Injustice: Gods Among Us (2013)

I probably outgrew fighting games in the late 90s, shortly after playing and completing Street Fighter on the SNES. I never cared for the gratuitous bloodiness of Mortal Kombat, the 3D innovations of Tekken, or really anything else. As fighting games kept getting bigger, more powerful, and more complex, I found my frustrations with them continuing to build... on the rare occasions I played them.

Such is the case with Injustice: Gods Among Us. I played through the campaign mode, and enjoyed the story well enough as a person trying to consume more DC media. But even on Normal mode, the fights would get frustrating, and sometimes I'd find myself stuck on a 'boss' character for longer than I started to feel was worth it. The amount of time, energy, and effort that would be required to learn the full mastery of even one champion is something I just can't afford to commit to these days, to say nothing of mastering the entire roster of characters.

With that said, I enjoyed a lot of the dialog, the plot, and the voice cast (I loved hearing Adam Baldwin say, "Time to kick my ass!"). I've read some of the Injustice graphic novels, and realize this is a fairly sizeable event, and for that reason just kind of went with things as they occurred. The playthrough was enjoyable enough for the story, and as a very casual player of this kind of game, found the experience worthwhile.

But then I tried playing arcade mode.

There's nothing WRONG with it, per se, but for me, it's a lot of fighting game repetition and joyless grinding, where I'm trying to either button mash my way to victory or devote hours to learning the move sets for specific characters. I'd occasionally flail my way into a move or combo that works for a certain character, and often just stick with it until I was able to inch myself into a win. I could feel myself getting frustrated and crass as the game made me more hostile at the opponents. Not the most gratifying way to spend my gaming time.

So while I'm glad to have played and finally finished the story mode of Injustice, as well as an arcade run for Nightwing, I think I'll pass on trying to unlock all the badges, icons, and other goodies. Oh, and there is NO WAY I'm going to try to platinum this one.

In any case, here's a link to one of my let's play streams to this game, in which I am mostly enjoying it. I think.

I got this game for free and decided to play it before I tried Injustice 2. After spending my early adolescence obsessed with Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, and having great fun playing Dead or Alive 3 with friends during my uni years, I never picked up another fighting game up until this point. I guess I just kind of gravitated away from them as I started looking for ‘deeper’ experiences in gaming, especially as I got older, and in a way I forgot how fun these games can be. Injustice: Gods Among Us is one such case. I had no idea if this 9 year old game held up, but in my eyes it absolutely does, for the most part at least. I was also a bit reticent because hero themes in gaming aren’t my thing at all, but I ended up having a good time throughout. It comes with a decent single player runtime for a fighting game, as well as a serviceable story, that not only does a good job of justifying all those weird 1v1 matchups but it’s also effective in getting you to experience pretty much all fighters and their styles. And speaking of fighters, there’s a pretty varied move set, and though I felt there were clear differences in power and usefulness when comparing characters (Aquaman, Green Arrow, Superman and Joker felt definitely stronger, at least to me), there really wasn’t any particular one I didn’t like.

My main gripe with the game were the character models. I just felt pretty much everyone looked awful and that the devs could’ve done a much better job in that aspect, even back then. There also isn’t much depth to it overall, but I don’t think anyone would boot up this game looking for depth anyway. Issues aside I enjoyed dipping my toes in a fast paced superhero world and experimenting with all those fighting styles, even if, when all is said and done, this blend of genre and theme will probably never become a favourite of mine. If you’re looking for a quick, easy pick up that will give you a few hours of fun and don’t mind the underlying themes, Injustice: Gods Among Us might be a good one to try. 6.5/10.

This game probably has the worst menu controls i've ever seen. Escape, Enter, Space, etc. all don't work. Instead you have to use G/L or Numpad 4/8. Imagine how incompetent the devs must be not be able to set normal keyboard controls for the menus (it's fine if you use a controller).

The actual gameplay itself is littered with unskippable animations. The game also has one of those pointless, godawful levelling systems. No thanks.

I did not like this game at all even though I love the characters. The fighting was just so repetitive and by the numbers and I might not be the biggest fighting game player but I still felt disappointed when picking this one up. The story was minimal and interesting enough for a fighting game but it could have been pushed a little more. Character selection was amazing obviously but the gameplay did not represent the diversity of the rooster due to its repetitive style and character designs at points left a lot to be desired. The graphics and overall visuals were not that good either, unfortunately. All in all, I hope there will be a better product out there for a DC fighting game cause this one just isn't it.

I have absolutely no illusions of being even halfway competent in any fighting game versus actual people online. So, I decided to go through the single player story mode of Injustice this weekend.

It was an entertaining 4-5 hour playthrough. The graphics aren't too dated, the voice acting & writing were decent, and the difficulty wasn't too punishing on Normal. I didn't lose often against the CPU opponents, but when I did, I feel like the game immediately lowered the difficulty for the rematch. And I'm totally okay with that.

That said, I don't really have much drive to go through the STAR Labs challenges. I'd say I got my couple bucks worth of fun from the game, and it's time to move on.

I have Injustice 2 downloading now, after finding a cheap copy online. Maybe I'll put a little more time and effort into the sequel.