Xbox: Injustice 2 released
Yesterday I spent the better part of the day dealing with problems relating to my Xbox One S downloading the 28 or so gigabyte monster Injustice 2. At roughly eight PM after the little ones had gone to bed I started ignoring the world and played until the game locked up and crashed about three hours later.
There are probably some spoilers in here, but I only made it to chapter five so not many.
I’m expecting a patch will be released shortly for that, but I took the crash as a reasonable stopping point as by this time I was completely over troubleshooting tech issues for the day.
Injustice?
If you’re unfamiliar with the storyline of Injustice it goes as follows – Joker got bored fighting with Batman and wanted a fight he could win so he decided to go, kidnap a pregnant Lois Lane, and trick Superman into killing her and unborn Superbaby with the aid of Kryptonite-enhanced fear gas. Basically Lois Lane became refrigerator girlfriend to propel Superman into stopping all crime on the planet and dealing a pretty quick end to the Joker.
Of course Batman doesn’t take too kindly to someone murdering the murderer he captures and imprisons on a bi-monthly schedule, and there’s the issue of Supes taking over the planet to stop all crime. This leads to war and the Bats eventually coming up with a way to defeat Superman and put him in a jail cell, where he’ll probably escape in Injustice 2 (don’t know, not gotten that far yet).
Injustice 1 leads one seriously to contemplate that an ineffective justice system combined with a re-imprisonment operative (Batman,) leads to more deaths than were the characters to roam the street and be downed by a militia.
Install-ice!
Unrelated to Injustice 2 during install time I had the Xbox refusing to pull DHCP while wired at one point, stuck on a slower band than it should have been on wireless, a Comcast area issue where I was getting 2mbit out of the 250, and a host of other things that would have made it significantly faster to walk to the nearest Gamestop and pick up a copy. My lawn, get off of it.
Playing it
Injustice was one of my favorite games of all time, so even though I have about an hour a week to myself I decided it was time to prioritize and put everyone I know and love second and see how my favorite game had been sequeled.
The answer is mechanically well, story-wise up to chapter five feels pretty shoehorned. The cut-scenes with people talking – something about their lips and teeth make me remember a nightmare I had as a child. I can’t put my finger on what’s so disconcerting, but yeah.
By chapter five I’ve seen more characters than the entirety of Injustice 1. Played with Batman, Flash, Green Arrow, Harley Quinn, Black Canary, Hal Jordan, probably some others (think it crashed loading Aquaman.) Fought in game vs against Swamp Thing, Dr Fate, Superman, Robin, Gorilla Grodd, Captain Cold?, Reverse Flash, Scarecrow, Joker Hallucination.
The fighting mechanics are virtually identical to Injustice although I am finding the block left right X set of blocking/push impossible even in training. Not sure if that is because at my age I’ve lost the twitch factor, my controller needs changing out, or if there’s a timing issue on my part.
Overall mechanically appealing, story mode shoehorned so far to get every character you’ve ever heard of on-screen quickly, fun game. I recommend it.
Injustice 2 on Amazon (link probably makes us money)