Injustice: Gods Among Us – Preview 2
So earlier this week I had the chance to take a sneak peak at Injustice: Gods Among Us, the new game by Netherrealm who you of course should all know as the makers of the Mortal Kombat games, based in the DC comics universe. Now I’m a pretty big Mortal Kombat fan so I’ll gladly admit my expectations were set pretty high, but I’m happy to say that after a few hours with the game I walked away interested by what I saw and optimistic towards the final product.
The day started off with a nice little presentation by none other then the game’s producer, mister Hector Sanchez, who introduced us to the various single player modes of the game, the story mode which is going to contain over 3 hours of cut-scenes apparently, practice, single battle, a mode much requested by the community after Mortal Kombat came out allowing you to practice against specific characters you have trouble with, letting you set stuff like AI difficulty. Then there’s the S.T.A.R. labs mode, a mode he said was the evolutions of Mortal Kombat’s challenge tower, giving you ten missions with each of the game’s characters that teach you how the characters work and have their own little story arcs. Now these missions won’t be just pure fighting missions, they’ll also contain some mini-games to change things up a bit. The last mode is called battle, a ladder mode with it’s own leaderboards and different league’s with different rules. You’ll unlock new battle leagues thanks to the game’s new consistent leveling system.
After the presentation we got a chance to actually play the game ourselves, all be it only the multiplayer mode. The build we played didn’t have all of the 24 final characters in it, some of which haven’t even been announced yet, but we still got a good idea of what the final game will look like. The character roster is pretty varied, ranging from the most famous DC characters like Batman or Superman to more obscure characters like Solomon Grundy or Raven. Now Netherrealm say they made this game so they could do something different, try some new things, things they say themselves would be considered blasphemous in a Mortal Kombat game. They also wanted to make a game more easily accessible to beginners, without taking away from the complexity of finesse that Mortal Kombat had at the highest competitive level. Now I’m not going to go into great detail on everything they did to accomplish this but I will say that after about 2-3 hours with the game it seems like they did a pretty good job in all areas. It’s a game that’s still gonna be a game that feels very familiar to Mortal Kombat fans, but with enough changes to offer a new twist, and things like being able to go into the moves list and tagging combo’s so they’re on screen while fighting, that make it way easier for newcomers to get into the usually very closed off and intimidating high level fighting game play.
The day ended with an interview with Hector Sanchez himself, which I have to say was a very interesting talk. He told us some more about the online multiplayer and the modes in it: your standard online with completely reworked netcode. An online version of the practice mode from the singleplayer, another much requested feature by the community. The return of the king of the hill mode from Mortal Kombat, and some more modes that will be announced leading up to the game’s release. He also talked about how liberating it was being able to work on another game, and how great it was working with DC. They gave Netherrealm full creative freedom, even letting them create their own sub-universe separate from the main DC world, so they could have complete creative liberty when it came to the storyline and what they could do with the characters.
So injustice. I went into the preview really interested but admittingly somewhat sceptical on whether the game would really be something new or just Mortal Kombat with DC skins. But, I’m happy to say I walked away an impressed man, optimistic about the future of Injustice and the future of Netherrealm. I’ll certainly be picking up my copy of the game on April 18th. If you wanna know even more about the game, head on over to their website and have a look for yourselves.
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