NetherRealm Studios built a fighting game that trusts its players to care about stats as much as combos. Injustice 2, released in May 2017 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with a Windows version following that November, is the sequel to 2013’s Injustice: Gods Among Us and the second entry in a series drawn from the DC Universe. It is also the rare sequel that fixes the first game’s worst habit while keeping what worked.
Trailer, via IGDBcom.
The Gear System Rewards Every Match
The headline addition is the Gear System, a loot-dropping mechanic that hands out character-specific costume pieces and equipment after every match. Each fighter carries four base stats: strength, defense, health, and ability, the last of which drives special attacks. Experience points and level-ups raise those stats, and gear pushes them further.
That structure borrows openly from role-playing games, and it works. Customizing how a character looks and fights gives every match a second payoff beyond the win screen.
Batman Weighs Freeing Superman
The story picks up two years after the Regime’s fall. Batman and his Insurgency are trying to rebuild social order when a new villain faction, the Society, emerges under Gorilla Grodd. Brainiac is pulling the strings, and he intends to shrink Earth and add it to his collection.
Batman’s response is desperate: consider freeing the imprisoned Superman to fight alongside him. The campaign moves through Slaughter Swamp, Gorilla City, and Atlantis, and it gives Black Canary, Green Arrow, Harley Quinn, and Supergirl real weight in the plot rather than cameo duty.
A Roster Built for DC Fans
The base roster holds 28 playable fighters, mixing returning heroes and villains with new faces. Ten more arrived as downloadable content.
- Fighter Pack 1: Red Hood, Starfire, Sub-Zero
- Fighter Pack 2: Black Manta, Hellboy, Raiden
- Fighter Pack 3: Atom, Enchantress, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Darkseid: pre-order bonus, later standalone DLC
Premier skins go further, transforming existing roster characters into other DC figures with unique voices, dialogue, and in some cases altered moves.
Combat That Respects the Player
The core fighting stays close to the predecessor. Players trade basic attacks, special moves, and combos using directional inputs and button presses, and the trait system still grants each character a temporary buff. The super meter returns, letting fighters spend it on enhanced specials or a fully charged super move.
Two small additions matter more than they sound. An evasive forward roll counters keep-away tactics, and an air recovery lets a character escape a combo early. Most environmental attacks, once unavoidable, can now be blocked or dodged.
Environmental Attacks Can Be Stopped
Injustice: Gods Among Us had environmental attacks that simply could not be stopped, and they made fights feel cheap. Injustice 2 fixes that. Certain heavy objects, like a thrown car, still land unblockable, but the player now has options against most of the stage.
That is the correct call. A fighting game lives on the belief that every loss was yours to avoid.
What Holds and What Slips
Injustice 2 does not reinvent the genre, and it does not need to. The Gear System gives long-term players a reason to keep opening loot, the roster is deep enough to satisfy DC loyalists and guest-character curiosity alike, and the combat corrections address the sharpest complaint about the original.
The campaign’s multiverse detours and its large cast occasionally thin the focus, but the fighting underneath holds. This is a sequel that understands what it inherited.
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