Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition Review

Demigods. 

The original release of Injustice: Gods Among Us delivers exactly the kind of glorious fights you’d expect from the DC Universe's mightiest, and makes them as fun and rewarding to watch as they are to play. While it buckles just a bit under the weight of all it was trying to do, it more than earned its spot on the shelves of fighting aficionados. Now NetherRealm has released Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition, collecting all the currently available DLC and sprucing it up for the PlayStation 4 and PC, and the result is…largely the same. Ultimate Edition looks and runs a bit nicer, but it doesn’t do anything substantial enough to warrant picking it up if you already own the original.

For its first trick, Injustice does something that few fighting games ever even attempt to do: tell an interesting story. What if Superman lost faith in humanity and, with his near-infinite power, decided it was time to stop protecting and start ruling? Without ruining anything, you've rarely seen Supes quite like this before. We've seen him “retire” in Kingdom Come, and watched him wreck shop whilst being mind-controlled a few billion times, but this is a far darker spin than all that. This isn't about a mopey alien who just wants somewhere to belong, it’s about a god who's decided his subjects no longer deserve free will.

As heavy as it sounds, Injustice still finds time for the same kind of action, adventure, and humor that made the Justice League animated series such a treat. In fact,
much of the original JL voice cast is in action here, including the inimitable Kevin Conroy as the Dark Knight himself and George Newbern as Superman. The story mode’s primary fault is that its reach exceeds its artist’s grasp. Closeups on main characters look good, but when the in-engine cutscenes attempt to depict clashing armies or sweeping cityscapes, bland textures and shoddily modeled buildings erode the visual impact a bit, and neither the PS4’s or PC’s beefier internals do nothing to change that fact. It's only because the in-fight graphics usually look so crisp that this dip in visual quality seems so stark, especially since the game is now running natively at 1080p/60fps. Outside of looking sharper and smoother, the move to next-gen hasn’t done much else in terms of effects or post-processing, resulting in a fighter that looks decidedly less impressive than say Killer Instinct. Ultimate Edition certainly isn’t ugly by any means, but even compared to other cross-generation titles, it only looks good rather than great.
Despite this, it still manages to capture the godlike abilities of DC's finest. The cast is varied, interesting, and thankfully devoid of ninja lookalikes – more than I can say for Mortal Kombat 9 at its launch. NetherRealm took 24 characters, many of whom have never been seen in a video game, and translated their abilities and personas over beautifully. This is Injustice's greatest feat, and Ultimate Edition drives that home further by including the additional six characters that have come out since launch. There's reverence for the DC Universe in each menu screen and every matchup-specific line of dialogue.

So Injustice mostly stays faithful enough to its comic book roots, but how true does it stay to its Mortal Kombat ones? The short answer is: only as much as it needed too. All the best things about MK are present in spades. Beefy, high-impact hits that sound as brutal as they look, and long, satisfying juggle combos still abound, but so much more has changed for the better. Traditional direction-based blocking replaces the block button, making actual cross-ups possible. Throws are no longer a pure 50/50 mix-up like they are in MK9, thanks to a universal tech input. Combo breakers (renamed “clashes”) are only possible once per match now, and are part of a wider variety of useful ways to spend meter that make the decision to save it for an emergency a more meaningful one. This broadens the tactical possibilities for players at every level.
Two other new systems help further differentiate Injustice from its ancestor. The subtler of the two is the character-power system. Each fighter possesses a unique mechanic based on their super-power that truly makes their style distinct. Solomon Grundy, for instance, gets a series of chain throws, each of which buffs a different attribute of his for the remainder of the match. The Flash, on the other hand, can call upon the Speed Force to effectively slow opponents to a crawl. NetherRealm got pretty creative with these, and learning how to leverage them properly adds another level of technical nuance and variety.

Also new, but potentially more troublesome, are the interactive environments. Each setting is jam-packed with heavy objects to pick up and throw, or bounce your opponent off of, and landing certain attacks at the right spots triggers a stage change, sending your enemy careening spectacularly through a series of obstacles. I have mixed feelings about these. Sure, it's badass when Doomsday backhands Superman clean through a pair of skyscrapers in downtown Metropolis... but when mere mortal heroes like Batman or Green Arrow do the same exact thing, it just looks plain silly.

I'm not trying to go nerd police here, but such moments undermine all the effort that clearly went into making these characters move and play like you'd imagine they should. Between that, and animations that look great one moment and jerky the next, the illusion of two superheroes clashing can crumble at times. It never keeps the fighting from being fun, but Injustice is so effective when it maintains that spell that I hate to see it broken.
Now, I'd be lying if I said all the wanton destruction wasn't great fun, because it totally is. However, I did have some balance concerns when Injustice originally launched. Environmental attacks are completely unblockable, and either shear off sizable chunks of life or leave you open to eat a full combo - and sometimes both. As the game has developed though, this has proven to be mostly a non-issue, with NetherRealm making a few small tweaks to tone them down a tad.

Finally, I'd be doing Injustice an injustice if I didn't mention just how much content is included. NetherRealm has once again spoiled us with things to do and a mountain of costumes, art, and music to unlock. STAR Labs is the new challenge tower, offering hundreds of fights to complete under special conditions. If you just feel like jumping into a series of matches, you can unlock and fight in a number of battle ladders, each with different stipulations like heroes only (no villains) or surviving on one health bar. Training mode has been significantly beefed up too, with frame data and detailed move descriptions built right in. Online lobbies have also improved, with the ability to bet XP on who will win the next match – and even issue challenges for how they'll win it. It helps keep lobbies fun and interactive, even when you're last in line to fight. Ultimate Edition augments this generous selection with new STAR Labs missions, some of which utilize the Dual Shock 4’s touch pad.