Another week has gone by, meaning we have another pair of battle arena gameplay trailers from NetherRealm for Injustice: Gods Among Us. This week we have been graced with Green Lantern battling an opponent who just can’t stay down while Aquaman has a grudge match against fellow teammate Cyborg.
Green Machines
Green Lantern and Solomon Grundy both show off their wildly different play styles. Green Lantern displays myriad uses of his power ring, showing the ability to fire multiple types of projectiles, one of which staggers and can knock up and pull his opponent. He also has a couple offensive dashes, one of which can be executed mid-air, promising to make him a very mobile target. Coupling that air dash with the ability to grab opponents out of the air for a slam shows Green Lantern to be a serious anti-air threat.
He polishes all of those abilities off with some fairly quick combos, including a few very fast combo starters, and a finisher that sees him throw a giant hammer, two buses, and three fighter jets at his target.
Solomon Grundy is the character I was actually most interested in seeing in action. He does not disappoint. As expected, he has some combos that look to be extremely hard-hitting, making judicious use of one-handed body slams and the swamp he came back out of to dunk his foe’s face in.
More interestingly, he can also grab opponents out of the air (grabbing Green Lantern out of his air dash) and can render them briefly helpless on the ground by having hands reach up from his swamp to hold them in place for him. He also has the ability to grant himself a form of armor, ignoring the normal stagger from enemy attacks during the wind-up for his grab or after he powers up, with his finisher having him smash his own tombstone across his opponent.
Steel and Sea
The match between Aquaman and Cyborg showed some impressive tricks from them both. Cyborg is going to be one of the more mobile characters in the game, having a grappling arm that can pull him either towards or away from his foe. On top of that he has multiple projectiles, including one with a delay before impact and another he can fire in the air or can delay firing on the ground.
His combos also show potential to be strung together far longer than they initially appear, as he can grapple forward after knocking the opponent back and begin comboing again immediately on starting his drop. His finisher stuns his target with a jackhammer arm just long enough for him to blow them away with what looks to be the biggest gun in the game.
Aquaman was a pleasant surprise for me. Most of his attacks utilize his trident, giving them a surprising amount of range and coverage, though for his combos he also uses his fists up close. He also showed an ability to make his trident stab up through the ground under his target, granting him some extended combo capability and no small amount of style.
One move he showed that was pleasantly surprising came up several times against Cyborg. He can slam his trident into the ground to summon a whirlpool around him that appears to render him immune to projectiles.
The king of Atlantis’s finisher has him strike the ground, sending out a shockwave that summons a tsunami to cover the battlefield. He impales his foe and holds them up in the air for a massive shark to swim by, pulling them from the trident and, presumably, chewing on them in unpleasant fashion before depositing them back on the now-dry arena.
Once again, Injustice shows off some cool moves and dynamic fighting styles for its different characters. Stay tuned to find out how the next quartet of quarrelers quell their combative quests!
