Bam! Bif! Pow! Injustice 2 hits open beta
ZONK!
Your favourite DC Comics superheroes and villains -- including Poison Ivy, Swamp Thing, Black Canary, Catwoman, the animal fella, the angry one, Seaman, Jared Leto, and the one who's definitely miffed but I wouldn't say angry per se -- are now BAM!ing, BIF!ing, and POW!ing all over PC in a free open beta test of Injustice 2. It's the sequel to 2013's superpowered fighting game from Mortal Kombat developers NetherRealm Studios, and is coming to PC a few months after its console debut. NetherRealm want to be sure it's in decent shape before launching, though, so everyone is invited to try the multiplayer for free this week.
The beta only offers 1v1 multiplayer, without the story mode or tutorials or anything, because it's here to test the game's netcode and online infrastructure. My download is still ticking away but initial reports seem positive.
Hit Steam to download the Injustice 2 open beta client. It's a 32GB download. The beta started last night and will end this Friday, November 10th. This test was supposed to kick off on October 25th, but it ended up delayed. Here we are now.
What's Injustice 2 like anyway? Some thoughts from our Adam, who has already played it on PlayStation 4:
"I'm not a fighting game fan so it's entirely possible that my enjoyment of Injustice 2 comes from a place of deep ignorance. What I know is that it has a very silly story with big fancy cutscenes involving characters that I recognise, and Batman sounds increasingly petulant when he tells people off between rounds. Oh, and when you finish the story there's an effectively endless singleplayer mode where you jump around between worlds in the multiverse punching and kicking people for justice and profit. The profit comes in the form of loot Mother Boxes that give you new bits of equipment for the massive roster of heroes and villains. It changes the way they look, but also provides buffs to stats as if you're playing some kind of RPG.
"My Batman has the biggest, pointiest ears I could find."
I'm not interested in DC's current grimdark nonsense but big pointy ears work for me.