Hello everybody! For today's review I decided to keep it a little modern this time around. The game I will be reviewing today is Injustice: Gods Among Us.
The game: Injustice: Gods Among Us is a fighting game created by Netherrealm Studios and was published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in April 2013 for the PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii U, and PC. The game would later get a ported over to the PS4 in November 2013. The game is based upon the fictional universe of DC comics.
The Story: 
In an alternate reality, Superman gets tricked by the Joker into destroying Metropolis and killing Lois Lane and Superman’s unborn son. Superman finally snaps and kills the Joker. This makes Superman form the Regime and declare a new world order. Some of the superheroes and villains are forced to side with Superman and some, like Batman, don’t like the whole Regime idea. Batman forms the Insurgency and their plan is to stop the Regime Superman from taking over their universe and our universe. Batman, with the help of the Justice League from the “good” reality, vow to stop the evil Regime Superman from taking over both realities.
The story is separated into chapters. There are 12 chapters total and you will switch from various characters to play as such as Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Deathstroke. Some characters you will play more than once in different chapters, like Batman. You will play as him the most in the story. What I liked about this story was how it was basically felt like an episode/movie of the TV show, Justice League. I love that show and I recommend it to everyone. What I didn’t like about the single player was how short it was. You can literally beat the single-player in just a few hours if you wanted to. And the story is okay at best, but its something you will forget about over time. The story in this game is something you play through once and don’t go back to it.
One thing they added in the story were these little quick-time event mini-games that you will go through every once in a while. For example, when you’re playing as Green Arrow, Solomon Grundy is coming towards you and the camera switches to a first-person mode and you shoot him and the objects he throws at you with arrows. That was the best one because that was the only mini-game that didn’t have quick-time events as you actually had to be fast and aim correctly. The stupidest one was when you’re playing as the good Superman and you blast like 30 cars that Black Adam is throwing at you. He’s grabbing them off the highway, with people inside by the way, and you’re blasting through them with your Heat Vision murdering everybody inside the vehicles. You’re the good Superman… killing innocent people… just to get to Black Adam.
The game ends hinting at a sequel but I don’t know if that is going to happen anytime soon. Netherrealm is currently making Mortal Kombat X and will most likely stick with that since Mortal Kombat is their main game. If there were to be an Injustice 2, it may not come out for a while.
Gameplay: Before you say “Oh its just a MK vs. DC/MK9 reskin” I can tell you that thankfully it is not. It has similarities but they are not the same game.
These are the heroes and villains you get to play as in the game:
Heroes
1. The Flash
2. Nightwing
3. Batman
4. Cyborg
5. Green Arrow
6. Superman
7. Raven
8. Wonder Woman
9. Aquaman
10. Hawkgirl
11. Green Lantern
12. Shazam
13. Batgirl
14. Martian Manhunter
15. Zatanna
Villains
1. The Joker
2. Harley Quinn
3. Solomon Grundy
4. Lex Luthor
5. Catwoman
6. Deathstroke
7. Ares
8. Killer Frost
9. Doomsday
10. Sinestro
11. Black Adam
12. Bane
13. Lobo
14. General Zod
15. Scorpion
Keep in mind that Batgirl, Zatanna, Martian Manhunter, Scorpion, Lobo, and General Zod are DLC characters.
You also get to see cameos of other DC characters in the backgrounds of the maps like Scarecrow, Killer Croc, The Riddler, Captain Atom, and Gorilla Grodd.
- Every character has their own unique character power that they can use during a fight to help them gain an edge over their opponent. For example, Superman gains a damage boost and a armor boost for a short time. Batman can call mechanical bats to fly by his side and send them to attack his opponent. After you use your power, you will have to wait a short time before you can use it again.
- The game has interactive maps as it has Stage Transitions. If you get your opponent next to the edge of the map and hit them with a heavy attack, you activate the Stage Transition and send them flying through all types of danger taking a huge chunk of their health away. Every character can do this. Even sweet, little Harley Quinn can send a behemoth like Doomsday through one of these Stage Transitions.
This is what a Stage Transition looks like:
- There are also interactive objects in the stages as well. If your character has super-strength, you can pick up objects like barrels/rocks/cars/etc. and throw them at your opponent. Characters that don’t have super-strength like the Joker use gadgets on these objects. The Joker can plant bombs on these objects and the shrapnel from the explosions can hit your opponent. I liked this as it keeps the game balanced whether your character has super-strength or not.
- You and your opponent have 2 health bars. Its not like Mortal Kombat how after each round your health resets back to full. You have to be more conservative in this game about your health.
- Once you get to your second health bar, you can initiate this thing called a Clash. Both characters share some words and then they charge at each other. If you start and win a Clash, you do extra damage to your opponent. If you didn’t start a Clash and win, you gain some health back. The way to win a Clash is to bet your Super Meter. The larger the amount you bet before a Clash, the better your chances are of winning it. If nobody has enough power in the Super Meter to bet in the Clash, it will end up in a tie and nothing happens.
Here's a video on how the Clash system works
- Every character has a Super Meter and Super Power. You raise your Super Meter by getting hit/ doing combos/blocking/etc. When your Super Meter is full you can pull off your character’s Super Power and have a chance to do some insane damage to your opponent if you can land it. I just wish that every character had more than just one Super Power however. It would have been so cool to see at least 3 for each.
Here is a video of every character's Super Power
- If you forget how to do a combo or special attack, you can tag them in the Moves list and they will appear on-screen for you during gameplay. Saves you the trouble from constantly pausing the game to go to the Moves list.
Graphics: The game’s graphics are exceptionally well done. The backgrounds look beautiful and character models are pretty neat. If I have one complaint about this game, its that why are most of the female characters so ugly? I mean, you look at Wonder Woman and she has the face of a man. Raven’s face is even worse! Zatanna looks okay but not that great. Killer Frost is alright but could be better. I would say that Hawkgirl looks the best, mainly because of her body but she always has her helmet on. Catwoman in her Arkham City skin I would say is the best looking female character in the game.
I mean... just look at Raven. She's so god damn ugly. Can we trade this Raven for the Teen Titans Raven? Please?
Soundtrack: There’s not much to say about the soundtrack. You will mainly hear only one song and that’s the main theme. There’s music that plays in the stages but you will barely hear the music with all the chaos that’s happening.
This is the main them if you want to give it a listen:
Extra Content: 
This game offers its fair share of content to unlock. The way you unlock things depends on how you play or Cards you achieve when you rank up.
- You have a Title/Emblem that you can set similar to how CoD does it. If you go to the Bonus Features in the main menu, you can set it there. The way you unlock titles and emblems depends on how well you play the game. For example, if you win 10 matches with any character you unlock their logo to use for an emblem.
- You gain EXP for winning, doing combos, Super Moves, Stage Transitions, etc. and you rank up. The highest I got to was Level 55 I think. I don’t know how much Levels there are but there is an achievement to get to Level 100. The more you rank up, the more Cards you get to have to unlock stuff in the Hall of Justice.
- Speaking of the Hall of Justice, that’s where you go to unlock things like Skins, Concept Art, Music, Double XP time, and Stage Interactions. There’s also Character Bios of every single character that you can read. You can also look at their Endings when you beat Classic Ladder and look at their character models there. I just wish there were Skins from the Justice League TV show. That would have been cool.
- There is a gamemode called S.T.A.R. Labs which are basically minigames for every character to do. There’s sooo much challenges to do in that game mode. Some of them are really unique and fun, like there’s one where you get to play as Catwoman’s cat Isis and you have to jump over infrared lasers and evade security. I haven’t played all of them yet but they are fun. If you can manage to get 3 stars in all of the challenges then you are a god.
- The only way to unlock a character’s ending is to beat Classic Ladder on Normal or higher. It’s the same as Mortal Kombat’s ladder where you beat 9 fighters then take on Shao Kahn. Here it’s the same except you fight Regime Superman and he has double health and double damage. Beat him and you unlock your character’s ending. Some of the Endings are pretty lame but some are cool. I would say though that Harley Quinn’s ending was totally unexpected like wow, I can’t believe she would do that.
- Online Multiplayer is pretty cool. They brought back King of the Hill from MK9 for this game and it plays pretty much the same. There are also daily challenges that you can do to get bonus exp. Other than that the multiplayer is pretty solid and almost never lags.
Final Verdict: This game is so much better than MK vs DC but is it better than MK9? Not really. There are still some issues with this game that the developers missed. For instance, there’s no Tag Team mode. That was one of the best features added to MK9 because you can play with a friend co-op and go up the Ladder. That is something that should have been in Injustice because you can have the Justice League vs Lex Luthor and his gang or something like that.
I give Injustice: Gods Among Us an 8/10. It’s a solid fighting game and if you are a fan of DC you will love the game.
I would have given the game a higher score if it had Tag Team.
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