Kill your Heroes – Injustice: Gods Among Us Review

It’s a old school yard discussion that we’ve all had, who would win in a fight between Superman and Batman? Aquaman vs Green Lantern? Green Arrow vs Nightwing? We crazy ideas of having beloved Superheroes fighting each other, and stories that features this have become some of the best works from comic companies like Marvel and DC.

Marvel had a head start on this concept by teaming up with Capcom in the Marvel vs Capcom series, with DC following suit early in this generation with Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe… with underwhelming results. Now that NeitherRealm studios have found success again with the remake of the Mortal Kombat series, they’re ready to take another stab at the DC Universe with Injustice, throwing their take on the DC heroes and villains.

To introduce the story, I’d like you to think about what it would be like to live in the DC Universe as a normal person. It’s scary to think that at any moment any of the DC villains can do a significant amount of damage, and what happened the strongest hero of them all decided he was in charge of everything, how could you stop him? This is the basic concept of Injustice: Gods Among Us’ story, after Joker forces Superman to kill Lois Lane and his unborn son, then setting off a nuke in the middle of Metropolis. This makes an enraged Superman kill Joker and take over the world as the One World Regime.

In parallel dimension; the Justice League is fighting a group of villains led by Lex Luthor, setting off the same events that depicted above with the exception that the Nuke is stopped by a dimensional rift sending Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow and the Joker into this new dimension. The group must find a way to stop the Regime and Superman before he attempts to step through the rift that was created and causing trouble in our world.

Like in Mortal Kombat, there is a well thought out story mode added into the game. Focusing on specific characters for section of the story to explain little details on Superman’s rise and the fall of Batman’s Insurgency. It is a great 3 to 4 hour story and has all the workings of a great Justice League movie or comic ark. While the dimensional rift may turn away people who don’t read too many comics, it fits well in the Injustice world after fighting a couple of rounds.

What separates Injustice from Mortal Kombat is the actual gameplay, while the influence is still there and very strong, Injustice focus is on over-the-top action and fast pace attacks. Using a 3 button attack system, the cast of Injustice can link combos and special attacks smoothly as they bash each other brains out. The 4 button command activates the character specific super power; which can add a new attack, change the fight stance, give a boost for the character.

The stand out feature is the environments, most of the time this is an after thought in fighting games; something cool to look at while your beating each other up. In Injustice, the environments are deadly weapons that can be used to cause quite a bit of damage to your opponent. The reaction to these environmental attacks depend on your characters strength, for example: Batman cannot pick up a dumpster, but he can slide it into his opponent, while Superman can lift it up and toss at a great distance. This is a great strategy to keep your opponent on their toes as it forces them to watch your reaction to your combo setup.

There are several Big hits that can be done in the game to help bring the battle to your favor, launching your opponent through walls in a level transition is one of the best ways this is done as they are devastating attacks that look great in the process. Another way is by the Super attack which can be preformed once the super meter is full. These attacks are similar to the Mortal Kombat X-Ray strikes, preforming an unblockable strike that can take a large chunk of damage from the opponent and usually involve cool moves like punching someone into space, attacking them with various explosions, or by punching them through the Earth… Twice.

All of these moves are showcased inside the game’s challenge mode called the S.T.A.R. Labs, based on the Scientific and Technological Advanced Research Labs in the DC Universe. These missions are similar to the challenge mode seen in Mortal Kombat and offer a different set of story missions where you must complete goals to earn stars. These missions range from simple like beating your opponent, to more difficult ones such as defeat your opponent without jumping or without special attacks. Some of these missions do include minigames (which can also be found in certain story missions) and range from simple side scrolling missions to shooting down or deflecting objects.

Injustice is a huge fighting game for your money, featuring a robust and great story, ton of missions in the S.T.A.R. Labs and an Arcade mode, a solid multiplayer with various gameplay options, a large amount of unlockable costumes and some solid controls. If your avid DC comic reader or not, if you want a great fighting game then Injustice Gods Among Us will not disappoint.