Injustice: Gods Among Us

At first, Injustice: Gods Among Us may look like just another superhero-themed fighting game, but it has been done well.

Made by Netherrealm Studios, the company behind Mortal Kombat, Injustice is a game that takes various heroes and villains of the DC Universe duking it out. But it has a story: Batman and a select few superheroes are yanked out of their universe and into another one, a universe whose Superman has become an evil dictator and has gathered heroes and villains into a Regime. However, the world's Batman has started an Insurgency after seeing Superman kill The Joker, and he has brought the heroes here to help them.

Other than the neat story mode, which tells a story as well as sports a great voice cast (which includes Kevin Conroy reprising his role as Batman, Tara Strong as both Harley Quinn and Raven, and Khary Payron reprising his role as Cyborg), the game also has a single player mode that lets you play an arcade path to get a character's ending, as well as other paths with certain themes, as well as S.T.A.R. Labs, which serves as Injustice's take on Mortal Kombat 2011's Challenge Tower, as it has missions tasking you to do certain tasks.

As for gameplay, it is almost similar to Mortal Kombat, however, it would add some features. While X-Ray Moves and Fatalities are a no-go, the game instead offers Super Moves which are attacks that trigger a cinematic where the attacker does something spectacular themed after him (for example, Superman punches the opponent into space, only for the Man of Steel to fly up and whack him/her back down to Earth, Cyborg shifting his arms into a massive Sonic Blaster, and Wonder Woman using her lasso to restrain the opponent, allowing some Amazons to beat on him/her until Wonder Woman reels them in to slash at them with her sword). Also new is the ability to use the environment to your advantage, as some objects in the background can either be thrown as weapons or, in the case of acrobat characters, used to make a quick escape, and the ability to perform Stage Transactions, which knocks your opponent into something, triggering a cinematic where they take damage as they are sent to another area of the stage.

But two of the best features are character traits, which are powers that can be triggered temporarily to give a sort of stat boost or weapon, and the clash system, where after a character loses one life bar (the match plays by Killer Instinct rules where it's one round with two life bars), they gain the opportunity to start a clash, where both characters must wager some of their super meter. The attacker will do damage if he/she wins, and the defender will have some of his/her heath restored should he/she come out of top. This adds an aspect of strategy to the game as well as a risk-vs.-reward situation: would you rather lose a clash to save your super meter for your character's Super Move, or will you risk some or all of it in an attempt to win the clash?

Injustice is an awesome fighting game, and is a game to be played.

As a massive fan of the Tekken fighting games, i am always wary of getting other fighting games, but as a super hero fan, i simply had to give this game a shot. What I ended up with was an enjoyable game with simple enough controls to get to grips with, but there is scope to learn to use the moves of each character to incredible effect.

The game has a story mode that is far superior to most fighting games, and the level of detail that has been put in to the S.T.A.R. labs missions makes the 1 player content last much longer while not seeming like too much of a grind. I was also glad that the studio didn't make superman and batman the instant pick that they may have been being the famous pair, the other characters are all very competitive for 2 player use.

If your favorite character is not one of the 24 playable ones, you can almost guarantee that they will have a cameo in the game somewhere, and with down-loadable content on the way, the games longevity will be increased.

I would recommend this game to any fan of fighting games and/or DC comics characters, and i hope that this becomes a franchise of games, not just a one off. Note to Disney: make a game like this for Marvel characters, there is lots of money to be made!

That's what turned Superman into one of the most evil dictators ever. Forget Nero, Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, and those others. Try imagining having a nearly indestructible man as your leader. Make him a not-very-nice man. Then make him someone that used to be a hero to you, but grief and loss turned him into a man as insane as The Joker. But more powerful. Would you want to kill him? Would you try to end his reign? Then take into consideration the fact that Kryptonite probably costs near a billion dollars on the black market. By then you probably would have lost all hope. That's the situation we are all currently in in a parallel universe. That's the DC Theory.

Injustice: Gods Among Us is one of the most brilliantly-conceived, gloriously-animated video games out there. The fighting style is swift and the moves are beautiful. As difficult as the combos are to learn, once they are applied correctly, the result can be spectacular.

The Story is surprisingly inventive and moving for a video game; I almost wished DC had decided to make it into a movie instead. The Story uses the intriguing idea of different universes. In the DC universe we know and love, everything is familiar. The Joker is terrorizing the Justice League (and the world) with another of his maniacal Metropolis-destroying schemes. We see an all-out war going on between DC's best known superheroes and not-so-super-villains. As Flash and Green Arrow observe the more-powerful heroes (Superman, Wonder Woman) fighting the most menacing villains (Doomsday, etc.), Arrow calls them gods. Flash responds, "What does that make us?" Arrow replies cleverly, "The people that clean up the mess." Throughout the game--which can almost be called a movie--such trivial dialogue occurs.

Not to long into the game, a mind-blowing plot point occurs. A few of the members are transported into another universe--one that appears to be a lot like ours, with other versions of themselves. Although it appears to be a lot like ours, it is in contrast almost the opposite. Sure, Lex Luthor and Superman are still enemies...but their roles are reversed. Instead, though, Superman isn't struggling to become president...he is pretty much Supreme Ruler of the entire world...except for Atlantis.

One funny moment is when Cyborg is accidentally transported to the other universe (after all the others) and eavesdrops upon Lex Luthor's conversation with Deathstroke about defeating Superman. Cyborg then charges in and fights them, only to find out after beating them that he is on the same side as they.

The rest of the game is just as exciting, with funny moments, tragic moments, epic moments, and definitely some thought-provoking moments. Throughout the game it is appalling to see Superman--one of our greatest heroes--trying to bring upon us what he considers "world peace". Here it's really just a fancy word(s) for world destruction.

Injustice is to DC what Marvel vs Capcom is to Marvel..a good, addictive fighting game with a deep story movie and tons of extra play. The online is OK, yet in the special edition you can play more than a dozen superheroes and supervillains from DC's vast universe. The more you fight, you get XP and level up your profile although you won't gain any strength with the fighters. Some fighters are easy to handle while others are hard to control. I highly suggest getting the PS4 version since you get the complete package for the price of one.

I've never been a big D.C. (or Marvel for that matter) fan, and I've played fewer fighting games than almost any other genre. In other words, I'm not the target audience for this game. Yet I really enjoyed every moment of 'Injustice: Gods Among Us'. I don't know what die- hard fighting fans will make of it; maybe it's too accessible for some of them, but as a relatively casual player I can't think of much to criticise. I *do* wish that Batman's playstyle was a little smoother -- playing him seems a little trickier than the rest of the characters. The story is surprisingly good - the fighting fits within the narrative rather than the other way around, and this is probably why it was such a success. The sequence of events feels natural, and not just an excuse to line up the next opponent. Many of the story fights actually add to the plot in some sense, and so the player is always left with an impression of progress which runs much deeper than just beating the current level. I bought this game in the sales but would in retrospect happily pay full price -- the amount of content is *very* impressive. There are enough unique challenges to not only acquaint you with all the characters, moves and settings, but to also fill dozens if not hundreds of hours. (The fact that I haven't logged many more hours on this is largely due to the fact that I'm not very good with fighting games and just *know* that I won't get very far with the additional content.) This game, in brief, is definitely worth your money and time