VideoGame The I-Pad Version: Subpar
I like fighting games. They offer all the excitement that comes from violence without the hassle of imprisonment, morality, property damage, or anything else. As for empowerment fantasies, nothing beats throwing a fireball at the shopkeeper who won't shut up about how you need more money to purchase the flaming sword.
I don't mean any of that in a psychotic way. The "excitement" from violence can only be fun when it's fictional, and I respect the fourth wall as far as my violent in-game ways are concerned.
Anyway, a few months ago I downloaded the eponymous game onto my tablet. The tutorial highlighted the game's easy to learn but bone-dry mechanics. You tap and swipe for the 2 kinds of attacks, you hold two fingers to block, and you fill up your special attack meter by getting hit and hitting others. That is all, folks.
No epic combos to chain, no ninja-jumping (or any jumping, or any kind of movement at all) and expertly timed parrying to pwn your enemy even with only 1 hit point left, no anything. The entirety of the fun in this game comes from the roster alone, and even then seeing Lobo punch my opponent instead of the Flash gets old a lot quicker than you think.
I am a casual player, and though I appreciate the fact that you don't have to have the reflexes and speed of a Matrix Agent or the memory of Sherlock Holmes to be good, the simplistic gameplay does not lend itself well to skill and feeling awesome. Most of the mid to end gameplay revolves around using your special attacks to maximum effect, which is moronically simple. I don't exactly feel like a badass when almost all I have to do to win is press a button.
Last complaint is the fact that there is grinding to be had. I hate grinding. Grinding to level up and grinding to get money to upgrade characters (to a point where the game can be played to the end) will take months.
It's not all bad however. The graphics are some of the best I've seen for an I Pad game, and for all the technical power the game has, I can't remember it freezing even once, and the special attacks when your meter is fully charged are cool (but only the first few times), but other than the roster that's pretty much it.
At least it was free...
VideoGame Not Bad At All
I have to say I was skeptical about this title when it was first announced. Another fighting game about DC comics? Seemingly about some sort of civil war? Sounded kind of 'meh.' However when I realised Netherrealm (The guys who resurrected the corpse of the Mortal Kombat franchise) were behind it, I warmed up to the idea. And boy am I glad I did.
The story mode is entertaining and is useful for giving a crash course on various members in the 20+ character roster. Hell it's actually a decent plot too (And by fighting game standards it's bloody Shakespeare since most of those games don't have much of a plot other than 'TITS'). Concerning Superman being pushed over the limit and forced to become an extreme Knight Templar. There's plenty of shenanigans with alternate universes to boot.
The mechanics are solid, many of the characters able move fluidly and most of them feeling unique in their own ways (Though some of them have some clear MK influences. Captain Marvel is basically Raiden and Deathstroke is Stryker with a mask on.) The Super Moves are insanely satisfying to watch, and the various arenas are all pretty fun to fight in (Though some are just recoloured versions of other arenas.)
The game is fairly Batman-heavy though, with an irksome number of Batman characters and Batman-related arenas present in the game. In addition the 'Clash' mechanic in the game is pretty fucking annoying, since it makes no logical sense most of the time and is little more than a cheap way for losing characters to recover a third of their health.
All things considered the good outweighs the bad. If you're a fan of fighting games you should give this game a buy. It'll be a good way to pass the time and I imagine there'll be plenty of DLC to add lifespan to the game. And it's pretty much a must-buy for any DC comics fan.
VideoGame Good Story, Subpar Game
Let me make one thing clear right off the bat: I'm no good at fighting games. The "best" I can do is a 4+ player free-for-all in Smash Bros, and even then my losses far outweigh my wins - but at least there I still have fun and feel like I have a chance. Here, on the other hand, I don't.
The story of Injustice is pretty good for what it is, especially with the addition of the prequel comics; this is the story that taught me just how many amazing moments, positive or negative, can come from a well-established setting like the DC Universe being allowed to tell Status Quo Is God to fuck off. Shocking, permanent character deaths? Powersets changing and being shifted around? Absolutely insane battles you'd never get to see in "canon" with real consequences? It's all here and more. Honestly, this is probably the first "Superman goes evil" storyline since the original "A Better World" two-parter from the Justice League cartoon to actually do the premise, well, justice - over the course of the prequel comics, you see in painstaking detail just how rationally Superman falls from The Paragon to The Dictator, and every missed opportunity at correcting his course is heartbreaking to watch play out. The story of the game on its own is decent enough and has some interesting moments between characters meeting their alternate-universe selves, but since it takes place almost entirely in "Year Five" you miss or only get told about a lot of the crazy stuff from years 0-4.
Where this game loses me, though, is the gameplay. Don't get me wrong: even though I'm no good at them, I have nothing against traditional fighting games on principle and I greatly respect players who make high-tech gameplay look easy and smooth-flowing (like the famous Street Fighter II tournament finale). What gets my gander here is that Injustice, though a decent superhero fighting game in a vacuum, only goes halfway to actually being a good game on its own merits. Due to my lack of experience in the genre, I can only point to a general, persistent feeling of frustration in matches (all of which were A.I., since I never actually got to the point of going online before rage-quitting the damn thing) - the A.I. isn't necessarily a cheating bastard but it sure does make life miserable since, unlike you, it doesn't have to rely on a PlayStation controller's D-pad for precise direction inputs and thus never screws up attacks. I found that all the primarily close-range characters (Superman and Batman particularly) were just far, FAR outmatched by any other fighter with even a hint of range to their standard attacks; punching and kicking quite literally falls too short much of the time, and their ranged special moves are a chore to pull off properly with the aforementioned directional buttons. There's also the extra mechanic(s) of each fight lying in the super meter for each character: in addition to letting characters actually perform their super moves (and I take great umbrage over said moves being blockable after how much time and work you have to put into getting them to begin with), these meters can also be used for Clashes, which are almost always used by the opponents right as they're about to die so they can restore a good chunk of health and just prolong the fight further. I can't recall a single time it ever worked out in my favor or when it made sense to initiate a Clash instead of a beefed-up special move or my super move, so I'm confidently calling this completely unnecessary.
What specifically made me rage-quit, though, was the S.T.A.R. Labs battles, which basically have you fulfill special conditions while fighting to earn the top rank: all of 3 fights in, I was met with an AGONIZINGLY frustrating condition of "Don't get hit by Batman's projectiles" that ended up requiring pure RNG to accomplish, and 3 fights after that I was told to "Complete a 4-hit juggling combo" while not getting hit ONCE in return for 20 seconds that I couldn't pull off for the life of me, even after practicing elsewhere and watching someone else do it on You Tube. If this were purely optional and for bragging rights, I wouldn't mind, but this is for one of the TROPHIES - no wonder the completion/platinum rate is so damn low on PSN. That's when I realized that I was having anti-fun with this game and that it simply wasn't skyrocketing my blood pressure over, so I quit and am never looking back or apologizing.
Final verdict: beating up a bunch of famous DC characters is fun enough, I guess, especially when you pull off their supers, but I really would recommend just watching the cutscenes on You Tube and reading the comics elsewhere if you're as casual at fighting games as I am. This is not an entry-level part of the genre by any means, and it's certainly not well-made enough to merit toughing through either. But hey, if you're both a DC fan and an expert at traditional fighting games, have at it, I can't stop you.