Poor Effort

This has to be one of the most badly designed fighting games in recent years. Yet it gets good reviews for things other games do that get them slated. For Honour has a dreadful gear system, as does Injustice which also has the same kind of random rubbish loot box system as Overwatch. 5 levels of rarity where 99% of what you get is utter vendor trash you will never need or use, clogging up inventory space that is pointlessly limited.

The game seems to expect you to play every character all the time, without realising that is not at all how these games work. It has a levelling system that does nothing but slow down the enjoyment of acquiring gear by creating needless level locks, while awarding xp at a frustratingly glacial pace. This also affects multiverse mode, which is nothing more than a tedious series of fights that arbitrarily requires certainc ahracters at certain levels with modifiers that spoil the game experience completely. The rewards are, the great majority of the time, not worth the effort. There is no point to opening boxes that aren't gold, adn even gold is a crapshoot.

The guild system is similarly hampered. The difficulty spikes with certain AI fights is crushingly difficult to the point I just can't be bothered any more. When the reward isn't worth the effort, your design has failed. And all this is before we get to that actual gameplay.

The character balance is transparently broken. A clear section of the roster is hands down better than the rest. They have the tools to deal with any situation and can exploit the game's frustrating mechanics much easier than the rest. They likely (though not always) have traits that are universally effective. Other characters, like Craptain Cold and the Slowker have to stand still while charging their trait. This is such poor design it makes my head spin. Risk v reward is perfectly reasonable, but in practice it simply doesn't work. Are you likely to be facing an opponent that won't punish you for standing still? Is the reward worth it? In some cases, possibly. In others (like the Joker), not remotely (clownsanity is useless).

The arenas are way too big and simply promote the worst, turtling style, ways of playing that reward the insane level of zoning that NRS inexplicably seem to want in their game. The zoning breaks the game clean in half; against a hard zoner like deadshot or fate you are denied the ability to use your character in any of the ways that make him unique that presumably you chose him for. Instead you are forced to play a frustrating mini game that punishes you hard for a bad read. Even on block Deadshots low rifle has an obscene amount of pushback. All of this is compounded by the nonsensical choice to use a d button to block. It doesn't work in a game like this at all. Certain moves exploit it completely - such as supergirl's teleport punch, which should never have been included (it's not as if her trait isn't OP enough).

Speaking of the inputs, they are rubbish. They are sloppy and incapable of processing moves precisely at times. It matters not how you set them, whether or not you use negative edge, because moves will come out at random with no input from you at all. I've seen this happen repeatedly.

Finally, while the roster had promise, the characters largely all play the exact same way. It doesn't matter how you dress it up, they are ultimately not terribly deep and knowledge of one is really enough to play the others reasonably competently. This is unlike a game like SF (which i'm not championing, it's just an example fanboy) where many of the characters play completely differently regardless of their input commands, Dhalsim for instance is light years different from Ryu even though both can do a QCF move to launch a projectile.

DLC is proving to be a mess. We don't need or want MK characters in a DC game. At all. DC has 75 yeras of history to choose from. It doesn't need another ice snowball wielding character, nor another electricity wielding character; you haven't even made clever choices. Topping it off you can't even access it so what was the point anyway? It says 'get fighter pack 1', sends you to the PSN store, and then tells you no content is available! Way to support your fans Boon - oh, sorry didn't mean to interrupt you trolling us on twitter!

Finally, FINALLY, the game needs serious optimisation. It is far too resource intensive for what it is. Other games, with way more going on, do not push the system as hard as this. THe sound my console makes when this game runs you'd think it was about to launch into orbit.