After a stunning announcement trailer, NetherRealms’ “Injustice: Gods Among Us” had a pretty high bar to leap over on the show floor. After seeing some of the game in action, my feeling is that the game is an interesting prospect, but not a sure-fire victory quite yet. It looks good, and the NetherRealm folks have some neat ideas, but we’ll see.
“Injustice” looks almost identical to the recent “Mortal Kombat” reboot, and that’s a compliment. The art direction on the various Justice League/DC character outfits is superb, with Batman and the Flash in particular impressing. I honestly think the Dark Knight seen here is more convincing than the burly muscle disaster they insist on in Rocksteady games. There’s also a nice dark edge to all of the characters, but it isn’t overplayed. Art direction on the various locales also impresses.
The gameplay looked good, and again quite reminiscent of MK. NetherRealm was really emphatic about destructible environments interjecting themselves into combat. Not only does every stage split into several different segments that can be accessed by pummeling your opponent into them, but different objects in those segments can be used in unique ways by each character. For example, when Batman interacts with a car in the background, he just slams his opponent’s head into it; Solomon Grundy, by contrast, picks up the car and throws it at you.
The problem with this is the disparity it announces between characters. Superman, The Flash and Grundy all have amazingly cinematic, over-the-top special moves that elicit huge reactions from the crowd, but Batman and Harley Quinn, being mere mortals without super powers, have decidedly less awesome stuff. I worry that this is going to weight the game towards the two or three power characters and away from everyone else.
Also, environmental interplay kind of smells like “cheap victory” to me. Fighting game aficionados want more moves, more characters, more stages, better graphics, but more random background attacks? Is this a thing? I’m worried this game is going to come down with a chronic case of “Mario Party” syndrome, squashing winners and losers together until they’re all one thick, communist paste and victory is achieved as much by luck as anything else.
But okay, let’s keep an open mind. The game looks good, to be sure, I just have concerns. We won’t know if those concerns are valid until the game is out.
_AA
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