Injustice: Gods Among Us

So I picked up Injustice this weekend, and I'm impressed. The people who made it are the same ones who did Mortal Kombat, so they know what they're doing. It has almost everyone in it that I wanted except Ra's Al Ghul and Darkseid, but you can play as Doomsday, so that makes up for Darkseid. Also there are already a few Batman characters, so I can understand why they didn't want more. On the plus side though, Darkseid is a part of one of the stage transitions. Each stage has three areas you can fight in, with cool transitions in between. So one of them involves kicking your opponent through a portal to Apokalips, where Darkseid will putt a serious hurting on him, then throw him back through the portal, thus transitioning to a nearby but different area. Each stage is also unique and interactive, with lots of items that are useable in different ways depending on the character. The only other problem I see is that the story is pretty short. Granted, no one buys a fighting game just for the story mode, but a little more of it would've been nice. Especially since the story is pretty good and most of the characters have pretty cool alternate costumes. Sinestro gets a weird helmet, which I don't like that much, but some characters like Shazam look cooler in the alternate universe than the main one, and some of them are about the same in coolness, but a change is still refreshing. Besides appearance, NetherRealm had done a great job making every character feel unique. A big part of that is the fact that now there's a button for a unique character power. For example, Bane juices himself up with Venom, Batman summons some flying bat projectiles, and Wonder Woman changes her fighting style from hovering and wielding her lasso to standing and using a sword and shield. Super moves are also very character appropriate, besides being just plain awesome. Deathstroke tosses his sword into the air, shoots his opponent, kicks his sword into them, then shoots some more, which is something he would totally do in the comicbooks. Same with Aquaman (who's actually pretty sweet in this game) stabbing someone with his trident, then feeding them to a shark. NetherRealm has taken steps to make Injustice very different from Mortal Kombat, which is definitely a good thing, but the one thing I wish they kept is finishing moves. They don't need to be fatalities, but I just want some sort of cool move to use once you've won and want to further humiliate your friends. Overall though, they did a great job with this game, and if you like DC, you should totally go buy it. Even if you're not, but you like cool fighting games, check this one out!

Marvel Now

Warning: I don't consider myself an angry nerd, but this will be an angry post. Now that I've warned you, let's get into it:

I recently heard that Marvel is going to do their own version of the New 52. I don't have all the facts yet, so I don't know whether to be angry or glad. If they still plan on continuing the already existing Marvel universe, and simply making another one to start fresh, I'm glad. That means they'll get more new readers without driving any away, which means they'll make more money and be able to make more cool stuff. If they plan on replacing the current Marvel universe that's been going since the 40's, then I should be the director of SHIELD, because I am Fury (that wasn't my best pun, but I'm still proud of it). The Marvel universe is quite possibly the longest continuous story in the history of mankind, and if they plan on just ending it and starting a new one, well, that's just not ok with me. To me, that sounds like Marvel saying "Oh yeah, all those comic books you bought in your years of devotion? Those are the past now. If you want to stay a respectable Marvel fan, you have to support our decision to abandon that continuity you love so much"..... I may be overreacting. Especially since I'm not 100% sure that's what's happening. Then again, I may not be. About 97% of the titles I read are from the Big 2. When DC announced their plans for the New 52, I thought: "Well, at least I'll still have Marvel for the beloved complexity that only a true fan can understand". Right? Wrong. If Marvel ends and restarts their mainstream universe, then WHAT DO I HAVE NOW?!! TELL ME THAT, MARVEL!!!! Sorry, that happens to me sometimes. And is it just me, or does this idea remind you of numerous evil plots to destroy human civilization and start again in order to mold it to the plotter's liking? For example, Centrius, the High Evolutionary, the dude from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the dude from Mission Impossible 4, kind of the Doomsday Killer from Dexter, etc. Plus, unless they get Stan The Man to write A LOT of their new material, they'll be nullifying his works, and they can't exactly get King Kirby to do any art for their new titles,  since he's kinda dead. Which is really too bad, since Stan Lee is probably the coolest person in the comic book industry, and with some more modern art techniques, I'd love to see what Jack Kirby would do. Without The King and The Man, how can they begin a proper Marvel universe? I'm sure they have a lot of smart people over there, so why can't they come up with some other way to boost their popularity? There's always another way! WHY DID IT HAVE TO COME TO THIS?!!! Now that I've released all that... whatever that was, I'll end by saying that Marvel has done tons of things I liked and a couple I didn't (Brand New Day, anyone?), but discontinuing their decades-long continuity would be, in my eyes, their worst decision yet.