Injustice: Gods Among Us had a huge presence at E3 after only a week since it's unveiling. The lines were always long, sometimes encouraging people to sit as they waited for each demo to end. I was lucky enough to see it, and then play it for myself.
6/5/2012 E3 Show Floor Theatre Viewing:
The demo was build 0.37-20 of the game. The game's menu at E3 showed, One Player, Two Players, and Options. There were only six characters on the roster, all that we have already seen:
Wonder Woman,
Batman,
Superman,
Solomon Grundy,
Harley Quinn and
The Flash. The character select screen looks like it'll support up to 24 characters, but this can easily change. The game's loading screens are pictures with a horizontal line drawn, separating the word Injustice from Gods Among Us. There is an all-new HUD design that is really slick. Each character's health bar has an armor wrap (silver) that overlays the health bar. The armor bar goes down first, then once depleted, they take health (red) damage.
Special attacks are long and epic both in scale and display. Superman punched Flash into space. Flash ran around the world to punch Superman. Each character has an icon of their logo in lower right meter that glows when ready. The environments can be destroyed and used against the enemy, like cars on the ground and using a button that deploys missiles from the Batmobile. The stages shown at E3 were the Batcave and Fortress of Solitude. Each fight was able to transition to three different areas of the location, and can return the fight to the starting point. Minimal blood was shown during fight sequences, but was present. The game moves real fast, hard hits and with a back to block system, instead of the dedicated button. Gadgets will be used by many characters like Batman and Flash.
6/6/2012 Hands-On:
So yesterday I saw the game, today I played it. I sat down with
Paulo Garcia, lead designer at
NetherRealm Studios. We played it on Playstation 3's in versus mode. The feel is way closer to MK9 than say, MK vs DC, but that doesn't mean it plays like MK9 exactly.
Special Moves are activated via L1/LT + R2/RT like the X-Ray moves in MK9. Circle is a weapon switch, gadget deploy, or throw depending on character: Weapon switch for Wonder Woman from Whip to Sword & Shield, deploying protective barrier of batarangs for Batman, throwing your enemy styles for Grundy, The Flash runs around the world into a special attack and slows down time, Superman goes into a bit of a rage and is protected and attacks can’t be blocked, Harley deploys a random item from a gift box, BANG! sign or an explosive. All circle items that are gadgets have a cooldown timer to them, very short though – can’t be spammed.
Face Buttons like Square, Triangle and X are used to attack. You do hold back to block, but is not visible and hold back at a distance pulls your character back. Up jumps, double-tap Up when using Batman to do a glide, into an attack combo. R1/RB is used to do a grab L1/LB appeared to not have a function L3/Left Stick and R3/Right Stick buttons did not seem to have a function either.
The game will have a timer, but it was off for E3. All fights will essentially be one round. Narration for the game was not present, and they have not decided on how or who they’ll have announce. Kevin Conroy sounds like he is the voice of Batman in this, but is not confirmed. The person who voices Harley Quinn in Arkham City is not confirmed or denied to be the voice of Harley here. As detailed in the interview with Ed Boon, the development team is not completely set on a maximum of 24 characters. Combos will still be a huge function of your success.
There are no finishing moves, but there are special animations that play out for each character that has a little flourish or insult to injury to end the match. Injustice is coming along nicely, the hits are hard and carry huge weight with everything as you saw in
Mortal Kombat (2011). There is epic scale being shown here, and there’s a lot of room for it to grow and to become even bigger and better than what I got to play.
Also incase you missed it, I was able to interview two people you might be interested in:
•
Ed Boon - Team Lead on Injustice and for NetherRealm Studios, Co-Creator of Mortal Kombat
•
Adam Urbano - Senior Producer on Injustice and for NetherRealm Studios
