2017 is a good year for fighting games- a genre that has been pretty niche over the years due to its steep learning curve. With the rise of the competitive scene and esports, the genre is seeing another wave of revival with a plethora of games coming this year. However, one big question still lingers: how can a fighting game attract the casual crowd without sacrificing its appeal to the competitive players?
NetherRealm Studios certainly know the answer to that. They are one of the developers that remains ahead when it comes to providing good content in fighting games.
Injustice 2 continues that pedigree, by bringing in loot boxes and gear into a fighting game based on the DC universe. Despite some worry that the addition will muddle the competitive aspects, NetherRealm understands their audience and provided the best of both worlds.
Graphics & Sound
It was a surprise to learn that Injustice 2 is still using Unreal Engine 3 because at first glance, the graphics looked better than expected. Stilted images and murky background during its early reveals are now gone, with a pretty good lighting system making the characters all pop out of the otherwise gritty background.
While I was not a fan of the more realistic design of the world and characters at first, it certainly grew on me. Injustice 2 has some of the most phenomenal facial details and animation work- which really works really well with its art style. You can see blemishes and wrinkles of each of the cast. The animation work for the cut-scenes as well as during fights look really well done.
However, you could see where some parts where they have to cut corners in the graphics department, some blurry textures and particles can be seen if you snap a screenshot at the wrong time, but everything looks great in motion.
During gameplay, Injustice 2 runs at a consistent 60 fps, but will drop to 30 during cinematics (character intros and outros, super move animations, etc.) as well as in the menus. It’s normal for console games to do this, but seeing the jump from 30 to 60 and back to 30 again can be a bit jarring, especially during Story Mode.
I also can’t sing the same praises for the sound however. I find the use of the orchestral heavy soundtrack uninspiring and forgettable. While tying the announcer to the Brother Eye AI is a good dedication to the source material, that also means we have an intentionally plain announcer. I get that it’s not going for the hype-inducing presentation other fighting games are doing by design, but it I find less enjoyable.
On the plus side, hitting someone feel and sounds powerful and certainly satisfying to hear. Character banter during the start of the fight, as well as their voices in general, are all well delivered. Props for having it all uniquely written for each character combination, including mirror matches.
Gameplay
Injustice 2 is a four button fighter- light, medium and heavy attacks plus a character trait makes up the face buttons. It uses simplified motions which does not require diagonal inputs to make special moves easier to pull off (though you can have it detect normal fighting game motions as an option). It plays mostly similar to most 2D fighters like Street Fighter but with an emphasis on meter management and use of stage environments.
There’s meter burns to enhance special moves, similar to EX moves in other fighting games. You gain these meters really fast, and new to Injustice 2 are meter burn rolls to close in or move out on the ground faster and an air roll- each uses requires one meter burn. The clash mechanic returns, allowing both players spend meter with the biggest wager can inflict damage or restore some health. Useful to stage a late comeback and wrestle back momentum of the fight- or just play mind games with your opponent.
In all the stages there are interactables that can be used depending what kind of character you are, which includes throwing a giant hanging alligator, kicking your opponent to a statue in the background (and see it getting damaged) and elaborate stage transitions. I feel that the unique environment based mechanic still doesn’t mesh well with the other mechanics, but it’s a spectacle to see one happening.
Each character has one super move that spends all four meters and delivered in a cinematic fashion. Take it as Mortal Kombat’s Fatalities, without the gruesome violence- just a lot of beating (and maybe some blood splashes and some bone-breaking sounds). Some of the supers can be a bit dragging and underwhelming, though some can be more ludicrous. It does have a hidden gameplay mechanic- press the buttons in time of each impact to increase damage (or decrease it, if you are on the receiving end). Not all of them are that great in my opinion, but they are well animated and presented.
The gameplay is pretty solid. Pulling of combos feel great and there are tons of options for each of the 38 characters (39 including Darkseid, the pre-order bonus character) in the initial roster. Some characters have pretty powerful zoning options (Deadshot’s bullets can keep you really, really far) but then there are characters that have specials that works regardless of range (Supergirl’s teleport uppercut, Aquaman’s tentacles and Poison Ivy’s tendrils to name a few).
It’s easy to get into, but requires time until you really can get good and utilise all the mechanics to play it at a high level. Which is what a fighting game in 2017 should do- bring in more new players while keeping the old guard of fans happy.
One nitpick would be the quality of tutorials. The opening tutorial is serviceable, so is the character specific ones which details a few of the good tools- special moves and combos- and hints on how to use them. It serves as a decent introduction but won’t help you understand the characters in full.
However, the bountiful options provided in practice mode makes up for it, with tons of tools to help you understand the characters better, including built-in frame data info. As long as you know what you are doing, that is.
The biggest new addition to Injustice 2 is of course, the loot and gear system. You can now mix and match your own costume for the characters by earning loot, either randomly dropped after a match or by opening loot boxes (Mother Boxes as it’s called in-game, again, tying it to source material).
At first it may seem daunting and convoluted- there’s five level of loot boxes, and another five only gained by doing Guild objectives. But it has all the features to make the gear system fair.
You have four different currencies- credits and guild credits can be used for to buy more loot boxes (of the first three rarities), regen token lets you reroll the stats of gear and match it to your character’s current level and source tokens lets you buy cosmetics- shaders (colours), premium skins, or transform a gear of a certain look to have the stats of another. Source tokens are the only ones available to buy with micro-transactions and as mentioned, purely for cosmetics.
In practice the loot boxes are impressively generous. Each tier gives more gear per opening, from 2 to 6 items but any of the three rarity can pop up in any of the boxes. You can also gain a new ability and a shader from these boxes instead of gear, but you’ll also gain currency and hero card customisation- which do not take a slot from the boxes thankfully. There’s no exact duplicates, and the abundance of loot boxes and currency gain did not make me feel cheated if the loot box was a dud.
I managed to open over 270 of them in 15 hours of playtime with over 100 of epic level gear collected (and a lot of currency- see the above screenshot). Plus all the dud gear can either be sold off for more credits or used to enter certain Multiverse events.
As for the netcode for online play, it’s decent. While Mortal Kombat X had a poor one at launch (a later update did bring it up to par), Injustice 2 having it all sorted on launch is nice to see. Despite some lag spikes in the matches I played, up to 600ms even, the game kept up and still feels okay to play. There’s public and private lobbies, ranked matches (which disables all gear stats and extra abilities) and normal matches (with options to opt-out of using gear stats). It’s serviceable, though one issue I have is you’re stuck staring at the screen when in matchmaking. It can take a minute or two to find a match at the time of writing. An option to at least browse other menus would have been nice.
Content & Longevity
Injustice 2 has boatloads of content. The Story Mode remains to be a spectacle of great cinematics and justified fights. It’s still unfortunate you don’t get to play as all the characters, but the addition of branching paths help get more of them being playable. The ever-changing Multiverse, similar to Mortal Kombat’s challenge towers, will always give you something new to do each time you logged in, and also a good way to implement squeeze in limited time events (like the Wonder Woman movie promo). If you’re pinning for a more traditional single-player mode,an Arcade Mode (the Battle Simulator), a Survival mode and an Endless Fight mode are available in the Multiverse at any time.
You can also form Guilds and participate in co-op multiverse events, which culminates in beating a boss character that has a huge health pool. Only by working together and slowly chipping the health will net you victory- and tons of loot.
The 38+1 character roster is pretty diverse. A lot of the cast are either new or swapped from similar characters from the first game. Some may seem a bit obscure, but they all stand out with their own unique look and gameplay style. All the gear you collect have a ton of variety- from just slight variation of armour pieces to completely different hats. There’s 12 stages currently- eight of them having transitions which adds up to 20 unique stages.
As always, the cast is still expanding via DLC with Red Hood, Starfire and Mortal Kombat’s Sub-Zero set to join in a few months, with more still coming. For those who wanted all the content offered you will have to fork out more than the RM239 Standard Edition, but what you get here is still worth the price.
I enjoyed booting up Injustice 2 once in a while. Either it’s just for a quick few matches or just letting the AI do its thing and grind levels for me like an idle game, there’s always something to do after finishing the story. And the loot boxes drops ever so often kept me playing longer than I would have without it.
Verdict – Injustice 2
NetherRealm Studios remains at the forefront when it comes to making content-loaded fighting games. The cinematic story mode remains one of the best of its genre and the introduction of loot and gear does not detract anything for the competitive crowd, it only adds more flavour for casual fans. The Multiverse will keep serving up new content and challenges and the online multiplayer works fine.
Injustice 2 makes the right steps to accommodate both casual and competitive players. It has competitive legs and requires some learning to get good, but for casual fans who just wants to play alone or with friends locally, there is enough content to keep you busy for hours on end.
Injustice 2 is a worthy follow-up to the DC brawling series and putting in additional features not seen in the genre paid off.
Review is based on version 1.02 and 1.03 of the game, played on a regular PS4. Review copy provided by the publisher.
Supplemental articles leading up to the review: Story Mode | Multiverse | AI Battles