E3 2012: Injustice: Gods Among Us (impressions)

by: John - posted: 6/7/2012 8:40:00 AM

In the last few minutes of the second day of E3, I dropped by the Injustice: Gods Among Us booth to say to a PR person who I hadn't seen in a while. Lucky for me, they had time for one more showing and since I didn't have an appointment with Warner Bros. and wanted to see the game, I hopped right in.

NetherRealms, makers of Mortal Kombat, are taking a break from that series to go and try something a little different. They're heading back to Mortal Kombat for sure, but man what they have in Injustice looks fabulous.

Now, nothing's been said about the story and the same is here with the hands-off demonstration, What was shown was just flat out hard hitting action that takes place on multiple levels.

Before getting into that, let's talk about the characters. Each one shown had their distinct style and attitude. Flash looked cocky and danced around a bit. Superman just hovered above the ground as he moved around. Solomon Grundy looked like a big lumbering giant and Batman, well, he's Batman.

Their fighting styles seemed perfect when you thought about the characters. Superman used his heat vision and power in his combos. Flash's speed came into play with his quick hits and special moves. Batman used his array of gadgets such as the grappling hook and batarangs in his combos. So NetherRealms really paid close attention in making sure that the characters would fight that showed off their specific traits.

Each character also has their own unique special move. My favorites were Flash, whereby activating his special power, would dash around the globe and deliver a power punch. Superman would punch his opponent into the atmosphere, fly up, and do an ax handle smash sending his foe down hurling back to Earth.

Now, the environments come into play in a big, big way. As you fight, the destruction gets worse and worse and things start to open up. In the Batcave, smashing apart the displays of bat suites will make accessible some grenades on the ground . Anyone can pick them up and heave them at their opponent. On the other side of the cave sits the Batmobile and someone can push a button to launch missiles from the Batmobile to his foe.

One really cool thing was that you can send your enemies hurling into other parts of the level and see a very cringe worthy animation of your enemy falling to the next part while smashing into various objects along the way. Shown was Flash being hurled to the bottom of the Batcave opening up a whole new area to play with and whole new set of environmental objects to interact with.

And different characters can react to different objects in different ways. In a demo of the Future City level, a car sat to the far left of the screen. Batman would send batarangs to it causing it to explode and hurt his enemy. Solomon Grundy, being a big strong zombie, would just pick up the car and smash it into Batman.

There are so many other little things the environment provides that it really makes the fight strategy on choosing both a character and stage important.

Injustice: Gods Among Us looks just insane and what NetherRealm has done with the fighting genre seems to have taken it a step up with how they are incorporating environments as an important part of the brawl. I'd love to hear more about why the heroes are doing what they are doing , but for now color me mighty impressed with how NetherRealm has taken the DC license and looks to have produced a very fun fighting game for next year.