I loved
Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition
. LOVED it. I've always been more of a Capcom guy, though to be honest I've never been especially good at any Capcom fighters, but Mortal Kombat 9 showed everyone how to make a modern fighting game. The story mode was worth the purchase price by itself. It was a glorious retelling of the original classic trilogy and delivered a truly epic eight hour experience. Add to that an enormous roster of characters, tons of modes, and a mountain of extras to unlock, and you had the most fully-featured, fully-realized fighting game we have ever seen. The wealth of content and level of quality was staggering. With INJUSTICE: GODS AMONG US, NetherRealm Studios has delivered a spiritual follow-up that polishes their fighting engine to perfection. The fighting in INJUSTICE is a definitive statement for the studio, real proof that this weighty, Western style of fighting game can be just as technical and hardcore as the Capcom fighters, but also more accessible than Ryu and Wolverine have ever been. No matter your skill level, no matter how much time you want to devote to leveling up your game, you will have fun playing INJUSTICE. But, there is a trade-off. When taken as a complete package, it's obvious that so much development time was devoted to refining the Unreal 3 based fighting engine that concessions were made in both the amount of content offered and the overall presentation quality of the game.
Mortal Kombat 9 is a beautiful game. The lighting is great, the character models are big and detailed, and you really feel like you get a sense of the world the MK universe takes place in. INJUSTICE is not a beautiful game. The only good-looking thing in this game is the menu, full of detailed, photo-realistic close-up shots of things like Wonder Woman's fist hitting Batman's face. The stages generally have a washed-out look. Whether it's Gotham City or Metropolis, the Justice League Watchtower or the Hall of Justice, Atlantis or Ferris Air Base, things just don't look very clear, very HD, very GOOD. Wonder Woman's stage, the docks of Themyscira, is probably the only standout, looking just as good as maybe something from God of War. The characters are actually different sizes, quelling the single biggest complaint leveled against MK9, and actually feel differently from each other as well. Instead of Sonya and Kitana being pretty much like Jax and Reptile with different moves, here Bane and Solomon Grundy feel huge, Batman and Green Arrow feel athletic and ninja-esque, Wonder Woman feels like a real warrior, Lex Luthor actually feels like he's in a mech suit, and Hawkgirl is actually smaller than the people she's supposed to be smaller than, with a floatiness that befits a character with wings. The characters generally look better than the stages, but other graphics-related issues pop up here. When the blue Sub Zero and red Sektor are fighting in front of Shao Kahn in MK9, you can see absolutely see everything clearly. Everything pops out and you know exactly where you and your opponent are at all times. In INJUSTICE, half of the cast are rendered in the same shades of gray, black, and ice blue, and they are often the same shades as the dingy, ugly stages. Try putting Doomsday and Solomon Grundy in the Fortress of Solitude. Doomsday and Grundy are practically the same colors as EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE STAGE. Heck, there's even another Doomsday in the background! The issue here isn't one of colors, but of rendering. You can make two identical shades of gray look different by shading them differently, or adding a slight white outline to the characters, or ANYTHING. INJUSTICE just doesn't pop. It simply doesn't look very good, either in your living room, on Youtube videos, or on streams when you're trying to watch top players compete against each other.
Besides the graphics, or should I say the color palette and rendering choices, the other huge knock on the presentation in this game is the music. As in, what music? I could barely hear any, even with the setting cranked up. It's fine that they chose to prioritize grunts and lasers over the score, but not to this degree. There's a beautiful, epic, orchestral soundtrack in INJUSTICE, but you wouldn't know it.
Mortal Kombat 9 had the best story mode in any fighting game ever. INJUSTICE does not. Not even close. The story mode is completed in 3 hours. It's confusing. It's full of mirror matches. In fact, it ENDS with a mirror match. It has no memorable moments, nothing you would ever need to see again. I'm an insane DC Comics fan. I know what their comics are about. They love doing alternate versions of their characters. They love stories about the heroic legacy, about how every parallel world "needs" Superman or "needs" Batman or whatever. If Marvel Comics are about a never-ending soap opera featuring characters who never stop caring about the things teenagers care about, DC Comics are about how important...DC Comics characters are. Hey, that's what we love about them. So here's a disclaimer if there ever was one. If you are solely a DC Comics fan, or you are someone who just wants to buy this game to play the story mode, DON'T. Watch
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
or
A Better World: Part 1
, read
Kingdom Come
or
JLA: Earth 2 (Jla (Justice League of America) (Graphic Novels))
, do ANYTHING ELSE except drop $40-$60 on this story. The story told in INJUSTICE is the single biggest misstep of this entire game. This story did not need to exist. It adds nothing to the DC universe and will be forgotten. If NetherRealm Studios needed a "good Justice League versus bad Justice League" story to justify the often ridiculous situations fighting game stories have to present, they really should have just done a game version of any of the stories referenced above, or the MANY others that I'm not listing. How sweet would a KINGDOM COME game have been? Think about how interesting the story and the character roster would have been. Magog would have made an AMAZING endboss. Instead, we have INJUSTICE, which as far as I can tell after clearing the story mode, is about a Batman wearing football pads getting the Earth-1 Justice Leaguers into his universe so that they can unlock a KRYPTONITE GUN to use on a totalitarian Superman. That doesn't work, two Aquamans and two Wonder Womans have some choice words about how to run their kingdoms, Green Lantern and his "evil" counterpart Yellow Lantern talk about the color spectrum, and "our" Superman has to save the day by fighting the "evil" Superman, who might have maybe killed The Joker...for MURDERING MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, INCLUDING LOIS LANE AND HIS UNBORN SON. Also, you'll know this Superman is evil because he's wearing a full-body jock strap. The alternate Batman is the figurehead of the Insurgency against Superman's Regime, except, near as I can tell, the only other important member of this "dangerous" Insurgency is...Harley Quinn.
Yes, it's really as bad as it sounds.
So, I've done alot of complaining, but you'll notice I've given the game a very good four stars, and that's because the fighting feels amazing. Initial footage had me worried because the animations looked very stiff, but in action and in your hands, the fighting is weighty, fluid, and extremely satisfying. Hits look like they hurt and hurt alot. Supers are over the top and amazing the first few times you see them. Each character controls just as you think they would, with moves that are faithful to their abilities, though it must be said that, for a roster where so many people can fly, INJUSTICE's action takes place far more on the ground. The fighting is a great mix of the weighty special moves that make Mortal Kombat great, with some air juggling, complex combo potential, and a dash of 3-D fighters with a healthy array of command normals that chain together. I love the interactables and the stage transitions because, you know what, they make the game funner to watch, and they are the closest thing to a comeback mechanic the game has. For all you Capcom snobs out there, INJUSTICE has a perfectly-implemented, "two health bar/one round" system that strongly discourages cheap comebacks. No Ultras and X-Factor shenanigans here. INJUSTICE doesn't reward you for sucking the way the modern Capcom fighters do, and that's truly commendable. If the closest thing you can get to a comeback is knocking someone down the Batcave or firing a missile, that's alright with me, because both players have access to the exact same tools instead of the losing player being rewarded with a level 3 X-Factor comeback that basically punishes me for playing well up to that point. Everything in the fighting engine of INJUSTICE is polished and well-considered for all levels of play. It's a beautiful system, and not only is it polished, but TRULY innovative in certain respects.
The trait mechanic, which seems to cribbed from Blazblue, is fantastic, adding an immediate layer of depth. I love playing as Green Arrow and having access to all my trick arrows, or switching stances as Wonder Woman and Nightwing. Sure, some seem a little superfluous, such as Cyborg's self-healing trait that you'll never be able to use in a real match, or Aquaman getting...wet for a few seconds, but the implementation of the traits is vital to the fighting system in a way that largely feels integral to strategy and character diversity. I also love the meter burn mechanic. You have EX special moves in this game, except you don't activate it until the move hits. I have no idea why no one has ever thought of this before, but it's downright brilliant. Instead of throwing out a flame hadouken just to put you in block stun, I can wait for my move to actually connect, then decide to meter burn the move for damage or a combo continuation. Like the "one round/two health bars" system, the meter burn mechanic shows that INJUSTICE truly rewards players who have a strategy and execute it well, and who know their character inside and out. I also love how kind this game is to new players. I play on a big, honking arcade stick that I modded myself, and I love that some of the buttons, like the weird button combo for super, are actually tailor-made for pad. This makes my casual friends who come over that much more comfortable, and I'm all for it.
INJUSTICE should have been a perfect game. It should have been definitively better than Mortal Kombat 9 in all respects. It's not, but if you're a fighting game diehard, you should know that it's still better in the ways that count. Next time, I hope NetherRealm Studios gets it COMPLETELY right. Give us that KINGDOM COME game with the epic story mode and great fighting system. Heck, a Justice League versus Teen Titans game sounds mighty fine to me, or why not just do a Justice League versus Secret Society/Injustice Gang game? Or the Emperor Joker storyline? Or Crisis On Infinite Earths, Final Crisis, Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night, Flashpoint, or even Battle for the Cowl?
Anybody?
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