After being tricked into killing his wife Lois and their child, Superman fails to prevent the Joker from destroying Metropolis with a nuclear bomb. Deciding that enough is enough, Superman becomes the evil dictator, keeping all heroes and villains in line with brutal force. But now an alternate universe is seeping through and those superheroes are fighting against evil Superman.
1. Gameplay
There’s a reason you don’t see many fighting games rated on this site. I’m not much of a fan of them. That’s really what it boils down to. I loved Soulcalibur 1 and 2, but hated games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken 3, etc. I found most fighting games to be fairly repetitive and over reliant on complicated combo moves and button combinations. If I wanted to spend time memorizing a huge list of button combinations, I wouldn’t, instead dedicating that time to memorizing something that might be useful outside of a single genre of video games. That is why I can, without any doubt, say that Injustice is a surprisingly awesome game. Yes, if you want to be great at it you’ll need to memorize button combos, but for those of us who happen to be less than competent fighting gamers there’s a ton here that works. There is a long list of heroes and villains, each with their own unique abilities and special moves. There are a good number of recognizable levels. On top of the crop of levels, each one has at least one second area. In Mortal Kombat you could punch an enemy up, down, or sideways into a second area. That also makes an appearance here, although with an extremely flashy cinematic sequence. This was, by far, one of my favorite features of the game. My other favorite feature is the interactivity of the levels. Each level has a good number of objects that the player can throw, use, detonate, or kick an enemy into. Even if you can’t get in a punch or two, you can still feel completely satisfied throwing a missile into The Joker’s stupid, grinning face. I can’t say for sure how this game stacks up against other current fighting games, but I had a great time with it. Whether you’re new to fighting or a veteran of the genre, I felt that this was money well spent.
The true length of this game is going to depend on how much the player enjoys fighting games. If you enjoy learning the combos, unlocking heroes, doing the challenge missions, and playing online, this game will have some excellent replay value. While the campaign is fairly short, it can be fun to go back and try again. Even with my general dislike of fighting games, I found the campaign to be pretty awesome. Unfortunately, I’m fairly horrible at memorizing combos, so while I could challenge the easier enemies I struggled against enemies on the higher difficulty levels. My playthrough lasted me around 5 hours. While I have definitely considered going back and replaying the campaign, the challenges and online components were not enjoyable enough to try more than once or twice.
As I have mentioned before (and will undoubtedly say again), I am not particularly good at fighting games. Spamming a few simple moves and pulling off painfully obvious supermoves are about as far as I can go. So if I go up against a high-level computer character or against pretty much any human opponent with more skill than a concussed turtle I’m going to be decimated. Most of the time in the campaign I didn’t have much problem (with a few exceptions later in the story), but a few times in the random battles and every match online I was left pretty frustrated. The most important part here is to know your ability level and play with friends who are about equal to you.
Violence in this game can seem brutal, but since all of the characters are superheroes the earth-shaking blows can come off as comical. Most hits will result in a small amount of blood that may nor may not be visible depending on the camera angle, type of attack, and who is the target of the attack. As I mentioned before, many of the blows are, sometimes literally, “earth shattering”. The moves and effects are all exaggerated to a pretty ridiculous degree. However, the strength of the attacks is also combined with a superhuman speed. Many times the attack combos can chain together in such a way that the player has landed dozens of blows within a few seconds. Each character has their own super attack, which is a specially animated attack sequence that is meant to highlight the attacking character’s identifiable strengths and abilities. These greatly exaggerate the already exaggerated strength of attacks, but is otherwise not significantly more violent than any of the normal attacks. The campaign does have a few moments where the violence increases slightly. The most obvious example of this is when the evil Superman uses his laser eye vision to burn a hole through another superhero’s head.
This game revolves entirely around conflict between comic book characters. If you take a moment to look up comic book female characters (both heroes and villains), you’ll notice that they tend to wear extremely tight, revealing clothing. The same goes for Injustice, where most of the female characters wear extremely tight clothing that accentuates their many curves. The total amount of clothing that a character wears varies, but most of them were mostly covered up. But it cannot be questioned that these characters are all designed to showcase their bodies. To be fair, a few of the male characters also wear spandex-like uniforms, but these tend to be much more armor-like. Even Superman’s classic tight suit has armor plating. There was also a location with a strip club and a few other references to mature businesses. However, the player never fights in any of those establishments.
Substances are not a factor in this game.
Gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
Religion is not a factor in this game.
Anti-law is included in this game, but the subject gets complicated. The game’s plot does revolve around the forces of good fighting the forces of evil, but in the alternate universe the forces of good are technically the forces of evil. The forces of good in the real universe have to fight the evil versions of themselves in the alternate universe. Since the evil versions are the law enforcement in that universe, the forces of good are fighting against the regional law enforcement. Either way, the player generally fights on the “good” side, so anti-law is not a major factor.
The online community is a tricky part of this game. As with most fighting games, I would highly recommend not playing this game online unless you are good enough to beat the computer on close to the highest difficulty level. While there is a chance that a few lower-skilled players (such as myself) are still playing online, the majority of the players I found are all clearly veterans with high win/loss ratios. If you are not prepared to take on players of a high skill level, you will likely lose and you will almost certainly be left frustrated.
Extreme sports is another one of those grey areas where technically it’s included but the way it is included isn’t particularly notable. Since each of the characters in this game are superheroes, many of them can fly. Those that can’t are strong enough or will fight characters who are strong enough to punch other characters and send them flying hundreds of feet. Characters can be sent through multiple concrete walls, through teleporters, or even into space.
Magic is a serious factor in this game. Almost all of the heroes have superpowers of some sort. And while the backstory of these characters might give biological or technological explanations for these abilities, the game never discusses these in any significant detail. Everything from Superman’s laser eyes to the Green Lantern’s magic ring can all be classified as magical. While there are a number of heroes that do not have “magical” abilities (such as Batman and The Joker), the majority of the characters in the game have something that gives them superhuman abilities without any real explanation.
Torture There is a scene where two of Evil Superman’s lackeys (Evil Raven and Evil Cyborg) torture Lex Luthor. It’s a pretty simple scene, but it’s pretty obvious what’s going on. Execution Evil Superman ends up capturing a few superheroes and killing them. While most of these are just references and not actual actions, one cinematic scene shows Superman using his laser vision to kill another character (I believe it was the Green Arrow, but I’m not as familiar with DC characters as I am with Marvel characters). Weapons of Mass Destruction
At the beginning of the campaign, the Joker tricks Superman into killing Superman’s wife and child. The Joker then proceeds to detonate a nuclear bomb in the middle of Metropolis, killing millions of people. Somehow an alternate version of the events end up playing out in a separate timeline, and those two timelines end up colliding for what would eventually be the plot.
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