Injustice: Gods Among Us

[Insanecyclone]

[Insanecyclone]

http://www.siliconera.com/2012/06/11...n-youd-expect/


Injustice: Gods Among Us Is More Like BlazBlue Than You’d Expect

I went into Injustice: Gods Among Us expecting that it would play like a DC-skinned Mortal Kombat, but I was pleasantly surprised that Netherrealm is stepping out of their comfort zone. Instead of two punches and two kicks, the layout was a bit more like Blazblue with light, medium, and heavy attack buttons alongside a character-specific attack button.



Because of the light-medium-heavy setup, combos are much easier to string together than in Mortal Kombat. While combos were still pretty cut-and-dried, it was nice that attacks were a bit less obtuse. Light-Light-Light and Light-Light-Medium were both pretty simple combos that every character I played had. Specials also seemed to be a bit more standardized, with down-back and down-forward and an attack button performing specials for just about everyone. As somebody who’s always found MK’s inputs to be kind of annoying, I liked that I didn’t have any trouble acclimating to Injustice.



Then of course, there is the "character trait" button. Much like Blazblue’s "Drive" attacks, each character’s "character trait" is individual and supposedly built around their fighting style from the comic books. I was intrigued by how different the button got from character to character. Wonder Woman can change between her sword/shield and lasso of truth fighting styles, Batman summons little robotic bats that circle around him, and Superman buffs his stats for a while.



Batman’s robotic bats were of particular interest to me. A single press of the B button would call three out and they’d just circle around him. Pressing down and B would cause the bats to spin quickly. Being attacked during this would cause the bats to counter the enemy and knock them into the air. After using this, the robotic bat icons near Batman’s super bar at the bottom of the screen would refill one bat at a time, so I could summon a single bat more quickly, or wait for all three to return.



I also found it helpful that pressing B normally would simply send the bats towards the enemy without sending Batman into any animation. This meant that I could start a combo in a corner, throw the bats at the enemy to keep them in the air while Batman recovered from his last animation, and continue the juggle.

The game does bring one particular element from Mortal Kombat back. Pressing both triggers simultaneously will activate your character’s super if you have a full super bar. These are as over the top and cheesy as you’d expect. Superman uppercuts his enemy into space, flying after them until he punches them back down to earth. The game also has its own take on EX attacks, but at least in the build I played they were a lot safer than what you’d generally expect, activated by pressing RT when an attack connects with your opponent. Sadly, I didn’t get a lot of time to experiment with them, but it seems like every special can be turned into an EX attack with careful timing and a portion of your super meter.



Injustice puts a lot of emphasis on its backgrounds. Hitting your opponent with heavy attacks will cause things to break and dislodge, revealing throwable items like Bat-grenades or exposing wires to uppercut your opponent into. LB is essentially your go-to button for interacting with the environment. The Netherrealm rep I was playing with pressed a button in the corner of the fortress of silence to shoot a laser at me that dragged me into the Phantom Realm before spitting me back out. Some environmental attacks were character based. For instance, Batman will smash his opponent’s face into a nearby car when Solomon Grundy would just pick up the car and smash his opponent with it.



Stages are also divided into multiple parts, but you’ll have to use a heavy attack (A) and a specific direction to punch your opponent into the next area. The NetherRealm rep used forward and A to punch me from the edge of one part of the Fortress of Solitude through the Phantom Realm, resulting in some creature biting into Wonder Woman (my character at the time)’s neck. The area transition attacks are flashy, looking like something out of a summer blockbuster, with people suffering inhuman amounts of damage before landing on the ground of the next section of the stage.



Food for Thought:

1. Unlike Mortal Kombat, the game does not have a designated block button. You simply hold back while your opponent is attacking. This is quite possibly my favorite thing about the demo I played.



2. While the studio isn’t talking about the story at all, they say that there’s a good reason that the superheroes are called villains in the trailer.

[Callisto]

The guy at our main arcade(Galloping Ghost, might recognize the 'GGA' from the guys who have been hitting a lot of MK9 top 8s recently) told me that NetherRealm has hired on some of our top MK players like 16-Bit to be testers for this, but they wouldn't give me any goods when I asked about the game lol

[Xno Kappa]

Change the button layout to light, medium, heavy, character specific...Plays like Blazblue now.

[Callisto]

shit yeah BlazBatman

[Insanecyclone]

[Aurara]

It was so legit seeing it in person, flash all the way '_'

[Lucavi]

Still feels too "Boond" with the stiffness, but who knows what can happen between now and launch.

[Xno Kappa]

They really need to stop with the "fight like they got a stick up their ass" animation style they're so fond of.

[Lucavi]

I love me some Boon (especially as a kid), but look no further than the modern Johnny Cage to see what's wrong with the animation. He Gootecks shimmies up to an opponent and then constantly performs the most homosexual form of goofy-looking snap kicks over and over. It looks so hilarious that you can't even focus on the fact that blood is pouring out of every orifice if he lands hits with it.

I don't know what the solution is for them, but they need to find it. Experiment or something, guys.

[Insanecyclone]

The problem is DC being dildos and not wanting to see their characters decapitated, mutilated, castrated, or anything like that. Why ask the same company, a gory fighting game company, to do your fighting game...again? I like that they're trying to redeem themselves after the unholy shit such as MK vs DC.

[Weltall]

This will never work unless the animations and hit detections improve drastically.

[The Blackrose]

The problem is DC being dildos and not wanting to see their characters decapitated, mutilated, castrated, or anything like that. Why ask the same company, a gory fighting game company, to do your fighting game...again? I like that they're trying to redeem themselves after the unholy shit such as MK vs DC.

Because it's cheaper when you own the company that is producing the fighting game, instead of having to contract out to a third party developer.

Yes, WB owns Netherrealm and DC.

[Insanecyclone]

Oh well that explains it. Still, it just feels wrong.

[Lucavi]

The problem is DC being dildos and not wanting to see their characters decapitated, mutilated, castrated, or anything like that. Why ask the same company, a gory fighting game company, to do your fighting game...again? I like that they're trying to redeem themselves after the unholy shit such as MK vs DC.

We all know that Comic companies are a pain in the ass to work with; I remember hearing the horror stories about Capcom trying to make MVC3 with Marvel's crazy demands, so this isn't new. The problem with stiff animations has nothing to do with comics, though; this is a pure Boon thing. Originally the games were Mocapped edited sprites, so yeah, that made sense back then, but the technology is so much better now. I'll give MK through MK3 a pass, but nothing next gen. This shit is still looking like two blocks of wood are fighting.

We don't need another VF/Tekken/DOA clone where punching resets a stiff juggling animation all night long, but MK has become too stiff for me to really get into, because I just have to start sighing and shaking my head with how stiff it looks. MK9 is an awesome game; a true flashback to the good ol' days, and they've put together a fantastic game: excellent plot, good graphics, every move that any MK fan could ask for for every character, but goddamn, its just so stiff!

[Blackice]

Aside from the stiffness of the character models, the one thing they need above all else is fucking hit confirm animations. I don't want to play another MK9 clone where block strings are more like "I hope he stops blocking soon so the rest of my combo goes through" bullshit. Also, Batman's idle stance looks absolutely retarded.

[Correction]

Netherrealm needs to stop making games that animate like Rise of the Robots.

[Blackice]

Nightwing and Cyborg.

We had a chance to play with both characters, which have very different fighting styles. Nightwing is primarily weapons-based, wielding a staff that has a extended reach for sweeping and poking attacks. He’s also noticeably nimbler than other fighters and can leap out of danger when backed into a corner.
Nightwing’s staff can be split in two by pressing the special button — B on an Xbox 360 controller — increasing his speed and jump height, but decreasing his range. Nightwing’s weapon stance change opens up a new set of attacks and special moves for the character
Cyborg’s fighting style includes a series of powerful hand-to-hand attacks complemented with long-range attacks: lasers, fireballs and missile strikes. Using the game’s mechanic of high, mid and low attacks, Cyborg can launch missiles straight into the air, shoot fireballs forward and emit energy blasts at an opponent’s feet.
Cyborg’s special — again, with the Xbox 360 controller’s B button — is a health regenerating move, ensuring that opponents must stay offensive when fighting him. His charged up super move consists of a hefty, oversized punch followed by a screen-filling energy blast a la Iron Man’s super move from Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

http://shoryuken.com/2012/07/11/nigh...among-us-cast/

[Lucavi]

Graphics look good and the ideas sound good, but then again, Boon's problem was never graphics or ideas.

[Insanecyclone]