The weather in my state more closely resembles the symptoms of the flu than anything else. The last couple weeks have been rapid fluctuations between freezing temperatures to mid 90′s have certainly taken their toll on me. Granted I stay in my cold dark room and play video games regardless of the weather but people who DO venture out into the wilderness post about it constantly on Facebook and if theres one thing we love around here its complaining about the weather, and the sports teams, and the government, and road construction, and pretty much everything when you really think about it, we are an unhappy bunch. So while the local climate was falling victim to multiple personality disorder I chugged my way through the story mode of Injustice: Gods Among Us. Having trained enough for me to feel confident I felt it was time to venture forth into story mode. That, and I was trying to avoid too many story mode spoilers online and that was getting more difficult as time went on.

Harley also probably wants pants.

In the grand tradition of comic books the story is terrible from a literary standpoint but enjoyable enough as is. The game seems to have you fight everyone through the course of the story which sometimes feels a bit contrived and forced. The story was still amusing enough though, plenty of fan service moments and twists that are to be expected from DC at this point. And since it takes place on an alternate Earth thanks to DC’s Infinite Earth concept they are free to kill whomever they want. Really though the biggest problem with the story is that you change character every 4 matches or so, meaning that just by the time you are used to someone its time to change. You don’t play as EVERY character though and of course you are made to play as Batman most of the time as Batman is the most popular and most profitable character for DC currently. I’m not trying to sound annoyed and while I love Kevin Conroy and Batmans character gallery DC is risking overexposure. I don’t care if it makes me the hippest of hipsters but the popularity is starting to wear on Batman, also Doctor Who. One possible downside for the more hardcore people is that in the later half of the story when the computer starts to pull out the ultra-cheap moves and promptly stomps you into the ground, each successive loss will tone down the computer. On the cheaper fights, particularly the final one, I was able to win by the third or fourth rematch when the computer was practically inert. I’m glad I got through it since There were some story characters who I was just not able to figure out how to be effective, but its a more hollow victory than with someone I liked using. The fights in the home stretch were not the time to learn how to use Wonder Woman.

NO BLOOD HERE!

But Overall I enjoyed the story and got to try out some new characters and learn some things along the way. That and as the computer dialed up the difficulty they initiated the Clash’s more so you get to experience some great one-liner exchanges between characters which are pure gold. Once you join the online fights you will be immediately saddned because nobody clash’s online. It took me six fights to finally win a match online as my noobishness was truly blood in the water. I was frequently kept pinned down by people exploiting spammable moves as well as my own imcompetence and fumbling of powers. Aquaman however was a lot of fun still to play as and had a nice range of powers that finally helped me squeek out that victory. The entry level for this and most other fighting games is pretty high, even with Injustice’s easy to use Dial-A-Combo fighting setup, as opposed to Marvel Vs Capcom 3′s lengthy combos that resemble Linux code. The only fighting game I can think of that had a low entry level was Smash Bros, but even that is heavily dominated by the pros so be prepared to get beaten for a while.

Fun for all ages!

After Story and Online mode all thats really left is the S.T.A.R. Labs missions which theoretically are there to make you better by making you play in gimmicky ways, or let you replay the mini-games from the story mode. The mini games aren’t that fun to begin with and the gimmick levels are more mysterious and annoying than helpful in learning new ways to play. I’ve said it before how games need more dynamic training modes and this game could really have used one. But of course such a demand really just means im the noobiest scrublord to ever casual up a good game by disapproving of pain. I will not argue with that point I do suck at fighting games, and many others! However I don’t want to see any genre disappear. Most won’t and will just decline in budget and production value as they stick with their niche, but I’d like to see big budget games have some more variety and the only way to keep something big budget it for it to be profitable and therefore accessible. Not everything needs to be Call of Duty and have their sized audience, but I feel some changes here and there to the fighting genre to bring in some new blood would do it some good and breathe some new life into it.

Now were talkin’

Injustice is still an enjoyable experience that I’d recommend to DC comic fans and people who are semi-new to the fighting game genre. It’s not as technical or demanding as some of the others so its definitely something you could learn with some time and effort. Also they just added Lobo to the roster and hes a joy to play, but tragically he is not voiced by Brad Garrett like he was in the cartoons.