Injustice 2
  


 
  

REVIEW Following the footsteps of many successful superhero-themed fighting games of the past, Injustice 2 is a vehicle to re-establish the legitimacy of iconic DC characters - who may or may not have seen their best days in recent times (considering some low TomatoMeter scores). A video game like Injustice 2 serves as the perfect platform to not only re-establish Batman and Superman as two of your most popular superheroes, but introduce lesser-known DC characters who haven't appeared in a major production in a very long time (if ever). Running on this formula alone, Injustice 2 already has undivided mainstream attention - whether or not they even care about fighting games. However, as a reviewer of fighting games specifically... I'm here to write a review of Injustice 2 as a fighting game.


Obviously, one of Injustice 2's main selling points is that it is a fan service game. NetherRealm Studios took every opportunity to cater to the DC fanbase. Injustice 2's nostalgic roster of DC icons is wrapped up into a cinematic in-game storyline where heroes and villains will inevitably cross paths, in some cases, for the first time ever in video game history. In epic fashion, the engaging cinematics offer something that most other fighting games don't even bother with. Along with the 5 or 6-hour story mode, there are 13,000+ lines of dialogue and 6,000+ intros / character interactions. Furthermore, Injustice 2's "Gear" customization system pushes its own kind of fan-service, featuring countless nods to classic costumes and colors that old school DC fans can fully appreciate. There are even a few alternate "Premier" DLC character skins that have their own unique voice actors. 


DC fans and "ultra-casual" fighting game fans will likely be impressed just watching the cinematic intros, super moves, and story mode. They may even claim Injustice 2 is the "best fighting game of 2017," just before they silently quit playing it 2 months from now. To the casual fighting game audience, NetherRealm studios very successfully delivered a product that anyone can pick up, enjoy, and happily put down in a few months (until the next $20 DLC fighter pack arrives?). With an advertising onslaught only the likes of Warner Bros could make possible, Injustice 2's mainstream appeal and immediately recognizable cast will no doubt sell copies. NetherRealm and WB definitely know how to market a game, that's for damn sure. They're so good at marketing, in fact, that it hardly matters to the mainstream gaming audience whether or not Injustice 2 is actually a good "fighting game". On that note, let's get this fighting game review started... shall we?

 

Injustice 2 character selection screen.

 

The sequel to Gods Among Us retains most of the features of the original: destructible environments, stage transitions, cinematic super move sequences, and meter management... lots of meter management. Returning fighters retain many of their previous animations, special moves, and combos, most which have been retooled and rebalanced. Injustice's Clash system also returns, with players "wagering" super meter to restore health or inflict damage.
New mechanics such as Evasive Rolls, Air Recoveries, faster walking speeds, and blockable environmental attacks clean up the gameplay system a tad. In short, Injustice 2's gameplay is a subtle improvement over the prequel's, but it still feels very similar to the first game. Conveniently, the game starts you off with a Tutorial mode to get new players acquainted with the mechanics. Individual character missions also provide a small sample of what each character is capable of.



In Injustice 2's gameplay, many long-established fighting game fundamentals, both visually and technically, are put in a very different order of importance.
These "differences in fundamentals" will either be immediately unappealing or be refreshing, depending on your taste and experience with fighting games. Let's be real... Injustice 2 is heavy on Mortal Kombat-style "
Dial-A-Combos" and projectile spamming. Yes, Injustice is still zoning hell... and players are heavily awarded for partaking. Literally, players are rewarded meter for throwing "as much shit as possible" at the opponent (and gain zero meter for defending). And if you're not zoning your opponent to a frustrating death, you're mashing out hard-to-read strings for easy 50/50 mix-ups.


Speaking of which, memorizing attack chains (especially when learning multiple characters at once) is more laborious than in other fighting games - due to the fact that most of these chains have no rhyme or rhythm. They don't correlate to a fighter's limbs, and they almost seem completely random. I do remember in the 1990's when Mortal Kombat button layouts actually did correlate to a fighter's limbs. (Street Fighter and TEKKEN still do it. Why the change, NetherRealm?) Instead, Injustice 2 simply has Light, Medium and Heavy Attacks, along with a Special Power button (basically a "do-something-cool" button). There's also specific buttons for Throw, Meter Burn, Interact (for environmental moves), and Flip Stance - because every character in the game miraculously happens to be perfectly ambidextrous (another quirk I'm not a fan of).


When super meters first arrived in fighting games in the early 90's, they were an "accessory"... an extra element which can be used to turn the tide in a match (and in most fighting games today, this is still the case). However, meter management plays a much more crucial role in Injustice 2, almost taking priority over fighting fundamentals. Of course, meter can be used for EX specials will extend combos (and are usually the best option strategically). Lazier players can save meter for one big super move. And on that note, Injustice 2 super moves are almost as lengthy as a Final Fantasy summon from the PS1 era (I'm looking for the "skip" button and can't find it). The cinematic super moves are impressive the first few times, but get old and repetitive - especially since many supers take characters completely out of the stage they're fighting on. Lastly, meter is used to "wager" during clashes which can result in a health boost for the player who wagers more. 


Back to the subject of "zoning"... many
of the best 2D fighting games of all time were very successful in implementing zoning. The Marvel VS Capcom series took the idea of zoning to the extreme. The reason why MVC games are known for fun zoning mechanics are partly due to the vast amount of "space" your character is able to move around in. MVC characters also have super jumps, flight, and air dashes, providing tons of movement options for dealing with projectile spam. Injustice 2 characters rely on using background elements to move around, and some characters have limited flight options. However, the action still feels very condensed - as most action takes place on the ground. Considering the insane zoning options many characters have, things can get claustrophobic and frustrating... fast. I think Injustice 2 would benefit from more movement options (such as super jumps) and larger stage environments (vertically). It would also make more sense for a superhero game... since most superheroes I know usually take to the air at some point during their epic battles.

All these silly numbers and stats in a fighting game? Ridiculous.

 

Injustice 2
does some things right in terms of gameplay. Like in MK9 and MKX, there are some pretty fun combo possibilities. The core combo system isn't half bad. There are even some Street Fighter-esk cross-up combos from the air. Due to the jumping speed, performing cross-ups in Injustice 2 definitely feels weird and requires unnatural timing (another reminder of how very different Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are). I've always been a "Street Fighter guy" before being a "Mortal Kombat guy," so you might say this is a matter of taste.


NetherRealm's "reboot" back into 2D fighting games started back in 2011 with MK9. They have stuck with the same formula over the past 6 years, offering slight variations for each new game. One of the main draws of Injustice 2's gameplay is still the background interaction and how much it effects gameplay. While background interaction in gameplay is still pretty innovative (relative to the time span of fighting game history), Injustice 2's core fighting mechanics are streamlined to reward the cheapest of tactics. Injustice 2 seems to cater to a certain "old" way of thinking for designing fighting game gameplay engines. The gist I get from the way Injustice 2 character movesets are designed is that the designers "want me to find" the cheapest moves and spam the hell out of them. And judging from tournament-level gameplay, relying heavily on zoning and spamming clearly does work... very well in fact.


In Injustice 2, projectiles don't "nullify" one another. Perhaps it doesn't make sense "in the lore" for bullets to have any effect on magical eye lasers, but this creates an ultra-spammy atmosphere for a fighting game characters stuck on the ground. 
Dashing and back-dashing also feels awkwardly sluggish. Injustice 2 literally punishes you for back-dashing by making it so slow. On the other hand, certain characters have stupidly fast forward dashing. (It doesn't even make sense for a character, like Joker, to basically have a teleport as a forward dash.) Animation-wise, it also looks weird and unnatural.


I also dislike the idea of having to "wager" super meter to "prevent my opponent from gaining a health boost". Wagering isn't fighting... and
I don't even "wager" this much when I spend a week in Vegas. Players can also "spend" 2 bars of meter to get out of an air combo.
As the giant Injustice 2 billboard read at GameStop, "Your battles, your way". Who needs to learn how to cook (or play fighting games)? Just order fast food... "Your burger, your way". You almost gotta hand it to Warner Bros with that brilliant subliminal advertising to lazy gamers.

 

More Batman versus Superman... because nobody ever really wins.

 

Did we just segue into the animation paragraph? Yes we did. I'll start with the positives. Most special move "effects" in Injustice 2 are done very well. For example, Braniac's tentacle arms are expertly animated and definitely look "next-gen" for a fighting game (too bad Braniac himself moves like a old man mixed with an orangutan, but we'll get to that later). Other projectiles have impressive lighting effects, even though many appear very small onscreen and are hard-to-see. While most throw-attacks have decent animations and ouch factor, in typical Mortal Kombat-style fashion, many punches and kicks are nothing more than characters "flailing their arms about". If it's really up to the DC heroes to "save the world," we're screwed, because most of them have no clue how to throw a proper punch or kick (see featured video above). Nearly all characters appear off-balanced as they "reach past their center of gravity" while punching. Furthermore, characters still awkwardly "face their opponent horizontally" like they're stuck in a 1990's Mortal Kombat game. They also don't bend their knees when they jump, and cape physics are as stiff as in the first game.


NetherRealm also struggles with (or pays no mind to) getting their characters to hit "cool poses" during special moves. You know, memorable poses... like Ryu's Hadoken, Terry Bogard's Buster Wolf, or Scorpion's Spear Throw. When I think cool poses, I think Capcom and SNK sprite artwork from the mid 90's (or for an example of even more extravagant/exaggerated poses, Guilty Gear or JoJo's Bizarre Adventure). One of the main visual flaws of Injustice 2 as a fighting game is that characters end up repeating stupid-looking and laughable motions when spamming their special moves. For one example, Superman looks "happy to be constipated" every time he shoots his eye laser. Captain Cold can't even shoot a gun right. It looks terrible, and you better get used to seeing these animations since most projectiles are spammed around 35 times in an average match.
 

Injustice 2
does some things right with the animation, but ironically, the best animations in the game have nothing to do with actual fighting. If you've seen the trailers and the story cinematics, Injustice 2 cleearly raises the bar for character facial animations in fighting games. Indeed, Injustice 2 characters are really really good at talking. Injustice 2 takes every opportunity to get characters yapping in front of the camera. Destructible background environments and interactions (such as objects on the floor and walls) also have impressive animation. All those amazing talking & background animations, but they couldn't get "basic walking animations" to look right. Examples: Robin's laughable "waddling" forward, Catwoman's "constipated" walking forward, and Darkseid's especially cheery "jumping with his hands behind his back". Who thought that was a good idea? Some of the support characters like Poison Ivy's plant-monsters and Enchantress's zombies also animate like bad animatronics from 2001. Even in the way most characters jump, it appears they have a "stick up their ass" controlling them.


Another major visual flaw of Injustice 2 (returning from the first game) is that characters appear tiny on screen. Most Injustice 2 characters don't take up much space on screen, causing them to almost resemble stick figures. Even Injustice 2's "biggest, beefiest" characters hardly fill even half of the screen vertically. They're stature isn't visually appealing, making them not have much "screen presence" by default (when the screen isn't zoomed in during cinematics). Not only is this a visual flaw for a fighting game, this also effects gameplay negatively - as it's challenging to see characters' tiny limbs (as they throw their yellow-belt-level punches & kicks). To compare, the size of SFV's and GGXrd's characters dwarf Injustice 2's characters. Furthermore, a typical Injustice 2 character is about the size of one TEKKEN 7 character's leg.  The camera motion during gameplay is also jarring at times. Another eyesore... super moves and stage interactions run at 30fps, which is just gross for a fighting game. While Injustice 2's graphics take their moments to shine (usually close-ups on faces), the core graphics engine and the way certain animations and scenes are handled is not appealing. In closing, the type of visual effects that I love most in fighting games are either non-existent or done poorly in Injustice 2

 

NRS's effort in their 5-hour cinematic story mode doesn't go unnoticed.

 

Injustice 2
comes at a time where superhero movies oversaturate the box office to the point where I don't pay to see them in theaters regularly anymore (which saves me almost hundreds of dollars a year to spend on better things, like food). Anyway, let's talk about Injustice 2's ultra hyped-up story mode, which carries itself like a stand-alone movie. Before we get started... Spoiler Alert: The good guys win. This is partly the reason my interest in superhero movies has diminished over the years. What's the point? There's never any surprise, and the good guys have to win in under 3 hours, making the iconi
c villains seem pathetic and not much of a threat. Sorry, but I enjoy a production with good writing, where villains get their fair shot. (Examples: Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad.)


I guess it's easy to say Injustice 2's story mode is "good" by video game standards. Obviously, the bulk of Injustice 2's production value was put into the story cinematics. Judging how the story was written and paced, I would speculate Ed Boon and company watch a lot of mainstream TV and bad Hollywood movies, because they certainly captured that unmistakable "Hollywood vibe" in Injustice 2's story. Maybe I'm the wrong person to review Injustice 2's story mode... because I really can't stand clichés and redundant events that happen in every typical superhero / action movie these days.


Parts of Injustice 2's story mode were enjoyable. Times where you get to "make a decision" and choose between characters was cool. But just like MKX's story mode, there was no shortage of tired clichés. Let's see.... "Life saved in the nick of time" clichés, "okay now we're tip-toeing and sneaking around" clichés, "villains revealing their master plans to everyone" clichés, and so on. Seriously, Green Arrow and Black Canary encounter the main villain, Braniac, early in the story. And what does the main villain do? Well, Mr. Brain-fart decides to reveal his major world-conquering plans to the good guys, in elaborate detail. That's the most generic superhero cliché of all time... and they took themselves seriously. If "Braniac" actually lived up to his name, he wouldn't have done the the dumbest possible thing any main villain could ever do. So, like you read in the mainstream reviews, Injustice 2 has a "good story mode?"... Perhaps, if you're easily entertained, or 5 years old. In fairness, if you can look past these things or you're a major DC fan, you'll definitely enjoy playing through story mode with all of DC's main heroes and heroines. One thing they got right is the character variety... pretty much everyone shows up in story mode.


Injustice 2's
story mode is at least visually impressive. Costume and skin textures look particularly great up close. Facial expressions and dialogue animations are the star of the show. Ironically, some characters almost make too many facial expressions - almost to the point of being unrealistic. Because most normal humans don't actually move their face muscles that much when they talk. Did Supergirl's parents not tell her her face will stay like that if she doesn't stop making all those funny faces? She's gonna have bad wrinkles when she gets older. Even with the high production value, Injustice 2's story mode has some surprising visual flaws. There's some pretty bad aliasing seen in the environments. Also, the aspect ratio of story mode didn't fill my TV screen - with cinema-style black bars at the top and bottom (note that the game was running on PS4 Pro with a 4K TV). That's actually disappointing the action had to be so shrunk down, and for the record, this isn't a problem I've experienced with story modes in other games. Also, the crispness of the character models and the animations create a very odd "jittery" effect throughout the entirety of story mode (or as Ed Boon would say on Twitter... it's "jittery AF"). Lastly, the frame rate constantly drops throughout story mode (but some of the story pacing is as choppy as the frame rate, so it kinda works. Jk).


The entire game also suffers from a painfully generic score and sound design. Again, sounding like something from a "cut & paste" annually-releasing Hollywood movie series that needs to stop milking itself. Like I said earlier, they captured the vibe perfectly. If you like that sort of thing, I guess you'll be impressed. In all honesty, I was actually "more entertained" by other, more unorthodox story modes in recent fighting games (example: SFV's, GGXrd's and TEKKEN 7's) - even though their production value wasn't nearly as high as Warner Bros with Injustice 2. In fairness, Injustice 2's story does seem pretty great movie when put up against blasphemies like Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Suicide Squad (2016). If you think I'm being hard on Injustice 2, you definitely wouldn't want to read my reviews of those "JustAss" DC movies I just mentioned (or maybe you would).

Shaders..... LVL... STR... DEF... ABL... HP....... is this... Destiny

 

Let's wrap up this review by talking about Injustice 2's Loot / Gear system and the Multiverse mode. While playing through various modes, players earn Loot Boxes containing random costume items and shaders for characters. The items are then collected in a congested menu, with way too many numbers and stats, and there are even costume "Loadouts" - a term more suited for an FPS or RTS. If you play for a few hours straight (such as playing through story), you'll end up unlocking a lot. And when you return to the main menu... the game suddenly goes into "full seizure" mode. The Loot Box opening animation is an eyesore, and you have to hold a button down for several seconds to unlock each one. In short, I didn't find opening Loot Boxes fun or satisfying, and the collection of junk you acquire just seems overly complicated and annoying.


Your character / experience also has to be a "certain level" to equip certain gear, which can be frustrating if you're not planning on spending 20+ hours with the game and just want to customize characters. On the bright side, there are some cool throwback costumes possible (if you put the time in to collect all the parts), and many of the gear designs themselves are quite cool-looking. The customization can definitely add replayability; but it's a shame the way its organized makes it a total clusterf*ck. In short... way too many menus, sub-menus, numbers, and random other useless crap. Also, since characters appear so "tiny" onscreen most of the time, costume details and customizations are hardly noticeable in actual gameplay. Customizations can only be fully appreciated up close during clash scenes, win poses, and some supers (which might be enough for some people). But if you ask me, details during actual gameplay matter more. Some Gear also has an effect on gameplay, adding power-ups or new techniques. Thankfully, these buffs can be enabled or disabled in online matches.


Finally, Multiverse is similar to the Living Towers mode from MKX. In Multiverse, players choose from different versions of Earth from alternate dimensions and storylines. Each Earth has its own opponents, challenges, difficulty, and rewards upon completion - and some of them
are only present for a limited time, which motivates players to participate while they last. There are also some random "moddifiers" and gameplay gimmicks that happen randomly on certain missions, adding some "just for fun" variety to the 1-player experience. Last but not least, there are also Guilds, and Guild-specific Multiverses - adding a social element to hunting down loot and experience. For online, the basic features and NRS's staple modes like "King of the Hill" lobbies return. The netcode is fairly decent as well.

Page Updated: August 7th, 2023
Developer(s): NetherRealm Studios
Publisher(s): Warner Bros. Interactive
Developer(s): Ed Boon                      Director
Adam Urbano          Producer
Platform(s): PlayStation 4,  Xbox One, PC
Release Date(s): May 16th, 2017         PS4 / XB1
May 17th, 2017         PS4 / XB1
May 19th, 2017          PS4 / XB1
Nov. 14th, 2017       PC
Characters Batman, Superman, Aquaman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, Bane, Catwoman, Cheetah, Supergirl, Poison Ivy, Gorilla Grodd, Atrocitus, Blue Beetle, Deadshot, Robin, Braniac, Black Canary, Swamp Thing, Cyborg, Darkseid, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Black Adam, The Joker, Doctor Fate, Firestorm, Scarecrow, Captain Cold, Red Hood, Starfire, Sub-Zero, Raiden, Black Manta, Hellboy, The Atom, Enchantress, TMNT

Featured Video:

Related Games: Injustice: Gods Among Us, Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe, Justice League: Task Force, Mortal Kombat 11, Mortal Kombat X, Mortal Kombat 9, Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Killer Instinct (2019), BlazBlue: Central Fiction, Street Fighter V, KOF XIV, Guilty Gear Xrd REV2, Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite, Fighting EX Layer, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Tekken 7
   

Gameplay Engine  6.0 / 10
Story / Theme  8.0 / 10
Overall Graphics  8.0 / 10
Animation  6.0 / 10
Music / Sound Effects  5.0 / 10
Innovation  6.5 / 10
Art Direction  6.0 / 10
Customization  8.5 / 10
Options / Extras  7.5 / 10
Intro / Presentation  9.0 / 10
Replayability / Fun  5.0 / 10
"Ouch" Factor  6.0 / 10
Characters  8.0 / 10
BOTTOM LINE

7.5 / 10

 Review based on PS4 Pro version  

 

Final Words: Injustice 2 is more than a decent superhero game... the character roster alone is a pure DC fan-service, and obviously, any fan of DCU will thoroughly enjoy it. This fact, however, does not automatically translate to Injustice 2 being a good fighting game. In my opinion, Injustice 2 is fundamentally a sloppy fighting game. There are some cool visuals to take in, but the best visuals of the game have nothing to do with actual fighting. Visual elements and gameplay nuances that I appreciate most in fighting games seem under-prioritized or overlooked in Injustice 2, while things I could care less about are over-blown and pushed in front of the camera.

You can tell when a game is designed by people who really really like to watch movies. I'm convinced Injustice 2 was designed to be watched more-so than it was designed to be played. It's a cookie-cutter fighting game by today's standards, utilizing the now-typical "formula" set by Street Fighter IV in 2009...  where every character has 1 repetitive super move, 1 win pose, and a standard variety of specials and EX moves. In fairness, NetherRealm did a decent job with character movesets and playstyles - and characters are perhaps a bit deeper than your typical SF4/SFV character. However (and a big however)... So many characters are blatantly designed to just be annoying. If you plan on playing Injustice 2 competitively, you're going to have a stressful ride dealing with spamming, zoning, and meter gimmicks. To me, learning how to defend against zoning and spamming in such condensed environments does not seem fun, and winning by such cheap tactics would never satisfy me either. Simply put, I prefer more honest fighting games.

For gamers who don't normally play fighting games, Injustice 2 may seem like a huge achievement - at a glance. For example: Casual folk at comic conventions (who are typically "proud" of their ability to mash buttons in fighting games, and want characters to do cool things without any skill involved), will probably love Injustice 2. "Best Fighting Game of 2017"... they will say. That's not to say Injustice 2 does not require any skill. It's just that the "type of skills" one would build to become a good Injustice 2 player will likely not translate to any other fighting games. On the flipside, skills players build in other (more technically sound) fighting games will translate nicely to Injustice 2... catch my drift?

Injustice 2 strikes me as 2017's "Welcome to Fighting Games" starter pack for lazy gamers. Some of the gameplay systems seem shamelessly catered to the "complainer types" of video game players: *whines* I wanna break out of a combo in the air... *whines* I want a health boost with my unused meter when I'm losing... *whines* I just wanna spam projectiles and win sometimes. (I can go on, but you get the gist.)

Curiously, Injustice 2 doesn't even seem "built" like a fighting game at its core. The menus and general terminology are more fitted to an FPS or Dungeon Crawler. Actual common terms in Injustice 2: Strength. Defense. Health Points. Performance Points. AI Attributes. Profile XP. Match Rewards. Credits. Loot Boxes. Mother Boxes. Gear. LOADOUTS... Are. You. Kidding? Can you say clusterf*ck? This is over-the-top, over-complicated fluff. Way too many stats & numbers for a fighting game, much less any kind of video game. Couldn't NetherRealm just do a decent customization mode without having spam Loot Boxes and Stats Requirements? Were they playing too much Overwatch at NetherRealm Studios (during the time they were supposedly designing Injustice 2's gameplay engine)? Also, how does Overwatch, a competitive FPS, have far less BS/stats/numbers than Injustice 2?

I give credit to NRS and WB for knowing how to promote a game (they've done far better at it than other fighting game developers in recent times), but a few things about Injustice 2's advertising rubs me the wrong way. I miss the days when expertly-drawn character artwork was used to advertised fighting games. Instead of any trace of hand-drawn artwork to promote Injustice 2, a $99 Ultimate Edition (with 9 DLC characters) was announced mere days after the game's announcement. Sadly, many gaming companies blatantly use DLC to "advertise" games these days... and just like NRS took heavy cues from other mainstream games for Injustice 2's menu design and in-game terminology, they've done the same thing with advertising. The mass marketing is real. And I can't say I respect such a practice...

Also, thanks to the Warner Bros.' advertising machine, and NRS/WB pushing $10,000+ into tournaments in the first month of the game being out, players (seemingly) have every reason to play Injustice 2 competitively. NetherRealm and WB have built a trusty schedule/formula... and you almost have to respect them for it. But like other NRS fighters, Injustice 2 doesn't seem built to last long-term. A popular pro player once said, the problem he sees with NRS fighting games is that they "seem built on day 1 to be patched in the future." He's right. NetherRealm will patch the hell out of Injustice 2, so why learn the game on day 1? It's yet another reason why I never invested much time into playing NRS fighting games seriously. (Fun Fact: Most of my all time favorite fighting games had the exact same balance and gameplay on day 1 as they did on day 3001, and they're still fun to this day.)

For me, one thing I've always loved about fighting games are the cool things you can make happen as a player. Things that not everyone can do with ease. Unintended combos, fancy stance transitions, hidden moves, etc. Some fighting games these days tend to make cool things happen for you, for everyone. Most of the time, Injustice 2 makes things happen for the player, not the other way around. Injustice 2 might be fun to play casually, I can admit that. However, watching the game as a spectator... Injustice 2 just looks sloppy. It never fails to resemble "little stick figures throwing random shit at each other" most of the time.

Casually, Injustice 2 isn't a terrible game. It's that game you can show to your Great Uncle Lewis who hasn't played a video game since his Atari days in college. He will be impressed by all the "next-gen" fluff; he'll cackle at Superman punching people into the sky and Batman shooting down opponents with the Bat-plane, but he'll probably forget it all when he leaves for work in the morning because he has to load bodies onto a train (there's still plenty of stuff you don't know about him). You might think I went off on a tangent there, but I'm trying to entertain myself... because Injustice 2 seriously bores me as a fighting game. [UPDATE: July 2018] Looks like I'm not the only one who found Injustice 2 boring, as the player-base dropped dramatically in early-mid 2018, with the game "limping" into EVO '18 with the lowest player numbers of all the main games. As cool kids in the FGC say: "Dead game". Looks like mass marketing, name brand superheroes, and mainstream Video Game Awards show nominations don't actually make a good fighting game... Gameplay Engines do. 

It's no secret that I'm more of a Marvel fan than a DC fan. However, if Injustice 2 actually featured Marvel characters instead, I would be making the same exact criticisms. If you still think I'm being biased (because you obviously haven't read or absorbed any part of this review), you should also skim through my review of MVC: Infinite. Maybe it's time for the superheroes to take a break from over-saturating anything and everything these days.

Even though I expect more gameplay depth out of a fighting game in this era, I've come to terms with the fact that some gamers these days actually prefer things "simplified". Injustice 2 actually streamlines this idea fairly well. No, really, they did a good job in that aspect. Following the tradition of the past few NRS fighters, Injustice 2 does innovate in the way of accessibility and presentation. But once
newness of the cinematics wear off, and you've watched the same repetitive super moves 200 times... what are you left with? I think you're left with a mediocre, over-hyped fighting game.

~TFG Webmaster | @Fighters_Gen
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
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