many games did it, where you would choose a character and go through their "story" which just consisted of a few fights scattered among cutscenes, Mortal Kombat and Injustice have story modes that have a connective plot through-line. All the characters are involved in the same story and you just have to play the characters the game chooses for you from chapter to chapter. You may end up playing as characters you wouldn't normally choose, but the end result is a story that makes a lot more sense and is more fun to see.

Injustice 2 picks up a few years after the previous game's events. For those who don't recall, Superman went a little loopy after the Joker killed his girlfriend and unborn child. He became a ruthless, unforgiving tyrant who judged and killed criminals in the belief that it was better and safer for everyone than any alternative. While he managed to convince many of his fellow "heroes" to join his new order, others disagreed, especially Batman. Batman then abducted doppelgängers of those heroes from the normal DC universe where Superman was not a sociopath to help fight back. This included some heroes who were dead and gone in the Injustice realm, like Green Arrow. Fights ensued, and eventually Superman was imprisoned before the summoned heroes were returned to their own universe.

Injustice 2 continues the story a few years later in the universe in which Superman goes on a villain-killing spree and becomes the tyrant of the world. In the Injustice universe, Superman's home planet of Krypton was still destroyed, but this time it was blown up by the intergalactic encyclopedia, Brainiac. In the process of wiping out Krypton, Superman's Cousin, Supergirl, escaped to Earth but was stuck in hypersleep until she was discovered by the fugitive former heroes. Unaware of Superman's recent faux pas, Supergirl is helping Black Adam and Wonder Woman in their efforts to free Superman from Batman's prison, while a new evil force led by Gorilla Grodd causes trouble. Eventually, the two "hero" forces must put aside their differences to overcome the true villains. However, you can bet there's going to be some major interactions between the heroes that disagree with each other.

If those last few paragraphs were a tough read, due to a lack of familiarity with the characters and the world, Injustice 2 does not really help in making anything clearer. You are expected to know most of the characters involved and already care about those characters, as you might expect of a DC fighting game. If you don't care about the DC heroes, I doubt Injustice will make you a fan, but it may still pull you in with some of its big events and witty dialogue. Some characters get a bit more screen time and backstory than others, but the plot mostly focuses on just moving through to the big events.

What makes the story experience so special is the amount of effort put into telling the story. No other fighting game developer has put so much effort into justifying the conflicts between characters, or in establishing the fights. Cutscenes will take place, the characters will talk for a bit or have an encounter and then the game almost seamlessly transitions into a fight. It's very smooth and doesn't break the experience like most other fighting-game story modes. They even have moments that allow you to choose different characters for the particular chapter's events. So different dialogue is given based on the character you choose to fight with, giving a reason to play through the story again. This, of course, depends on if you want to see the story to its conclusion again, but the writing quality justifies the second take.

Despite the numerous characters you go through, with or without some background information, the journey is fun and exciting. The big fights that go down between the heroes and villains are satisfying and don't feel forced like many fighting game storylines, a true credit to NetherRealm Studios' dedication to telling a story.

Gameplay & Mechanics

It's been a long time since a fighting game really sunk its hooks into me. The last Injustice was a lot of fun and I had a good time learning the different characters, but the online experience wasn't great and I ran out of things to do in Injustice when I got tired of trying to win online. Before that, the only other fighting game to really get me hooked to the point of trying to master combos and matchups was Blazblue, mainly due to the character diversity and the positive experience in online multiplayer.

Injustice 2 is my new Blazblue. Hands down, it has been the most fun I've had in a fighting game in a long time. The game offers a roster and a system with a variety of tools that require different levels of skill and technicality for players. It still boasts the various tools of the original Injustice, like background transitions and objects in the stage that can be used to a player's advantage. It also has some new mechanics in play that give the more advanced players different options.

More than ever, the super meter has become extremely important in combat. In the previous Injustice, it was already an important part of the fight with it being used to improve the effectiveness of special moves, as well as a way to reclaim some lost health in the second round. Now it can also be used to get players out of other tough spots. You can use it to recover in the air during an enemy's combo, allowing you to avoid some nasty damage. You can also use it to close the gap by rolling low across the screen. Both of these maneuvers can backfire, drastically, but smart use of them can make you that much more effective with characters who might normally have difficulty against zoning strategies.

Zoning is still the main strategy for Injustice. It was a primary method of achieving victory the last time around with characters who had various ranged options and methods of keeping their opponents at a distance. The same is still true here; characters with projectiles still hold a strong advantage. That being said, the new mobility options and diverse cast of characters balance things out a lot better than last time. It's still an uphill battle choosing a character like Robin to go up against Deadshot or Superman, but the victory is satisfying and not quite as overwhelming.

Part of that has to do with how the game feels. The "feel" of a fighting game is tough to describe in words, but it's a variety of different factors that can drastically affect how much fun the game is to play. The feel of NetherRealm games speaks to me more than Marvel VS Capcom, a more popular and complicated franchise that I still respect as a great fighting game. The previous Injustice was fine, but the controls didn't feel as good. The timing for combos and special moves felt a little awkward and offbeat. Plus, some characters required precise execution and timing that was extremely difficult to achieve online with latency.

Injustice 2's controls feel a lot better and less awkward. The timing of the attacks makes sense rhythmically, and the execution isn't as strict, for most characters. Unlike with the previous game and other fighting games I've played over the years, I've been able to jump into practice mode with a majority of the cast and easily flush out some decent combos that were fun and easy to perform. It often takes some time for me to warm up to the mechanics and the movement in fighting games, but I did not have trouble with Injustice 2. For the first time in a while, I really want to learn every character to some degree, simply because of how fun the mechanics are.

The different modes available and the wealth of content play into that desire. For one thing, there is more than just the story mode or online competitive multiplayer. There are multiple online modes that allow you to interact with other players via versus matches or tournament rooms. You can even set up a team of ai-controlled heroes to battle other ai-heroes and claim prize boxes.

If you don't want to play online at all, there's also the Multiverse. Straight from Mortal Kombat X's living tower feature, where different challenges appear and update every day or even every hour, the Multiverse is a single-player mode that is constantly changing. With the options available, you can select a world that then has different trials consisting of matches that may have special circumstances or rewards. The matches can vary in difficulty and provide a ton of different experiences. If you end up with a bunch of universes that don't seem fun to you, you can always just jump into the standard arcade and survival modes until it refreshes and some new challenges become available. While single-player experiences in fighting games can often feel a little shallow, this has been where I've spent the majority of my time, simply because the AI still provides a decent challenge and the variety of modes keeps things fresh.

What makes these challenges worth returning to, though, is the dangling carrot of loot. Controversial when first revealed, Injustice 2 has gear for characters. The gear you accumulate through single-player and multiplayer matches can drastically alter the appearance of the character. It can also drastically alter the stats of a character. There are different modes in the multiplayer that remove the effects that the gear has on stats, but in the Multiverse, the right gear can turn a challenging match into an easy one. At first, I admit that I didn't care much about the gear. But like most reward systems in video games, it is actually a solid method of motivating me to come back again and again to the multiverse with different characters. It's a great reason outside of just the personal gratification of getting better at a character, to keep coming back and trying the different challenges. I check the multiverse constantly to see what new gear might be available for different characters as rewards and it has even motivated me to try different characters I wouldn't have considered.

The gear system is far from perfect, however. It's a big cosmetic feature of the game, and like most cosmetic features, it follows the format of the free-to-play systems that have become more prevalent in video games. Your chances of getting the gear that you want for your characters are extremely low because you can only get gear by playing matches or opening the gearboxes that you get as prizes. What you get is completely random, though I could swear that I have a lot more stuff for the characters I haven't started using yet. If you have gear with good stats but a crappy look or color, you can pay some in-game currency to change its look around. This currency can be earned very slowly, or purchased with real money.

As great as the gear makes Injustice 2, it's also the biggest gripe I have with the game. The user interface, the multiple currencies that serve different purposes, and the low chance of success with loot boxes all feel sinister in their design; it's as though it's all meant to confuse and frustrate the player into paying more money just to get the loot they want. The game is already $60 and that price can quickly go up if you want to get different color schemes for your characters or new DLC characters. While some particular quirks to the UI have improved since the game first came out, there are other things about it that just suck and aren't likely going to get any better.

Presentation

I'll keep this UI complain-train going in this section. The user interface is not normally a big problem for me, as I'm willing to overlook shoddy UI design if the overall experience is satisfying. After all, you should be more focused on the game than the menu system. Still, Injustice 2's interface, particularly around the gear is frustrating. For one thing, a decision was made at some point to split the gear menus into two separate areas. One area is for opening the loot boxes, changing gear stats, and changing gear appearance. The other area is for applying gear to characters, discarding unused gear, and reclaiming gear that has overflowed because the character's inventory was full. It's just as confusing in the game as it was in those two sentences.

The fact that it's not all in one place creates frustration because I have to go back and forth between the different spaces obtaining or changing the gear and then applying it to the characters. While opening boxes, if I suddenly find that I need to get rid of some to free up inventory space, then I have to move back and forth between menus. If I get new gear from opening a box that I don't want, I have to navigate to the other area, find that same gear, and delete it, instead of just doing it when I first open the box. Make sure you remember the name and the stats of that gear before you get rid of it, though. In the areas where you decide to discard the gear, there's no preview of the look of the gear to help you.

And you have to get rid of stuff. A lot of stuff. The fact that there's inventory space to begin with—and one that is quickly filled—causes a bunch of issues and forces you to spend time managing all your equipment like a hoarder. If you're only going to play online ranked mode and don't care about accumulating gear, you can easily ignore all this. Otherwise, gear management is going to be a big part of the Injustice 2 experience.

Gear complaints aside, once you get your characters equipped and the different color palettes selected, they look great. Injustice 2 is a great-looking game with some fantastic background stages and amazing effects on the combatants’ moves. Part of what makes playing fighting games fun is how cool everything looks, and Injustice 2 is very cool. It also has some of the best-looking faces I've seen in a video game. Rarely does it dance over into the uncanny valley, it is so impressively detailed. If L.A. Noire had faces like these, I might have forgiven its numerous flaws.

The music is not particularly memorable, but it thumps and swells during moments in a match to match the epic nature of the fight. The end of a match or the initiation of a super move will cause the music to crescendo and add some emphasis to the moment.

Voice acting has also improved since last time, with some characters, like Harley Quinn, stealing the show. During the opening interactions of a fight or the big clash moments when players have the chance to reclaim some lost health, the characters provide little quips and exchanges with one another. Some are very common statements that are interchangeable during the fight and you'll hear them a lot. Others are far more personal, interesting, or just funny like Harley threatening to "break wind" in a voice mocking Bane and his typical threat to break someone's back. These small touches to the presentation during the fight help add some great character to Injustice 2 and make it a feast for the eyes.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

Despite the unfortunate issues around the user interface, the gear management systems, and the somewhat sinister price points, the pros of Injustice 2 heavily outweigh the cons. I have had a blast with it so far and expect to continue to do so for the remainder of the year. With so much content to experience, gear to unlock, and matchups to learn, I do not see myself getting tired of Injustice 2 any time soon. An easy recommendation for anyone who wants a new fighting game that is different from the typical Capcom or SNK fighting game.

Do you agree or disagree? Tell me what you think in the comments!

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