Injustice 2 is launching and to celebrate WB Games held a launch event in sunny South London.
The main event involved a tournament organised by ESL and a games journalist tournament, but I wasn’t there for them. I was there to play Injustice 2.
The event itself was held behind these arches, in a dimly lit cavern deep in South London’s seedy underbelly (OK, maybe more like a fancy venue next to Blackfriars Bridge, but let me be poetic). Filled with cosplayers and PS4s, I went in with eyes only for the game.
Fueled by a cupcake with the Green Lantern logo on it, I set to playing the game. I went in for single player, as I was on my own and also I hadn’t played Injustice before, or indeed any fighting games, and figured that a sound drubbing from a foe would turn me off playing any more.
Injustice 2 has a fine tutorial, that takes you through not only the basics of the control scheme but also going in deep to the intricacies of game systems. The only issue I have here was…and this is very shameful…it was too hard for me! There was one set of moves I couldn’t pull off, so I missed the end of the tutorial.
Armed with this knowledge, I decided to play on the easiest setting possible. Now I know many of you reading this will huff and sigh and think less of me, but that’s fine, I am rubbish at fighting games, and at least this way I get to play it!
And let me tell you, very easy is so easy I was able to make progress! Starting off as Batman I beat the heck out of people, before moving on to play as Harley Quinn to beat the heck out of some people.
A lot of noise has been made about the quality of the faces in the cutscenes and it’s utterly true, they’re so real looking it’s uncanny valley time. I kept on having to check that it wasn’t real humans. All the while being looked at by the green ice Batman who lurked near the entrance.
I made slow but steady progress through the first few missions and I won’t spoil what happens because it’s pretty dense on the old story, but having not played the original Injustice I have to say I was a little lost with some of the plot details I managed to pick up during the opening hour, but I did get a good overall view of what had happened in the first game.
What I did play of the game was crisp and easy to pick up and dive into, even for an absolute noob like me. For the more experienced fighter, I imagine there’s loads of depth for you to get into, stuff the tutorial hinted at with all sorts of moves that I learned about but then in the heat of the moment couldn’t pull off with any degree of confidence.
I left the event much more impressed with Injustice 2 than I thought I would be, and more interested in fighting games overall as a result. For someone who’s just not info fighting games, I’m intrigued by Injustice 2, and I might have to have a go at it when I can get my hands on it.
Just one question, why does Superman look like Michael Bluth?