The Death and Return of Superman — Issue 51

Mid­dling return spells dooms­day for Man of Steel

Death and Return of Super­man arc dropped in 1994

Super­man has nev­er been among my favorite super­heroes. First, I’m a Mar­vel girl at heart and I gen­er­al­ly don’t care for most DC char­ac­ters. Sec­ond, if there was a DC super­hero that I love, it’s going to be Bat­man. No prep time and by him­self. So, it stands to rea­son that I don’t care for most DC games out­side of Bat­man prop­er­ties. And so, it con­tin­ues with The Death and Return of Superman.


Death and Return of Super­man fol­lows the plot of the comics well. Super­man fights his ulti­mate neme­sis in Dooms­day, and he dies in the bat­tle. Short­ly after, four oth­er Super­men (Super­boy, Cyborg Super­man, Erad­i­ca­tor and Steel) show up to claim their right­ful place as the Man of Steel. The prob­lem is, how­ev­er, these guys are not Super­man, and it shows. Coast City is anni­hi­lat­ed, and it turns out that Cyborg Super­man is respon­si­ble for the car­nage. The oth­er Super­men, includ­ing the real Super­man him­self, return to stop the cyborg men­ace. If you’re famil­iar with the comics arc, this is basi­cal­ly what hap­pened there. It’s noth­ing super com­pli­cat­ed and there are no addi­tions or changes for the game. I appre­ci­at­ed it as some­one who does­n’t fol­low Super­man that close­ly because it allowed me to learn some­thing new about a well-known super­hero and encour­aged me to learn about the comics’ ver­sion of the sto­ry simultaneously.

Ram­pag­ing through the streets of Metrop­o­lis to stop crime and Cyborg Super­man is a no-frills affair as well. There is absolute­ly noth­ing note­wor­thy or spe­cial about the envi­ron­ments and the pre­sen­ta­tion. Noth­ing stands out, though the char­ac­ter mod­els and designs look nice. The sprites are nice­ly drawn and rather large, so they will catch your eye. How­ev­er, noth­ing else will. The back­grounds are just there, sta­t­ic and unchang­ing, and noth­ing looks par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing. The music is the same. The intro theme is kind of a toe-tap­per but noth­ing about this is going to make you search it out online to add to the collection.

The con­trols aren’t any­thing spe­cial, either. They’re just stan­dard beat-’em-up con­trols. There are your stan­dard attacks, a throw, a fire­ball some­times, and an ulti­mate screen-clear­ing attack that requires ener­gy. While the pay­off is the same for all the Super­men, the attack ani­ma­tion is dif­fer­ent. It’s kind of cool to see what each char­ac­ter is capa­ble of but it’s by no means any­thing excit­ing. And, as is the prob­lem with most beat-’em-ups like this one, you’re going to run into quar­ter-munch­er syn­drome. The hits are always unfair, espe­cial­ly with mul­ti­ple ene­mies on the screen, and health isn’t exact­ly plen­ti­ful. The boss­es par­tic­u­lar­ly are bad about this, and it’s infu­ri­at­ing to no end that you can’t get clean hits against them with­out tak­ing a bru­tal beating.

At the end of the day, Death and Return of Super­man goes about as well as you’d expect: You fight Dooms­day, you play as pre­tenders to the throne, and you res­ur­rect to stop a greater threat. It’s not ter­ri­ble but it isn’t great, either. Giv­en that we know how this end­ed in the comics, is there real­ly a need to play through a mid­dling game that does­n’t do any­thing spe­cial with the Super­man name? No. Let this death cycle play out and remain in its grave, respectfully.

Injustice 2: Legendary Edition — Issue 38

Injus­tice 2 hits right notes in super rematch

The intri­ca­cies of deter­min­ing the win­ner of the sto­ried fight between Bat­man and the Jok­er all depend on prep time for Bat­man and the Joker’s mani­a­cal state at the time of the bat­tle. We’ve thought this through and deter­mined that even with min­i­mal prep time, Bat­man could win this fight con­sid­er­ing his pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with the Jok­er. To sim­u­late it, we would need only one thing: the Injus­tice series of games. And con­sid­er­ing Injus­tice 2 has more chances for this to hap­pen with prop­er sim­u­la­tion, you can best believe we’re div­ing deep into the sol­id sequel DC com­ic book fight­ing game.

Injus­tice 2 is a com­pe­tent sto­ry­teller in its quest to be a DC com­ic book sim­u­la­tor. Set after the fall of Superman’s tyran­ni­cal regime, Injus­tice 2 places Bat­man at the fore­front again to take on the task of rebuild­ing soci­ety and com­bat­ing a new threat in the form of The Soci­ety. Mix­ing in long­time Super­man foe Bra­ni­ac only adds to the chaos. What it boils down to is that these are char­ac­ters you know from the DC uni­verse — even if you’re pass­ing­ly famil­iar with them — fight­ing it out to stop Super­man from con­tin­u­ing his reign of tyran­ny estab­lished in the pre­vi­ous game.

Where Injus­tice 2 shines is its pre­sen­ta­tion and its char­ac­ters. Every­thing that looked good in the first Injus­tice is much-bet­ter look­ing the sec­ond time around. The user inter­face got a new­er, sleek­er coat of paint, and all the char­ac­ter mod­els and back­grounds look bet­ter and clean­er, too. The char­ac­ter select screen even looks bet­ter and more flu­id. NetherRealm’s fight­ing game visu­als get bet­ter with each game, so this is just a tes­ta­ment to their grow­ing prowess. The music isn’t stand­out, but it’s serviceable.

Despite its shiny upgrad­ed pre­sen­ta­tion, I’m still not a fan of how it plays. The com­bat doesn’t feel nat­ur­al, like say, how Mor­tal Kom­bat feels. It still feels like it’s a step or two behind MK and like it’s try­ing too hard to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself from that series by throw­ing a wrench into the basic com­bo setups. I’m also not a fan of the unlock sys­tem. It’s a lot of gear to unlock for a lot of char­ac­ters, but I don’t real­ly have the time or the incli­na­tion to sit and work on it. I’m not say­ing have it unlocked imme­di­ate­ly when I first start the game, but I am say­ing it needs to be eas­i­er. The expe­ri­ence is not the most enjoyable.

Injus­tice 2 is a nice upgrade from the first game. It’s got the name fac­tor, char­ac­ters you prob­a­bly know and slick pre­sen­ta­tion that will catch most anyone’s eye who is into fight­ing games. Whether you’re a com­ic book fan or a casu­al fight­ing game con­nois­seur, Injus­tice 2 is worth a look to see if it’s worth its weight in kryptonite.

Injustice: Gods Among Us — 4Q2014 issue

Pho­tos cour­tesy of Polygon.com

Jus­tice takes a new form

There have been a few DC Comics fight­ing games that have tak­en advan­tage of its vari­able super­hero and metahu­man ros­ter. Jus­tice League Task Force and Mor­tal Kom­bat vs. DC Uni­verse are among those that come to mind. And because of MK vs. DC Uni­verse, brought to you pre-Mid­way implo­sion by the com­pa­ny that cre­at­ed that step in the direc­tion of redemp­tion, DC was able to fore­see the fruits of mak­ing a decent game based on their prop­er­ties. Enter Injus­tice: Gods Among Us.

Let’s get straight to the point: Mar­vel has had the mar­ket cor­nered on fight­ing games involv­ing super­heroes for some time now, thanks to the resource­ful­ness and shady under­tones that are Cap­com. So, for Injus­tice to stand a chance in the sud­den­ly re-crowd­ed fight­ing game are­na, it had to be some­thing spe­cial. Thank­ing those gods among us, it is.

Injus­tice plays much like the 2011 reboot of Mor­tal Kom­bat. The com­bat sys­tem is a lot like it in tone and rhythm and the ani­ma­tion style and fram­ing is much like it as well. If you can play that incar­na­tion of MK, more than like­ly you’re going to be able to pick up Injus­tice and run with it in a few short hours. And much like the MK reboot, there’s much more under the pret­ty coat of nos­tal­gia. Injus­tice is deep, with plen­ty to keep the fight­ing game crowd com­ing back for more and just enough to pique the inter­est of casu­als who don’t know much about fight­ing games but want to see who would win in a Bat­man vs. Super­man battle.

That’s some­thing else that’s going to draw in even the unini­ti­at­ed: the name recog­ni­tion. Yes, lots of folks now know who the mer­ry band of mutants are over at Mar­vel, but mil­lions more know the names Bat­man, Jok­er, Super­man, the Flash, Lex Luthor and Won­der Woman. That instant brand recog­ni­tion is what com­pels a cer­tain part of you to come back and learn more about what’s real­ly a good game. While you might not know who Dooms­day is or why the Omega Sanc­tion is instant­ly fatal to most liv­ing beings, you know the names behind the main char­ac­ters for play, or at least most of them, by sight alone.

That brand recog­ni­tion plays a large part in why the game is suc­cess­ful in its mis­sion: The pack­age around it does­n’t have to be slick and beau­ti­ful, but it is. And it’s enough to make the price to play worth it. Tak­ing into account the work that Nether­Realm Stu­dios pre­vi­ous­ly com­plet­ed, Injus­tice is quite the step up graph­i­cal­ly. Every back­ground is gor­geous and lav­ish in the game that’s already beau­ti­ful from the out­set. The graph­ics step up from MK vs. DCU in a way that have to be seen to be believed. And while it does­n’t seem like the game could get any bet­ter look­ing, then there’s the char­ac­ter mod­els. Every char­ac­ter is accu­rate, down to the details from sto­ry­line arcs such as Cri­sis on Infi­nite Earths dif­fer­ences. How­ev­er, while the graph­ics wow, the music isn’t great. It’s not ter­ri­ble, either, but it’s not exact­ly turn-up-the-vol­ume qual­i­ty. It’s just there, which is high­ly unusu­al for the team known for pro­duc­ing out­stand­ing sound­tracks in the MK series.

I may not be able to tell you exact­ly who would win in a fight between Dark­seid and Black Adam, but I can make the point that Injus­tice does the DC uni­verse quite a bit of, well, jus­tice when it comes to a qual­i­ty fight­ing game fea­tur­ing the Dark Knight, Boy Won­der and Man of Steel.

Which ver­sion to buy?

There are two ver­sions to choose from: reg­u­lar edi­tion and ulti­mate edi­tion. Ulti­mate edi­tion, while cost­ing con­sid­er­ably more, is the bet­ter bar­gain because it fea­tures all of the released DLC and char­ac­ter skins. It also comes with Mor­tal Kom­bat com­bat­ant and stal­wart Scor­pi­on as a playable character.