‘Injustice 2’ Game Review: “Only As Super As The First”

With the release of Wonder Woman to American cinemas, one could pretend to forget the fact that Batman vs Superman ever existed if it weren’t for Suicide Squad, the movie Jared Leto thought he had a part in. Ignoring Leto’s damaged feelings, the video game that follows suit is Injustice 2, or as I like to call it, “what if Mortal Kombat sucked even harder.”

Injustice was a game that pits the cast of DC (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Serial Flasher, etc.) against one another in a series based on a no longer recent comic book series of the same title. DC’s denial that people still read comics is as sad as the story is edgy; evil Superman from an alternate universe rules the world, Batman is the underground law, and the world is engulfed in a super-dictatorship. Seeing as how the whole plot boils down to “wouldn’t it be scary if Superman no longer had morals,” the same plot as Batman vs Superman, the story is as dull and uninteresting there as it is in any other format, this format constantly switching the characters’ perspectives and therefore forcing you into move sets for characters you haven’t learned yet.

Injustice 2 is the same thing, but with better graphics and a slightly more bearable premise. Wonder Woman is the villain this time, along with Brainiac. Looking back, the plot was only more enjoyable due to graphical changes. Everything is as needlessly dramatic as it has always been in recent years, as DC is still unaware that humor might be needed in comics. The writing has little to no improvements as super-beings talk amongst themselves in the most unrelatable and uninteresting of circumstances.

Aforementioned graphical changes are spectacular, utilizing the PS4 and Xbox One graphics to its current full potential; characters almost look real, perhaps too realistic. The music is a standard orchestral snoozefest. The combat system itself? It’s yet another Mortal Kombat game, plain and simple.

I admit there are slight improvements, yet these are accompanied by actual good cast members. Robin, Red Lantern, Poison Ivy and Brainiac are some of the most enjoyable characters to play, while Cyborg, Harley and Green Arrow have been completely revamped and upgraded. However, why would anyone in the right mind devote an entire character slot to Cheetah, Swamp Thing, and Captain Cold? Especially Captain Cold, considering 2 DLC characters, Dr. Freeze and Sub-Zero, are wanted, ice-based characters that people actually like. The less popular characters even feel terrible to play as, so why were they even made in the first place?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware that the game is actually quite good, it’s just not as big of an improvement as I and many others would have hoped for. The combo system is the same and while many characters are unique, few characters are in the same league, therefore many characters are heavily unbalanced and, more often than not, the winner has already been decided before the game even begins. This being said, fighting games rely heavily on the creativity of the player, so there’s bound to be a bad Cyborg player facing an amazing Cheetah player, but it’s just not enough. Injustice 2 brings the player a graphical update and a few interesting characters, yet in the end, it’s no different from the first game, flaws and all.