NetherRealm Studio is well-known for their successful Mortal Kombat franchise.  Recently they’ve announced an exciting new fighting game titled Injustice: Gods Among Us, which will feature a variety of DC comic book characters as the cast. So far some of the cast that have been announced are Batman, Harley Quinn, Solomon Grundy, Superman, The Flash,  and Wonder Woman. The title features a storyline that blurs the lines between good and evil allowing the players to divulge in epic battles on a huge scale.

“We can’t wait to reveal Injustice: Gods Among Us because it will give our fans and gamers an epic experience as they battle like gods as their favorite DC Comics villains and heroes,” said Ed Boon, Creative Director, NetherRealm Studios. “Our team is excited to make a fighting game that is filled with fast-paced action, incredible story-telling and iconic DC Comics characters.”

I don’t know about everyone else but I’m extremely excited for this game. It’s going to be interesting to have Injustice: Gods Among Us added to the fighting genre library but if they do it right this could be a game of absolutely epic proportions. The character line up alone makes me giddy, especially since the very few already announced characters like Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn haven’t been playable characters in a game since the throwback days, if ever. Of course being a woman myself I do get especially excited when the female cast of a fighting game is strong but lets not forget The Flash, if the characters are properly balanced I could see someone getting really good at using  The Flash and destroying anyone he/she comes into contact with, Either way expect this to be a game that PlayLegit keeps up on. Injustice: Gods Among Us will be available for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii U next year.

 Real Talk By: Vex

 Just in case you missed it, I have put together a quick description of some of the details from the amazing video showing off some of the feature’s of the Wii U. The name of the controller has been branded the GamePad, the controller is redesigned and inspired by what gamers called the classic NES controller. The gamepad contains various features including the ability that lets you use the controller as an infrared TV remote. Nintendo has also stepped up their on-line by introducing Wii-verse. 

 Get connected through Miiverse – a network service where you can share all your great Wii U experiences with your Nintendo community. Miiverse lets you communicate with other players in lots of fun ways. Whether you need help getting through a game or just want to show-off something to your friends, it’s all about sharing your experiences. Nintendo stated that it won’t be available at launch, but it will be available later not only on the Wii U but your smart phone, 3-DS and PC as-well.

Nintendo has also announced an alternative to the large game-pad named the Wii U Pro controller. Looking to draw inspiration from the design of the xbox 360 control, Nintendo seems to be taking aim at the hardcore with this reveal. For more details on Nintendo’s impressive vid, click the link and leave your thoughts. I’m not gonna lie, I was really impressed and hope to see more details at E3. So sit back click the link and enjoy because it looks like Nintendo is ready to kick butt at E3.

http://www.nintendo.com/nintendo_direct

Real Talk By: KJ

On this edition of the Diss or Download, I will be reviewing two titles. One game is the appetizer, the other: dessert. The Hitman Sniper Challenge ($5 when Reserving Hitman Absolution at Gamestop) and Batman Arkham City: Harley Quinn’s Revenge ($10 via XBLA and PSN).

The Hitman Sniper Challenge is a preview of whats to come this fall when absolution releases. Agent 47 is on a rooftop with his rifle, going after his designated hit. This is a lot more difficult, because there’s other enemies that will have to be killed outside of the main dude. The tricky part is shooting guards without others seeing the bodies. When a dead body is exposed, the guards are instantly alerted, and they will leave the area immediately. Hiding the bodies really gives me a nice preview of what the future will hold. Shooting guards into a pool to hide them, or a bush, or right off of the building brings smiles. This opens the challenge up for a few more play-throughs than you would expect. Of course those special kills will all earn you a higher score. You can still win the challenge with the main baddy killed, but you will lose out on several more bonus points by not killing all the guards. If you’re trying to compete with your friends scores, you will need a lot of patience. Please note that the sniper challenge includes only one stage, and no achievements.

The graphics are some of the best I’ve seen to date. Hitman is incredibly detailed, as well the games environments. This to me is a result of Square Enix tossing their money to aid in the visual department. The sniper challenge is very short, but it’s also only five dollars. It’s not something you rush out to buy, but it does its job in selling Absolution to the consumer. If you were going to reserve the new hitman anyways, at least now you’re getting something in advance for doing so. Not a lot of companies offer this and for that its a solid

Download!

Batman has brought himself back to Arkham city to rescue police officers kidnapped by Harley Quinn. Quinn is still furious from the events of the retail game. She blames Batman 100 percent, and will stop at nothing to end The Dark Knight. Batman is also captured by the Villainess, so it’s up to Robin to save him. This DLC sees the player alternating between the duo. Robin has his own set of gadgets that will need to be used to get through certain obstacles. Goons with guns, will need to watch out for robin’s bullet shield. I knew about all of his abilities, well you know being one of the few people to originally reserve Batman: AC @ Best buy and stuff, but I digress. The big downside to the DLC is that its very short. You could beat it in two hours. With that being said, there’s obviously not enough of Batman and Robin working together for my liking. Maybe the purchase would have been more justified with the inclusion of more challenge maps and an additional character (Batwing?). Those moments where you’ll have to do the unusual tasks, do not come up enough. Keep in mind its 10 dollars, but it truly is fun while it lasts. This is a cautious download. People with money to blow, go ahead but for everyone else needing to stretch your dollars it’s a

Diss!

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Real Talk by: Steph-O

JAM Live Music Arcade is a small musical sandbox game recently released for XBLA and PSN. JAM’s trailers boasts that it allows you to ‘explore an open world of music’ in an effort to bring fresh perspective to recent ‘follow the leader’ music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. For someone like me who does not ‘jam’ on any sort of regular basis, I rather enjoyed being able to experiment with the different instruments and songs without having to really know what I was doing. However, I can imagine that someone who does enjoy music, jamming, or recording mashes and remixes, may find JAM to be limited or frustrating, but then maybe they are not the target audience.

JAM has a rather steep learning curve (I don’t think anyone could just pick up the game and play) but the tutorials that guide you through game play do a nice job of getting you introduced quickly and easily, while also encouraging you to experiment with the 32 available tracks (as you unlock them) and record your own jams. One of the really nice features of this game, and the reason that it has a learning curve, is that as a single player you are not limited to just one instrument- you have a whole ‘bankset’ of instruments, sounds, and even vocals available for every track. You can activate and deactivate the samples within each bank to experiment with different sounds and create your very own ‘jam’. There is a scoring system, based mostly on staying on beat, and you are rewarded ‘medals’ for achieving high scores in your jam sessions. I found the scoring system to be rather useless however, and could do without it. Another rather minute detail that I unfortunately found to be rather annoying was that the volume of the music while you were selecting a song from the menu was much louder than when you were actually jamming, which made me want to just select a song and venue as quickly as possible.

JAM is compatible with game controllers, but a gaming guitar is the preferred method, and it is easy to see why. Much like trying to play Rock Band or Guitar Hero using only an Xbox controller, it is difficult to press multiple button colors at once on a game pad while still remembering what other buttons correspond with the strummer, whammy bar etc. I was able to experiment with Jam mode while still using a game controller, but Arcade mode is a whole other beast…

Arcade mode is back to the traditional ‘follow the leader’ game method, except that now the five instrument banks, each containing five samples, become a horrible burden rather than a useful tool. In order to press the correct buttons at the correct time you first need to activate 1-2 bank sets, and then 1-3 samples within those banks all on time. And even worse, if you miss a note your time bar drops and you are given less time to press the next note correctly. So the worse you play, the harder it gets! The pressure and difficulty of this mode (even on the easiest songs) make it extremely frustrating. The only somewhat redeeming quality of Arcade mode is that you can play tracks that you yourself have recorded previously in Jam mode, making you feel almost like a game level designer. A neat feature, but unless you have grown board of being a Guitar Hero whiz and are looking for a new challenge, I recommend avoiding Arcade mode altogether.

JAM also boasts that its a great game for a party environment (although I did not have a chance to test this myself). I can imagine that everyone sitting around listening to one person jam would be rather similar to everyone gathered around a computer watching a YouTube video that one person wants to show everyone else. It seems great when it’s your turn, but it can be rather boring for the rest of party. There are a few different ‘venue’ options for gameplay though, and I have to say that they do provide some nice visuals without getting too distracting for the player. This, combined with the overall aesthetic of JAM’s interface make it something that you will at least feel proud to show your friends. Considering that JAM is a rather unknown game right now (“Hey I have this game JAM, you’ve probably never heard of it.”), you can feel like a magical indie game hipster in front of all your friends.

Jam mode is definitely where the heart of this game lies, and with its infinite possibilities, not to mention the promise of DLC in the future, it is something that can be revisited again and again.

JAM Live Music Arcade gets

Out of Five

What’s Legit?

+inexpensive (only $9.99)
+tutorials guide you through the game quickly and easily
+fun to mess around in Jam mode, easy to make own recorded songs sound good
+gaming guitar not required (although it makes game play easier)
+many indie songs, which is good exposure for those artists, and maybe frees up your mind for remixes
+interface is easy to navigate
+can record own song and then play recorded song in Arcade mode
+has good replayability, especially with future DLC is considered
+background visuals are fun without being distracting

What’s Perpetrating?

-Not too many recognizable songs, so remixing well-known favorites is limited
-sound levels in menus and game are very different which can be annoying
-Arcade mode is insanely difficult and complicated

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Real Talk By: Ms. Throwback

Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems is a Capcom developed and published game made exclusively for the Super Nintendo and released in 1996 internationally.  As the story goes Thanos has obtained all six gems that hold the power of the universe and must now be stopped.  To stop Thanos the player goes through each level as one of five super heroes each having a unique characteristic. Captain America, Iron Man, Spider Man, Wolverine, and the Hulk join us on this SNES super hero adventure.

War of the Gems is a side-scrolling brawling game with some platforming elements involved at times. The controls are really straight forward for this type of game with only two of the characters being able to crawl on walls, those characters being Wolverine and Spider Man. Along with the slight crawling differences each character has their own unique special move. Captain america of course has a shield throw and charge. Iron man has an artillery of special moves including, Repulser beam, shoulder grenade, flying uppercut and body slam. The Hulk has a charge and body slam move. Spider Man has a web throw and swing. While Wolverine has his classic claw charge and slashes.

Along with simple controls, the character design is actually an extremely important part of the game, as each character has their own “feel”. They range from the Hulk’s large frame which takes up a good-sized portion of the screen to Spiderman’s agile low stance. beside just how large the character is some characters have larger amounts of attack power while still other’s can take a huge amount of hits before going down. For example while Hulk is of course the largest character in the game, he is also the slowest and the strongest, leading each character to have individual pros and cons in battle. Many of the cons of a character can be fixed once you obtain and equip the different soul gems that you collect throughout the game, making the characters faster, stronger or more agile, and essentially negating the cons that they ever had to begin with.

The visuals of this game are incredible although considering the time that it was released I would expect nothing less. shadows and light points bring depths to not only the backdrops, but the characters themselves. The art design seems almost as if you’re playing and actual comic book, and they are slightly dark in nature which is a plus for me. In one level we find ourselves on the inside of a volcano surfing against the Silver Surfer in a frenzy of lights, magma, and speed. It really brings out the true greatness of this game as far as visuals are concerned.

The music in the game is good too, keeping in line with the action and speed of the game, it helps to get the player pumped for whats coming next. It also changes on a pretty regular basis and makes sure not to become too repetitive which is a huge plus. The sound effects aren’t the best I’ve ever heard but they don’t take away from the game. I feel like the effects should have been better simply due to the fact that the rest of this game is so top-notch.

All in all for any super hero, video game fan this is as good as it gets on the SNES. As far as im concerned it’s a must-have title. It’s excellently polished in every way and being that it was one of the last titles to emerge on the Super Nintendo I can imagine that Capcom had a lot to work with and poured their all into it at the time. You really can’t beat a good amount of your favorite characters in a well put together game.

Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems gets

Out of five

What’s Legit?

+Visuals

+Music

+Storyline

+Character design

+Controls

What’s Perpetrating?

-Some of the sound effects are questionable but really barely noticeable.

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Real Talk By: Amir

Hey y’all this is the infamous Trucker Ninja here to help you Play Legit. So I cracked open the game Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier to see what goodies it has for you. First I was pretty impressed when first pressing start. Games made in Tom Clancy’s namesake are always long and paint a story that some games should take note of. The level of detail has remained a constant going all the way back to the Playstation 1. Not to kill some of the story You play as the Ghosts, a four man team going on insane future soldier missions using high-tech gadgets.

That is the main point this is a stealth shooter. You use active camo just by crouching and  keeping out of sight. It’s not like some games, when you camo you’ll disappear. In this one you’ll kinda just seem blurry.  Combined with a pretty decent cover system that takes just a few tries to get used too then its game on.

This is one of the few titles i would compare to gears of war 3 with its cover system being this awesome. It earns major points. You don’t unrealistically slide to place, you do kinda a crouching run to cover. This is massively useful and adds realism to the game. Jumping over stuff keeps the gaming fast pace and the struggle for life still there. Don’t get me wrong as much as i love going HAM on a room of people you don’t really get the option to do that and live that much. Your not a bullet sponge you will die if you go in shooting like this is Call Of Duty or something. I find it more of a challenge. Go figure.

Breaching, Checkpoints, room clearing, these are things that you will do a lot! This campaign is long its a tad repetitive but honestly the story is worth the hours. It will make you think this is your job. But your AI team is literally insane. Some missions they are on point obeying master marksmen Hollywood A-Team beasts whom kick doors just to find your mother sister brother there and eliminating them with no thought of remorse. Or, they are poor aiming disappearing (in a bad way) or not healing you when you have fallen to the ground waiting for a revive they will just stare at you sometimes.  AI is an important factor it kinda confuses me how a game could be so on point with keeping a story, fun weapons to play, with predator style (on a budget) stealth. This is 2012 this ain’t rainbow six. Which leads me to the visuals. If your dude is not equipped all the way up, the face-models are pretty much a joke for this day and age. Its simply no longer impressive.

Now lets talk multiplayer its pretty darn fun, maps are not just standard boring team deathmatch kill each other rinse and repeat.  Fun concepts that really involve teamwork not just lone wolf tactics total potential of sitting on my shelf for a long time. There are lots of places to hide and be a camper, but you won’t last long this is a constant stealth movement. Don’t get seen and win is the motto!

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier gets

Out of five

What’s Legit?

+Campaign is worth the dime, you won’t breeze through it

+ Upgradeable Weapons are a key feature of this game

+Cover system is on point

What’s Perpetrating?

-AI is mentally unstable

-Lots of repetition

-Online Pass

follow me @TruckerNinja

Real Talk By: KJ

The F-Zero racing series has been generally known as a controller tossing affair. Especially in F-Zero GX, completing a race and not dying, was more of a challenge than it was landing in the winner’s circle. An equally difficult mode within GX was its story mode. The mode had a handful of levels, but each were accompanied with sharp cut scenes, and hilariously voiced dialogue. When playing through the captain’s adventure, you begin to figure out that Falcon is a really cool character. All of these examples put the idea into my mind, that he should have his own separate game. Captain Falcon has a fair share of villains he could combat with on and off the track. The three people who watched the anime will agree there were plenty of action scenes outside of just racing, so this spinoff idea could work.

Falcon’s evil cloned counter part: Blood Falcon, would make several appearances throughout. Samurai Goroh and his gang of bandits would cause minor problems. Zoda, being one of falcon’s top Bounty’s due to his criminal notoriety, would give the player a true challenge. All of these melee’s would Lead up to the final confrontation against Black Shadow. Deathborn could be the main enemy down the line, but that would be left for the next installment due to his laundry list of galactic powers. On a side note, he can’t be killed, so there’s another valid reason to delay his arrival.

You would cruise around planets looking for enemies. The player would have to chase down the perps on different planets, opening this game up for some crazy level designs. There would be side missions. You could choose to pursue a criminal for bonus points, but it would be up to the player. The player could use the earnings from collecting a bounty to upgrade the captain’s moves, and his iconic vehicle: The Blue Falcon. Color options, speed enhancements, you name it. Falcon would use his attacks found in Super Smash Brothers of course, because it’s just the right thing to do. Falcon punching/kicking waves of enemies and sending ordinary thugs packing.

Part Racer, part beat-em up, a spinoff with the Captain could be an amazing tale.

The Wii U would be a great place to have this title. Picture the game-play visuals on the same level as the featured cut scenes, but it may even look better with the new Wii’s graphic capabilities. How would the screen on the controller function? The Falcon is known as one of Nintendo’s best characters, but I feel not enough appreciation has been shown. The surrounding cast would be interesting enough to add even more flavor to the game. More should be done with F-Zero, if anything lets see a racing sequel. Its been way too long. As far as Captain Falcon goes, he is one of the few characters from Nintendo that has depth; Show the world that this BA has more to offer than just a falcon punch.

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Special thanks to Mutecity.Org

KJ reviews Starhawk and breaks down the single and multiplayer experience. Is it worth the full 60, or just a placeholder for that other space shooter.

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The controversial Prequel/Reboot wont make it out this year. Ninja Theory is working hard with Capcom to make sure the title lives up to its popular name. The new release date for DMC is January 15, 2013 for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. PC owners will get a port at a later date.

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• Better Ask Somebody: DMC (PlayLegit.Net)

Real Talk By: Ms. Throwback

Die Hard Arcade is a straight forward beat-em-up game released originally as an arcade game in 1997 and then for the Sega Saturn in 1998. It was also ported to the Playstation 2 in 2006 with slight graphical upgrades although essentially it is the exact same game. Many people also may not know that while the US release of the game supposedly coincides with the movie series Die Hard, generally the similarities are vague due to the fact that Die Hard Arcade is simply ported from a Japanese game by the name of Dynamite Deka. laughably it becomes quite obvious when you have to fight hordes of robots which as most of us remember was not a feature of the movies.

Starting off, the visuals of the game are pretty impressive. The graphical nature is comparable to Playstation one and all images on the screen are presented in three dimensions. The backdrop is lively with doors opening and closing, fireballs shooting through the air, and fan blades rotating wildly. The 3D graphics may be slightly deceiving however, as the gameplay itself is presented in a traditionally 2D fighting style, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in fact I’m a fan of the more traditional style. Mid-ground is also interesting as it is littered with objects that can be destroyed with weapons or enemies ramming into them.

The controls are pretty straight forward although can get be slightly difficult to use at times. The player may pick up surrounding objects and use them to destroy enemies. Rocket launchers, pistols, and broomsticks are just some of the fun objects the player can use to their advantage. Another control aspect of this game that’s unique is that there are cut-scenes where the player must time the push of certain buttons to create an event on-screen with either a success or failure. Depending on that success or failure you can destroy enemies in really cool ways through the cut-scene.

One mentionable main problem I have with the control layout is that the punch and pick-up-item button are the same which means that it can become somewhat frustrating when the player needs to punch and ends up picking up an item or vice versa.

Honestly though none of the faults of this game matter much in the end because I had so much fun just laughing as I was playing this game. It’s hilarious and entertaining and definitely tons of fun even for a short time. The sound effects and music are really comical especially during the interactive cut scenes. At one point a woman steps out of a doorway unexpectedly and BAM! I just punch her straight in the dome piece. it’s absolutely hysterical. Another scene I loved is when I walked into a bathroom and the guys taking care of business in front of the urinal while three dudes are apparently hiding out in the bathroom stalls. it’s just totally ridiculous and completely awesome.

This isn’t a truly in-depth game but the fun factor alone gives it some brownie points.

Die Hard Arcade Gets

Out of five

What’s Legit?

+Way too much fun

+Cool weapon usage and mid-ground destruction

What’s Perpetrating?

-Music and sound effects

-One major control issue

Follow me @MsThrowBackPL