Steel Yourself for Injustice’s Demo Next Week

The DC Universe is on a dastardly collision course with itself (again).  Soon, comic and fighting game fans will get to have a hands-on with WB and NetherRealm’s superpowered slobber-knocker, Injustice: Gods Among Us.  April 2nd sees PSN’s demo of the game while Xbox Live receives it the day after.

Featuring the Gotham City stage, players will be given Batman, Wonder Woman, and Mr. Lex Luthor to bruise up, the trio representative of the two class types characters fall into; either those imbued with powers or those reliant on gadgets.  Injustice drops April 16th for the PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U (no demo in sight for the system, however).

I don’t care where your fighting game loyalties lie, you can’t deny NetherRealm Studios has seriously ramped up their game in the last couple of years.  Formerly Midway Games, NetherRealm floored the industry when they reinvented their bloody cash cow, Mortal Kombat, into a technically deep, graphical stunner that gave every other contender in the genre an honest run for their money.  If Injustice is anywhere near sweeping distance of MK9 in terms of quality, we’ll just go ahead and exonerate NetherRealm of its past crimes.

Injustice: Gods Among Us (PS3/Wii U/X360 - 2013)

Not Justice League, not DC Universe, hell, not even Mortal Kombat.  Injustice escapes any expected branding and stands alone like a comic book one-shot.  Warner Bros. and NetherRealm Studios must be purdy confident in their superhero rage simulator to establish it as its own entity.

MK9 was phenomenal.  It set a new precedent in fighting games for its sheer content, quality, and style.  Do you know what wasn’t phenomenal?  The turd that came before it, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.  I’ve spoken to gamers that hold that title up with almost an air of reverence and I can’t help but wonder what I’d have to take and how much to magically see that fighter as anything more than insipid.  People tell me that the game was fun and I truly wish to borrow their eyes for a day because all of my first-hand accounts resulted in me wanting to fling that shit out of a window (I didn’t, my programming prevents me from harming game-kind no matter how much they deserve it).

My biggest fear for Injustice — a title that looks very cool from the get-go — is seeing that flawed precursor inform it in some way.  But MK9, once again, was a resounding success in execution; it was as if the studio was proving they could do better than MK vs. DC.  Perhaps they’re returning to DC’s rich comic ‘verse in order to finally do right by the heroes there.

We’ll see more Injustice at E3, which I know I’ll have to in order to quiet my doubts.

Injustice: Gods Among Us Announced as NetherRealm’s Followup Fighter

Those of you anxiously awaiting a second part to NetherRealm’s massively successful Mortal Kombat reboot may have to ice those hopes for now, but Ed Boon and company have something pretty damn super to show you nonetheless.

The heroes and villains of the DC Universe are once more pitted against each other in subhuman combat, trading blows and devastating powers in a fighting game that’s not too far off from the studio’s previous, bloodier effort.  This time, your combatants are strong enough to hurl cars, punch each other through scenery, and even utilize gadgets to lop-side a fair fight.  Of course, NetherRealm is pulling another wire act when it comes to balancing characters so that Superman is unable to pop skulls like blood balloons (though he can still uppercut you through the stratosphere…a decently big “ouchie”).

With a roster said to be as large as Mortal Kombat’s on-disc lineup, there will at least be 25 to 30 scrappers from DC’s back catalog.  You can expect extremely familiar faces like Bats, Wonder Woman, and Supes, but I hope NetherRealm really digs into the license and pulls out some woefully underused heroes and villains (Bat Woman, anyone?  How about The Question?  Hell, I’ll settle for Booster Gold…I gotta get 52 outta my head).

Slated for somewhere in 2013, expect to find Injustice on the PS3, 360, and Wii U.

Watch the teaser trailer here.