Reviews// Injustice: Gods Among Us

On the one hand, there are comics that are basically structured as fights with bits in between to get you to the fights. On that hand Injustice: Gods Among Us makes loads of sense.

On the other, balancing a game to the point where the Joker could reasonably have a fist fight with Superman is a bit of a tall order. On that other hypothetical third hand (that would be a great boon while playing Injustice) what better way is there to get a large number of characters from the DC universe into one game?

So, as a big comics fan it was with some trepidation that I fired up Injustice. (And this is, it should be noted, the review of someone who's a fan of the source material and action games more than it's the review of a beat-'em-up connoisseur).

I was actually already a little more impressed than I perhaps ought to have been by the time I saw the title screen. As you're beckoned in to play, a montage of battlefield close-ups marinated in drama and detail pass across the screen. 'We've taken this seriously. We're not dicking around,' this sequence says.

The single player campaign is, to me, the biggest surprise. If I was expecting any plot at all,my expectation was for something that could serve as thinspiration for a Super Mario Bros. game. What you actually get is pushing towards being a CGI movie in which you get to play out the fights. There are some for whom this will be waaaaay too much. That's fine, you can just jump straight into Battles Mode for a more traditional arcade-style series of fights.

If you're a comics fan, though, Injustice offers a very meaty mouthful of DC. The story revolves around a universe in which Superman's become a dictator in a cape and a number of heroes and villains have stepped up/down to help. Enter a more recognisable set of characters from something closer to the regular DC universe (or a sort of mishmash of New 52 and pre-Flashpoint DC, if you want the fine detail) and we're off to the races.

There are plenty of fights in there, but for those who care the connective tissue is somewhere on a par with one of the DC animated movies. Which is to say, the dialogue gets a bit hammy and it could look a bit better, but there's enough there that it's good fun and it feels right.

It's also very apparent that a lot of love has gone into the game. Everything from the influences such as Kingdom Come to little glimpses of lesser characters such as Mr Terrific display a real fondness for the source material. There's plenty of fan service here, and if NetherRealm has learned anything from the Batman: Arkham titles, it's that games allow you to go a little nuts on the story front, unfettered as they are from continuity.

Of course, all of this would be for naught if it didn't handle well. Given NetherRealm's Mortal Kombat pedigree you wouldn't expect anything too shabby in that department, but the game also plays to the license well.

As I said earlier, I came for the capes more than I did a technical challenge, and through the tutorial I was a bit concerned that some of the more complex combos would be too finnicky – or the controls too claggy – to be pulled off. While there's a level of moves that's clearly there for seasoned vets, however, the range of combat options on offer to less experienced players is ample.

Each character's move set plays to their strengths and, while pinging arrows at someone is less impressive than being able to scorch them with heat vision or punch them into space, there's a good range to the characters.

Balance is obviously one of the biggest concerns coming into a game which features characters ranging from Superman to Harley Quinn, but there is an in-game explanation as to why Nightwing might go toe-to-toe with Green Lantern. It's not always entirely satisfactory (watching Aquaman smack Shazam around will never not be odd) but for the most part it's just the right side of plausible. As far as games with aliens and amazon princesses and men who can run at the speed of light go, anyway.