Game-Review: Injustice (2013) - No additional value

The Injustice franchise, or rather Injustice 2, unexpectedly surprised me a few weeks ago. You can find everything about it in the relevant review. The game captivated me with its impressive look, the in-depth story and the incomparably complex dialogue system. So while the second part was the best gaming experience in a long time, I expected the older debut to have at least a comparably satisfactory story or at least some insights into the events that are so often mentioned in the second part.

Well, unfortunately I came across granite there. I paid € 10 for the game, and it's not worth much more in my opinion. That alone should give a reasonable impression of what I think of Injustice: Gods among us.

When rating Injustice, one shouldn't forget that the game was released in 2013 of course, and also for the Playstation 3. In its time, Injustice may have been a compelling gaming experience with good graphics and a pleasant combat system, but today the title, even in Ultimate Edition and on the PS4, is hopelessly outdated and I honestly can hardly imagine a reason why you should play Injustice today.

Perhaps because of the main argument that Injustice 2 raised about the league of ordinary fighting games - the story, the well-implemented comic world, the authentically written comic characters. That could also work in the old Injustice, right? Eeeehh ...

What is HAPPENING right now?

At least I have often asked myself this question. I admit that if I hadn't already known the second part and tried to make the connections, my confusion would probably have been less. Nevertheless, Injustice’ story mode, which is STILL significantly better than that of almost all other fighting games, is ,compared to its successor, a confused wreck of approaches and events that are difficult to follow as a non-comic reader.

The magic word is beginner-friendly. Injustice 2, although it was a second part and a direct story successor in an established comic universe with largely unknown characters, was extremely accessible and easy to understand, I immediately picked up and felt well introduced into the world. I understood who stands for what, what it is about and what constitutes the conflict.

Injustice: Gods Among Us doesn't manage this balancing act and, irritatingly, doesn't even try. I'm sorry, I'm confused - I thought Injustice is a true-to-original comic adaptation, which implements the entire Injustice comic from the beginning, so that as a player I don't miss anything. And then characters in Injustice talk casually about how character X was killed by Y or characters A and B belong to Superman's evil regime without me having any idea why. Batman's son is already a traitor under Superman’s command, but WHEN DOES THAT HAPPEN? With characters like the Teen Titans, Starfire or Beastboy for example, you wonder where the hell they are - yes, Beastboy died in Metropolis, but you only LEARN THAT IN PART 2. Starfire is not mentioned at all. Why is Raven suddenly serving her demonic father?! Black Canary, who said in Part 2 that she was almost killed by Superman and then taken to another parallel world, does not appear. When would that have happened?

All of these things are not dealt with at all, as if Injustice was already a sequel in itself. It is assumed that all of these events are already well-known, probably from the comics. But I, as a person with no knowledge of the comics, sit there, drool myself and wonder what the hell is going on. And that WITH Injustice 2-context knowledge.

Just understanding the narrative gimmick at the very beginning of the story, namely our heroes changing the parallel world and the now grim regime world being the world from part 2, takes some time, simply because everything is told in such a confused and clumsy way. In addition, in the first part there is unfortunately almost no depth for any character involved. Superman is an insane, murderous maniac who just wants to knock everyone down for the sake of it, Joker is evil, Batman doesn't like Superman, the narrative bulldozer is used graciously.

With this Superman you understand much more the dislike that is collectively held against him in the second part, and STILL I asked myself - what exactly does his regime want? All we learn about Superman's world domination in Injustice: Gods Among Us is that it controls pretty much everything, that he has a few soldiers and is doing wrong. Nowhere is it mentioned that he wants to kill all criminals without exception, that he suppresses any rights or that people fear him. And we don't even want to talk about Show don't Tell, you never see in the story that his regime has any negative impact on people apart from the fact that Superman kills whoever he feels like. I owe it to the SECOND part that I KNOW what the regime stood for and what the problems were.
Apart from that, the story mode is also ridiculously short, after two hours you are through - in contrast to the successor, the fights are very clumsily integrated into the plot and you can literally hear the writer asking "Hm, there has to be a fight, how do we justify that best?" The end comes suddenly, abruptly and leaves many threads untied, which are then continued in a completely different way in the second part and do not really come together. Keyword Black Adam. Also, the fact that important characters like Raven, Hawk Girl or Sinestro do not reappear in Part 2 simply seems strange. Where are they?
All of this then logically meant that, unlike part 2, I didn't particularly like any character. For me, these are the most faceless, most insignificant stones, with which I associate absolutely nothing.
The graphics are horribly bad and aged very terribly, which is also one of the main problems with the story and its immersion. Batman looks like a disguised gas station owner, Superman is the front man of the Village People on sleep deprivation, the surroundings are lifeless and mushy, the animations are mediocre at best. The teeth of the characters are a special treat when they run into battle clashes. Morbid puppet cinema.

In terms of gameplay, there is little to say. I had no motivation to unlock interchangeable extras such as costumes, backgrounds or pieces of music. Apart from the multiplayer and story mode, there are only a few not overly exciting single player modes and thus the play value of Injustice is limited, if at all, to the story - and that one is also available on Youtube, without the annoying, lacking fights in between. The character ends are there again and a nice bonus, but they’re hardly worth defeating 10(!!) opponents per character. Youtube.

Conclusion

From a 2020 point of view, this game is unbearable. The game modes are dusty and tired, the (confused) story mode can and should be seen, just like the individual ends, on Youtube, the combat system plays much worse than in the second part, the graphics are more scary than Scarecrow's gas, the characters are cardboard displays. Eh. Better get the second part right away. Even ten bucks for the first are brave.

3 out of 10 Kryptonians for Injustice: Gods Among Us