Welcome back to Strange Times & Places, where we examine alternate universe stories in all their shapes and sizes. Today, we’ll be spoiling the heck out of story mode from the newly released Injustice 2 video game!
How’s It Different?
It’s a For Want of a Nail story in which The Joker tricked Superman into murdering his own wife and unborn child. The Justice League proceeded to basically re-enact Squadron Supreme at that point, albeit with a much happier ending for Batman’s crew.
What’s The Story?
It’s been five years since Batman’s Insurgence overthrew Superman’s totalitarian Regime and the world is still slowly rebuilding. Batman has worked hard to rebuild public trust, forbidding reformed Regime members from super-heroics and recruiting new and trustworthy heroes to guard against the threat of the Regime’s resurgence. However, when a routine investigation into a new band of super-villains known as The Society unveils a connection to the Crisis-level threat of Brainiac, Batman’s team (Batman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Harley Quinn, Blue Beetle, Firestorm, The Flash, Catwoman, and Green Lantern) and the Regime (Superman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Black Adam, Damian “Nightwing” Wayne”, and Supergirl) must put aside their differences to save the world.
Best of Differences
- Although plenty of the plot elements exist solely to facilitate fights (notably, the appearances of Atrocitus and Grid), the narrative has the strength expected after NetherRealm’s string of hits (Mortal Kombat 2011, Injustice: Gods Among Us, and Mortal Kombat X).
- In a world where most of his sidekicks are dead (Dick Grayson, Jason Todd) or kinda evil (Damian), Batman’s most trusted partner and confidante is….Harley Quinn. She’s even got a Bat Symbol on her leather jacket.
- Superman with the morals of The Punisher is a suitable mix of sympathetic, not-wholly-wrong, and horrifying. This game strikes a better balance of that than its predecessor, since the Big Blue Boy Scot isn’t the antagonist.
- Overall, the does a great job handling the regrets that would have been left over from the storyline of the previous game. Personally, the story-mode ends up being a better – if somewhat bloated – movie than Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Come back next week for a new installment of Tokusatsu Gesundheit!