PS3 Review: Injustice: Gods Among Us (2013)

Injustice: Gods Among Us has a really neat concept: Superman, tricked into killing Lois Lane and all of Metropolis by the Joker, goes crazy and establishes himself as a despot. That's how it seems at first, anyway. Unfortunately, things get messy pretty quick as the plot devolves into the incomprehensible clone/double/alternative universe babble all too common in superhero comics. I've never understood why the whole alternate universe idea in comic books has to be justified so literally, that is, within the narrative, but nonetheless, it gets all the good guys and bad guys to fight each other, so who cares.

Despite its disorganized storyline, however, Injustice is a fine game. Returning for a moment to the story, I can say that however much I dislike the conceit, it's told in an excellent manner, and by that I primarily mean the animation and voice-over. There's a nice balance struck between comedy and hammy drama so that things never get too cheesy or easygoing. This is buoyed by the well-written dialogue and delivery of the actors, a quality which certainly carries over from the cinematics to the gameplay. Injustice is a smooth fighting game in the vein of Mortal Kombat. Button combos require some skill to memorize and master, but they aren't so intricate that you have to frequently pause the game to remember moves. And Injustice is right about where it should be in terms of depth: not intimidating for newbies, but deep enough for the hardcore fighting fans. True, the main story mode is fairly short, but it's involving and has plenty of variety. Unlike other fighting games, where you are often locked into playing as a particular character for the duration of the quest, Injustice keeps things nimble: one minute you're playing as Batman, the next Green Arrow, the next Joker, the next Wonder Woman, the next Deathstroke. You spend just enough time with any of them to learn their attributes and moves before moving on, and more specifically you get to try out their super finishing moves, all of which are beautifully complicated and unnecessarily over-the-top. Same goes for the interactive environments. Most arenas in the game consist of multiple levels for combat, and transitioning between the upper and lower floors of the Batcave, for instance, only requires the proper positioning and timing, and it deals out a considerable amount of damage to your opponent. There's also ample opportunity to use the environment to your advantage in other ways: swinging from chandeliers, throwing cars, and so on. Once the main story is finished, though, you can take all these skills and find plenty of other things to do: besides Battles, in which you take any hero/villain in the game through a ladder of increasingly difficult adversaries, there's also a bevy of S.T.A.R. Labs missions to complicate (similar in many ways to TimeSplitters' Challenge modes), not to mention the on- and offline multiplayer options. I imagine this game is going to have some shelf life, especially for DC fans. As a result, Injustice is definitely the best fighting game I've played in a while, one worth picking up.