An Injustice Gods Among Us demo has landed on the Xbox marketplace so I decided to give it a try and post some thoughts. Here’s some mind blowing news, you can go and download the demo yourself if you really want to. In some ways this “preview” is utterly pointless but if you want to read someone else’s opinion on it then by all means, stick around.
Injustice Gods Among Us is the latest title from NetherRealm Studios, it’s basically the Mortal Kombat team reborn after Midway went under. Mortal Kombat II and Shaolin Monks aside, I can’t actually tell you I ever enjoyed the series in the past but that all changed in 2011 with the release of Mortal Kombat. The game went back to it’s 2D roots, dropped a lot of the stupidity from later games and the team got some professional fighting game players to give feedback along the way. The result was a non suck Mortal Kombat game for a change, pretty much everyone I know ended up enjoying the game and sales were pretty good too.
On paper the concept behind Injustice Gods Among Us is pretty simple, take 2011′s Mortal Kombat and turn it into DC universe based fighter. Gone is all the blood and violence and instead make way for interactive environments, it sounds like I’m selling the game short but in reality the end result appears to have paid off. Injustice takes the Mortal Kombat formula and make it it’s own so you have something that feels similar yet also refreshing different. I’ve had more fun with this demo than I ever did with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe in it’s entirety.
Let’s be straight up honest here, Injustice isn’t the smoothest fighter around and looks downright clunky in comparison to other games in the genre. None of that matters, Injustice isn’t trying to be like other fighters but instead is content with being straight up fun. In many ways it reminds me of Killer Instinct, not the most mechanically sound game I’ve played but totally awesome to the point where it doesn’t matter.
Injustice Gods Among Us is a 2D fighter with 3D visuals, you’ll be doing plenty of “jumping in” attacks and dashing around the arena. If you’ve played Mortal Kombat 2011 then you know what to do expect here, the big change however outside the DC license are the environments. Imagine Dead or Alive but a lot more interesting with loads of “holy crap, that was awesome moments”. There are numerous “hot spots” within the environments and a quick tap of RB will cause your character to use whatever happens to be nearby as a weapon. The most obvious one is the dumpster, Batman will slide it across to the opponent yet a character like Doomsday will straight up just hit you over the head with it. I won’t spoil them all but go ahead and explore the possibilities yourself, it’s often amusing how over the top it is.
The demo features a stage taking place in Gotham City, it’s comprised of three different areas. You start off at the top of a building but you’re more than welcome to throw your opponent off the edge. In most games that’s usually about it, you knock them off and wait until you both land before resuming the fight. In Injustice it takes it to the next level, you’ll smack your opponent off the level into a building, they’ll get hit with a wrecking ball, land on train tracks and then finally get hit by a moving train… THEN you resume the fight on another area of the stage. IT’S AWESOME!
Much like Mortal Kombat before it, Injustice uses a meter system to keep fights more interesting. X-Ray moves are gone and instead the Street Fighter style “Super Combo” shows up to add a cinematic flair to the fight. If you’re not into flashy moves then you can choose to spend your meter on “EX attacks” instead, it will burn a little off the meter but certain moves can be “enhanced” with better range, hits or generally better properties. Being that this is made by the Mortal Kombat guys, pressing down plus punch performs the ever popular uppercut.
My general impression from the demo is that fans of Mortal Kombat, DC Universe and fighting games in general are going to have a blast with this one. Initially you’ll love experimenting around to see all the different effects you can trigger in each area, it’s a pretty pick up and play fighter so mashing buttons lets you see some cool stuff but you’ll definitely want to learn it’s mechanics if you want to go far.
It’s not the next Virtua Fighter so if you’re expecting this to be the attraction at EVO for years to come then walk away now. It’s not a mindless fighter either, yes it’s over the top and crazy but there is clearly a deep fighting game here, the moves list has FRAME DATA listings for crying out loud. I think Injustice Gods Among Us is going to please a lot of people when it arrives later this month.
The fighting game community will ultimately decide what happens to this game, based on my time with the demo I can tell you for sure it’s not going to be the next Street Fighter X Tekken. I definitely recommend you try out the demo and just mess around to see what you can do, after that take your ass over to Amazon and throwdown a pre-order.
