Micahl Dickens
OkiDoki-NrdShmN
How to play Injustice: God’s Among Us
I’m not necessarily an expert on video-games or even fighting games, but I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at Injustice. That being said, here’s my little manual on Injustice, but it’s pretty good for fighting game theory in general.
In order to effectively master Injustice, we have to understand the game conceptually enough to learn the characters. By the end of this, you should be able to play any character and dish out a seven hit combo within two minutes of initially practicing that character. For most of this, I will be referencing Mortal Kombat Trilogy (MK3) and IGAU characters. But before we delve into that specific character, let’s talk basics. Keep in mind that this is all theory; that means that it’s not 200% accurate, but you can generally make distinctions based upon it.
We first need to understand what it means to play a fighting game, and how the controller in your hand correlates to what’s going on onscreen. I find that with fighting games, especially games made by nether-realm, there is a logic of the button commands with the character’s fighting moves. The way we’re going to do that is by comparing the actual combat of the game with the animations relative to the programming.
–In this guide, I will refer to buttons by numbers that are as follows:
1 = Square/X
2 = Triangle/Y
3 = Ex/A
4 = Circle/B
L2 = L2/LB
L1 = L1/LT
Same for R
For example, in older Mortal Kombat games, 2 and 4 are always high attacks (high punch or high kick), and 1 and 3 are usually low attacks (low punch or low kick). This correlates almost directly with the actual animations/attacks of the characters. In MK3, 2 is high punch and, from the player 2 position, high punch is an upper right animation/punch. The same is true of high kick, which is 4. This leaves the 1 and 3, which are lower hits than 2 and 4.
Once you understand the basics of the fighting, you’ll need a wider variety of attacks. This brings in directional buttons in addition to attack buttons. In MK3 holding back and high kick does a round house kick with every character, and holding back with low kick does a sweep kick with every character. Forward and attack buttons does some sort of character based, heavy damage attack. Holding down and high punch does an uppercut for every character and this is also true in Injustice.
So we have a means of attacking our opponent, but it’s not very effective unless we can attack in a series, and that’s where combos come in. Combos are a concept across almost all of arcade game history; they are what makes arcade games require skill. All arcade games are based on points. You get more or less points based on how well you’re playing the game. If you get more guitar hero notes in a row, you get more points. If you get hit more in a fighting game, you lose more points—that’s most essentially what your healthbar is: points. Throughout the rest of this, I may refer to your health in points. If I do, 200 points is full health. The most effective way to make your opponent lose points is to get them in a combo. In fighting games, this means a string of attacks that doesn’t break, so your opponent cannot stop you from making them lose more points or health. When it comes to the logic of the buttons, it’s usually that same correlation of attacks. So, in MK3, 1, 1, 2 would be a low punch, low punch, high punch combo, and the character animation would follow that same logic.
Finally, there are special attacks. Special attacks are character based attacks that fall into one of several categories. These categories are based on the functionality of the different kinds of attacks. In MK3, there were mostly projectile attacks, flash or teleporting attacks, and stun attacks. There are also throw special moves and damaging special moves, but most of those don’t need to specifically categorized here because the fall into another category which I will discuss later.
Projectile attacks are just that: projectiles. In MK3, Kung Lao has a hat throw, Baraka has a blade spark, and reptile has force ball. All of these can be shot towards the opponent. Kung Lao’s hat throw is back, forward, low punch. This makes Kung Lao throw a spinning hat that comes back to him. In theory, if it was forward, forward, low punch, the hat would not come back to him. Keep in mind that this theory is not exactly right 200% of the time, but there is usually a similar logic to the controls. Baraka’s blade spark is a good example. It’s down, back, high punch. The projectile doesn’t come back to him and it doesn’t shoot backward. However, this is an example where the character animation still follows the logic of the buttons. Barak stands back on his hind leg as he pushes down on the blade to shoot the blade spark. Reptiles force ball is one of the best examples of the button logic. He has a slow force ball and a fast force ball. The slow force ball is back, back, low punch + high punch. Reptile spreads his hands up and down and creates a force ball that slowly moves towards the other end of the screen. The fast force ball is the same except that it’s forward, forward, low punch + high punch and it moves more quickly towards the other end of the screen. The low punch + high punch combination is represented by the animation of the character and the speed is determined by which direction the player presses; more forward often means farther or faster!
Second, there are flash attacks. Flash attacks are attacks that either move your character or move your opponent’s character. In this section, we’ll use Noob Saibot’s teleport slam, Raiden’s torpedo, and corpion’s spear teleport punch. The logic for Noob’s teleport slam is pretty simple: it’s down, up and Noob goes up and slams down on the enemy. So, it’s almost like noob ducks down to get an extra boost as he jumps up, and this is evident in his animation. Raiden’s torpedo has a very similar logic. It’s back, back, forward and Raiden flies forward and jumps back a bit once he hits the enemy. While this isn’t quite a teleport, we’re still going to categorize it as a flash because it happens at a very quick speed and moves a character across the screen. Next is Scorpion’s teleport punch. The buttons are down, back, high punch, and he teleports off screen backwards to the other side and delivers a high punch to the opponent. The most noticeable difference between Scorpion’s and Noob’s teleport button commands and Raiden’s is that Scorpion and Noob both have a down press; the both also jump in their teleport attacks.
Third are stun attacks and they do just what you think they would: stun. We’ll use Kabal’s webspin, which is back, forward, low kick, Sub-Zero’s famous freeze, down, forward, low punch, and Scorpion’s infamous spear, back, back, low punch. Kabal runs past his enemy and they spin for a short while immobilized. During this time, Kabal can attack his enemy. Because Kabal runs across the screen so quickly, this is also a flash attack. Sub-Zero’s freeze is a great move because in addition to being a stun, it’s also a projectile. Sub-Zero ducks down when he shoots his freeze. Finally, there’s Scorpion’s spear, which falls into all three categories. It’s a projectile that flashes the enemy to Scorpion, and leaves them stunned for a short while. Again, the buttons makes sense.
So now that you’ve got an understanding of the buttons and how they work, we can get into combos and stringing them together. Most characters in most nether realm games have a combo that starts with 1, 1. When learning a new character, starting with 1, 1 or Light Light combos is always a good start. All of the DLC characters of 11 combos and so do quite a few others. If a character doesn't, there's a chance that they have a 22 or a 33 combo, but I will refer to all of them as 11 or light light combos. The combos that you’ll want to use the most are combos that end in what I will refer to as a knock up. The reason for this is because if you want to be good at Injustice, you’ll have to understand juggling.
Juggling is most essentially stringing combos together to make longer combos. We defined a combo as a series of attacks that your opponent can’t interrupt. If you notice, you can’t attack or defend when you’re falling out of the sky. That’s all that a knock up does: knocks the opponent up. In Injustice, Martian Manhunter has a knock up combo that’s: 2, 2, back + 3 or medium, medium, back plus heavy. After this the opponent is suspended mid air for a short while. During this time, You have time to do another combo. 2, 2, 2 is a good follow up because it does a fair amount of damage.
The thing to pay attention to in order to get a really good grip on juggling is timing your attacks on in air opponents. To do that, you’ll have to focus on the character animations. If you try to attack too early or too late, you may miss your target which could leave you vulnerable to a counter attack. You’ll want to wait until your character is completely done animating to enter the commands for a second attack. So in our Martian Manhunter (MMH) combo, we have to wait until he has stopped animating to follow up with out 2, 2, 2 combo. If you try this yourself, you’ll notice that if we try the second combo as soon as we can, you will miss your target. There are two solutions to this, and which one you use will depend on the combo and the character. One solution is to simply time your attacks by waiting or not waiting the appropriate amount of time. The other solution is the jump kick.
The jump kick is the perfect bridge or starter to any combo. A jump kick doesn’t necessarily have to be a kick, it’s just an attack that you can hit your opponent with in the air. The reason this is so utilitarian is because you can follow it with either a combo OR a special attack. If you enter a combo right after a jump kick, the opponent wont’ have a moment between the jump kick and your combo to block. We will talk about stringing special attacks to combos in just a bit.
Let’s recap. So far, we’ve worked out the logic of the buttons and how they correlate to the attacks you’re doing on screen. We’ve discussed the three basic types of special moves, combos, and how to string combos together by juggling opponents in mid air. By now, you should be able to pick any character, take a quick glance at their combo list, try them out and find a combo that ends in a knock up and hit them with a second combo. If need be, jump kick during the knock up to get better timing or get closer to the target. Now let’s get to the fun stuff.
What separates an intermediate player from a novice player is the ability to consistently string combos into special moves. This is a matter of timing your special moves into your combos. For our starting example, we’ll use Batman. Batman has a 11 combo that is 1, 1, 2. In order to string this to Batman’s grapple, we’ll need to basically time our button presses to batman’s attacks. With our basic three hit combo, we need to push 1 the second time before batman is retracting his fist. The best way to do this is to simply double tap the button immediately. You’ll want to press 2 during the second punch, but before Batman is retracting his fist from the second punch. You could really just press 112 really quickly and accomplish the same thing. However, with four hit combos, you may end up pushing the command for the fourth hit during the second attack in which case it won’t go through to the character.
Now, getting Batman to make his straight grapple part of his combo is a matter of timing the actual attacks well, and this is where our button logic comes into play. In Injustice and most nether realm games, your special moves will end with an attack button, and it will often follow the button logic theory we’ve developed so far. So in timing Batman’s grapple, we want to press the buttons just like they’re part of the combo. That is, you want to be pushing the attack button (in this case it’s 1) during the animation of the third hit. The advantage of this is that if your fingers are fast enough, you can start pressing down forward during attack two to have a bigger window to press 1 at the end of the combo. Mastering this technique will bump you up to the next level of game play.
Remember earlier when we talked about juggling? Well juggling doesn’t have to just be in air moves; juggling just has to be combos that end with a disable but attackable opponent. So, the best special moves are ones that are either stuns or knock ups. In Injustice and the more recent Mortal Kombat games, there has been the “meter burn” concept. What burning the meter does is augment your special moves, often so that they’re either stuns or knock ups. So, even if a move isn’t a stun or knock up, we may be able to turn it into one by burning some meter. To do this in Injustice, simply press R1 during the animation of your special move at the appropriate time. In our Batman combo, we’ll want to burn some meter to stun the enemy and continue our combo. So the button sequence is this: 1, 1, 2, down-back-1, R1. You’ll notice that I separated the sequence into attacks based on animation so that you get a better understanding of how to time your button pressing.
So now you’re pretty good at the game. You can come up with some pretty heavy hitting six hit combos in a matter of minutes by stringing together three hit combos with a stun or a knock up special attack by using meter burn if necessary. That’s awesome, but how do you do fifteen hit combos? It seems a bit obvious that it’s matter of adding another stun or knock up at the end of your combo. The programmers know that and they know that’s what the gamers want, and in Injustice, they created the back heavy and forward heavy knock ups. Holding back and heavy will knock the enemy to the other side of the screen and then they will bounce back to you. Holding forward and heavy will bounce them on the ground into a knock up. Being an expert Injustice player means knowing how to combine these moves with your regular combos and special moves to extend your combos.
So here’s how I come up with a combo: when I start playing a character, I try to find a 11 combo or any simple three hit combo that ends with a knock up. MMH has one that is 1, 1, up +3. At the end of this combo, he’s in the air and by the time he lands, your opponent is too low to really hit him again. Fortunately, MMH has a teleport that he can do in the air; it’s down, back, 3. So our combo goes 1, 1, up + 3, down-back-3. That teleport is a knock up, so we can keep going. Next we’ll add one of Martian Manhunter’s combos which is back + 2, 3, 3, 3. However, we’re not actually going to finish doing the combo onscreen. Because of the way the triple hit of the 333 is, you have to press the button all three times during the animation for the very first strike. But, we’re gonna add his Martian grab right after the third hit of the combo. So our button sequence is 1, 1, up + 3, down-back-3, back + 2, 3, 3, 3. Pretty brutal huh? But we’re not done yet. This part is tricky, but we’re going to press down-back-1 so that we’re pushing 1 during the third hit of the combo; we’re still going to push 3 all three times even though the final punch will be replaced by the Martian grab. So far we’ve got 1, 1, up + 3, back-down-3, back+ + 2, 3, 3, 3, down-back-1 and then, to make it a knock up, we’ll push R1 during the animation of Martian Grab. Once you’ve got this down, you can keep going by adding a back-heavy. Timing a back-heavy into a combo can be difficult, but once you’ve got it mastered, you will pretty much have all the utilities you need to be a combo master. And that’s pretty much it.
But wait! You have to defend yourself in a fight, right? This is true in fighting games just as much as it's true in a fight. Plus, remember that you only have 100 points to protect, so defending yourself is just as if not more important than killing your opponent. Think about it like this: the best way to win a fight is simply not to lose it. The longer you can stay alive, the more of an opportunity you have to dole out the necessary damage to overcome your opponent. This is the reason that I refer to health as points; in every arcade game ever made, it is theoretically possible to "never lose", thus the existence of the kill screen. In a proper arcade game, you are always provided the resource to never take damage and get as high a score as possible. You don't have to get all the blue ghosts in Mrs. Pac-Man, but you'll get an extra life on the first level if you do. This holds true for Injustice. The best way to do that is by blocking and dashing.
In Injustice: Gods Among Us, pressing back will block incoming attacks. When blocking, you are still vulnerable to low attacks; in the classics, this meant getting sweep kicked. To prevent this, you simply need to duck and block, but then you are susceptible to overhead hits. The best way to be a defensive player is to learn your opponent and learn his combos. If you're blocking a combo that starts with a low attack and ends with an over head, you'd have to time your ducking and standing appropriately. This is a matter of practicing and really focusing on what your opponent is doing and learning their patterns. A man with a habit isn't hard to find and an opponent with one combo isn't hard to defend against.
To further aid us in IGAU, we can push block! Push blocking is a fantastic control and it's pretty simple to do. Once you block, simply MB/R2 and you will push your opponent off of you. Mastering push blocking is a must, but that means knowing when to push block. Everything about being a good defensive player and still maintaining offense comes from being unpredictable and closing when you have an opening. Push blocking creates such an opening. When you know your opponent, you can use push blocking quite well and knowing your opponent is easier when you know the character their playing. For example, if I push block and I know my opponent is going to come right back at me, I can jump straight up and come down with the jump kick which opens me up to do a combo, and if I start a combo, it's not ending for at least ten hits. If I know my opponent is going to jump toward me, I can hit them with an upward attack like Harley Quinn's upward gun or Cyborg's double cannon. If I don't have an attack like this, I can dash forward and go right underneath them and attack them while they're still in the air. If my opponent backs off, I may use a flash attack or projectile to gain the upper hand. What you do really depends on what your opponent does.
Additionally, you can dash around and this is great for dodging incoming attacks and punishing your opponent for missing. In my opinion, it takes more to master successfully dashing away from attacks and beneath jumping opponents, but with some practice, you can really begin to use this to your advantage. When you successfully dash away from an attack, try following up with a combo that moves forward with each strike; if your opponent is stuck attacking, you will definitely hit them and that means getting off a combo. If each of your combos does no less than thirty percent damage, that's a huge loss. A lot of the characters in IGAU have an air dash and this is a very useful utility. As long as you are still in the air, you can air dash. This is useful for dodging attacks against zoners. Characters who have special moves that can be done in the air as well as an air dash have a world of opportunities open to them. MMH, for example, has a teleport he can do in the air. If I jump back and then just before landing dash back and then teleport, I can successfully dodge a string of attacks and knock my opponent up which means free combo and tons of damage.
Earlier when we were talking about attacking, I didn't mention throws. That's because I mostly use throwing as a defensive tactic. If you push L1, you will reach forward to grab and throw your opponent. If you manage to grab them, you will do some sort of throw move. You can't start or end combos with throws and you can't directly hit an opponent to combo after a throw. So what's the use? One, they look really cool and do decent damage. More importantly: throws can't be blocked! If you play online, often, your opponent will simply block for the entire fight and wait for an opening. Simply getting close and tapping on the L1 button will teach them not to do that. Mastering this concept is when you can begin to manipulate your opponent and really begin to control the screen.
So now you've got blocking all figured out, and you can dodge attacks and make your opponent pay for it. The final step in being a good defensive player (which ultimately means being a good offensive player) is staying unpredictable. If someone plays Ares and always teleports behind me when they're far away, I'm gonna start planning around that; an upper cut is a simple counter to this. Of course, if that player is good, they're going to either stop doing that or immediately block when they do and probably get off a combo. If I know that's gonna happen, I might change by tactic to a jump back, air dash back, air attack. You see how both players are adapting to their enemy? Picking up your opponents weaknesses and habits and using them to your advantage is where being a true expert comes from. The best way to do that is to learn all of the characters. I know if I'm far away from Catwoman, I'm safe because she has no long ranged projectiles. If my opponent locks in someone big and slow like Grundy, I'm gonna pick someone small and fast like Batgirl or Harley Quinn. The only way I can do this is to be practiced with a multitude of characters and by knowing all of the characters and their move sets and basic combo flows. So start practicing some characters you usually don't play and try to dish out a seven hit combo in two minutes or less. Good luck!
Common combos:
111
112
222
223
123
When checking for these combos, direction buttons may be necessary. Try'em all. Often, the combos are relatively the same. For example, 123 is often a knock up of some kind that can be used to lengthen combos quite a bit. For most of the ones where you must press back during one of the key presses, it's an over head knock up. Trust the button logic lol.
Combos I do: you can break the combos into sections where the ";" are, and often switch to other parts of the combo to mix and match. Try inserting other combos and parts of combos; you don't have to finish a combo to chain a super
Martian Manhunter
1, 1, up + 3; down-back-3; back + 2, 333, down-back-1, MB/R2; 2, 2, back-forward-2, MB/R2; back3. From there you have a few options. I either down-back-1 or back-forward-3
Jumpkick, down-back-3-down; forward + 1, 2, 3, 4; 2, 2, back-forward-2, MB/R2; back3; down-back-1, MB/R2, 2, 2, back-forward-3.
Batgirl
Jumpkick, 1, 1, 1, back-back-MB/R2; back-forward-1; jumpkick, back + 1, up + 3; UC/down+2; jump+2; 1, 1, back-forward-3, MB/R2, 2-down-forward, MB/R2, 1, 1, down-back-2, up;
remember you can take the combos apart and rearrange them as best you can. Combos are just knock ups and stuns chained to two to four hit combos. Think outside the box and throw a back-3 in there if you can.
Good Case studies for theory:
Mortal Kombat 3
This guy is a really good offensive player. He also takes some damage because he doesn't block or dodge appropriately, and that is an expense of being a more aggressive player. By the end of it, he blocks a lot more because the computer's difficulty increases to a point of intolerance for those who don't block.
Injustice: God's Among Us
Often, I will go to practice mode and select the same character twice and put the bot on the highest difficulty. It's good to watch the computer do things and show you what is possible for your character to do.
If you have any suggestions or questions, please post them and I'll address or add information as best as possible.
I’m not necessarily an expert on video-games or even fighting games, but I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at Injustice. That being said, here’s my little manual on Injustice, but it’s pretty good for fighting game theory in general.
In order to effectively master Injustice, we have to understand the game conceptually enough to learn the characters. By the end of this, you should be able to play any character and dish out a seven hit combo within two minutes of initially practicing that character. For most of this, I will be referencing Mortal Kombat Trilogy (MK3) and IGAU characters. But before we delve into that specific character, let’s talk basics. Keep in mind that this is all theory; that means that it’s not 200% accurate, but you can generally make distinctions based upon it.
We first need to understand what it means to play a fighting game, and how the controller in your hand correlates to what’s going on onscreen. I find that with fighting games, especially games made by nether-realm, there is a logic of the button commands with the character’s fighting moves. The way we’re going to do that is by comparing the actual combat of the game with the animations relative to the programming.
–In this guide, I will refer to buttons by numbers that are as follows:
1 = Square/X
2 = Triangle/Y
3 = Ex/A
4 = Circle/B
L2 = L2/LB
L1 = L1/LT
Same for R
For example, in older Mortal Kombat games, 2 and 4 are always high attacks (high punch or high kick), and 1 and 3 are usually low attacks (low punch or low kick). This correlates almost directly with the actual animations/attacks of the characters. In MK3, 2 is high punch and, from the player 2 position, high punch is an upper right animation/punch. The same is true of high kick, which is 4. This leaves the 1 and 3, which are lower hits than 2 and 4.
Once you understand the basics of the fighting, you’ll need a wider variety of attacks. This brings in directional buttons in addition to attack buttons. In MK3 holding back and high kick does a round house kick with every character, and holding back with low kick does a sweep kick with every character. Forward and attack buttons does some sort of character based, heavy damage attack. Holding down and high punch does an uppercut for every character and this is also true in Injustice.
So we have a means of attacking our opponent, but it’s not very effective unless we can attack in a series, and that’s where combos come in. Combos are a concept across almost all of arcade game history; they are what makes arcade games require skill. All arcade games are based on points. You get more or less points based on how well you’re playing the game. If you get more guitar hero notes in a row, you get more points. If you get hit more in a fighting game, you lose more points—that’s most essentially what your healthbar is: points. Throughout the rest of this, I may refer to your health in points. If I do, 200 points is full health. The most effective way to make your opponent lose points is to get them in a combo. In fighting games, this means a string of attacks that doesn’t break, so your opponent cannot stop you from making them lose more points or health. When it comes to the logic of the buttons, it’s usually that same correlation of attacks. So, in MK3, 1, 1, 2 would be a low punch, low punch, high punch combo, and the character animation would follow that same logic.
Finally, there are special attacks. Special attacks are character based attacks that fall into one of several categories. These categories are based on the functionality of the different kinds of attacks. In MK3, there were mostly projectile attacks, flash or teleporting attacks, and stun attacks. There are also throw special moves and damaging special moves, but most of those don’t need to specifically categorized here because the fall into another category which I will discuss later.
Projectile attacks are just that: projectiles. In MK3, Kung Lao has a hat throw, Baraka has a blade spark, and reptile has force ball. All of these can be shot towards the opponent. Kung Lao’s hat throw is back, forward, low punch. This makes Kung Lao throw a spinning hat that comes back to him. In theory, if it was forward, forward, low punch, the hat would not come back to him. Keep in mind that this theory is not exactly right 200% of the time, but there is usually a similar logic to the controls. Baraka’s blade spark is a good example. It’s down, back, high punch. The projectile doesn’t come back to him and it doesn’t shoot backward. However, this is an example where the character animation still follows the logic of the buttons. Barak stands back on his hind leg as he pushes down on the blade to shoot the blade spark. Reptiles force ball is one of the best examples of the button logic. He has a slow force ball and a fast force ball. The slow force ball is back, back, low punch + high punch. Reptile spreads his hands up and down and creates a force ball that slowly moves towards the other end of the screen. The fast force ball is the same except that it’s forward, forward, low punch + high punch and it moves more quickly towards the other end of the screen. The low punch + high punch combination is represented by the animation of the character and the speed is determined by which direction the player presses; more forward often means farther or faster!
Second, there are flash attacks. Flash attacks are attacks that either move your character or move your opponent’s character. In this section, we’ll use Noob Saibot’s teleport slam, Raiden’s torpedo, and corpion’s spear teleport punch. The logic for Noob’s teleport slam is pretty simple: it’s down, up and Noob goes up and slams down on the enemy. So, it’s almost like noob ducks down to get an extra boost as he jumps up, and this is evident in his animation. Raiden’s torpedo has a very similar logic. It’s back, back, forward and Raiden flies forward and jumps back a bit once he hits the enemy. While this isn’t quite a teleport, we’re still going to categorize it as a flash because it happens at a very quick speed and moves a character across the screen. Next is Scorpion’s teleport punch. The buttons are down, back, high punch, and he teleports off screen backwards to the other side and delivers a high punch to the opponent. The most noticeable difference between Scorpion’s and Noob’s teleport button commands and Raiden’s is that Scorpion and Noob both have a down press; the both also jump in their teleport attacks.
Third are stun attacks and they do just what you think they would: stun. We’ll use Kabal’s webspin, which is back, forward, low kick, Sub-Zero’s famous freeze, down, forward, low punch, and Scorpion’s infamous spear, back, back, low punch. Kabal runs past his enemy and they spin for a short while immobilized. During this time, Kabal can attack his enemy. Because Kabal runs across the screen so quickly, this is also a flash attack. Sub-Zero’s freeze is a great move because in addition to being a stun, it’s also a projectile. Sub-Zero ducks down when he shoots his freeze. Finally, there’s Scorpion’s spear, which falls into all three categories. It’s a projectile that flashes the enemy to Scorpion, and leaves them stunned for a short while. Again, the buttons makes sense.
So now that you’ve got an understanding of the buttons and how they work, we can get into combos and stringing them together. Most characters in most nether realm games have a combo that starts with 1, 1. When learning a new character, starting with 1, 1 or Light Light combos is always a good start. All of the DLC characters of 11 combos and so do quite a few others. If a character doesn't, there's a chance that they have a 22 or a 33 combo, but I will refer to all of them as 11 or light light combos. The combos that you’ll want to use the most are combos that end in what I will refer to as a knock up. The reason for this is because if you want to be good at Injustice, you’ll have to understand juggling.
Juggling is most essentially stringing combos together to make longer combos. We defined a combo as a series of attacks that your opponent can’t interrupt. If you notice, you can’t attack or defend when you’re falling out of the sky. That’s all that a knock up does: knocks the opponent up. In Injustice, Martian Manhunter has a knock up combo that’s: 2, 2, back + 3 or medium, medium, back plus heavy. After this the opponent is suspended mid air for a short while. During this time, You have time to do another combo. 2, 2, 2 is a good follow up because it does a fair amount of damage.
The thing to pay attention to in order to get a really good grip on juggling is timing your attacks on in air opponents. To do that, you’ll have to focus on the character animations. If you try to attack too early or too late, you may miss your target which could leave you vulnerable to a counter attack. You’ll want to wait until your character is completely done animating to enter the commands for a second attack. So in our Martian Manhunter (MMH) combo, we have to wait until he has stopped animating to follow up with out 2, 2, 2 combo. If you try this yourself, you’ll notice that if we try the second combo as soon as we can, you will miss your target. There are two solutions to this, and which one you use will depend on the combo and the character. One solution is to simply time your attacks by waiting or not waiting the appropriate amount of time. The other solution is the jump kick.
The jump kick is the perfect bridge or starter to any combo. A jump kick doesn’t necessarily have to be a kick, it’s just an attack that you can hit your opponent with in the air. The reason this is so utilitarian is because you can follow it with either a combo OR a special attack. If you enter a combo right after a jump kick, the opponent wont’ have a moment between the jump kick and your combo to block. We will talk about stringing special attacks to combos in just a bit.
Let’s recap. So far, we’ve worked out the logic of the buttons and how they correlate to the attacks you’re doing on screen. We’ve discussed the three basic types of special moves, combos, and how to string combos together by juggling opponents in mid air. By now, you should be able to pick any character, take a quick glance at their combo list, try them out and find a combo that ends in a knock up and hit them with a second combo. If need be, jump kick during the knock up to get better timing or get closer to the target. Now let’s get to the fun stuff.
What separates an intermediate player from a novice player is the ability to consistently string combos into special moves. This is a matter of timing your special moves into your combos. For our starting example, we’ll use Batman. Batman has a 11 combo that is 1, 1, 2. In order to string this to Batman’s grapple, we’ll need to basically time our button presses to batman’s attacks. With our basic three hit combo, we need to push 1 the second time before batman is retracting his fist. The best way to do this is to simply double tap the button immediately. You’ll want to press 2 during the second punch, but before Batman is retracting his fist from the second punch. You could really just press 112 really quickly and accomplish the same thing. However, with four hit combos, you may end up pushing the command for the fourth hit during the second attack in which case it won’t go through to the character.
Now, getting Batman to make his straight grapple part of his combo is a matter of timing the actual attacks well, and this is where our button logic comes into play. In Injustice and most nether realm games, your special moves will end with an attack button, and it will often follow the button logic theory we’ve developed so far. So in timing Batman’s grapple, we want to press the buttons just like they’re part of the combo. That is, you want to be pushing the attack button (in this case it’s 1) during the animation of the third hit. The advantage of this is that if your fingers are fast enough, you can start pressing down forward during attack two to have a bigger window to press 1 at the end of the combo. Mastering this technique will bump you up to the next level of game play.
Remember earlier when we talked about juggling? Well juggling doesn’t have to just be in air moves; juggling just has to be combos that end with a disable but attackable opponent. So, the best special moves are ones that are either stuns or knock ups. In Injustice and the more recent Mortal Kombat games, there has been the “meter burn” concept. What burning the meter does is augment your special moves, often so that they’re either stuns or knock ups. So, even if a move isn’t a stun or knock up, we may be able to turn it into one by burning some meter. To do this in Injustice, simply press R1 during the animation of your special move at the appropriate time. In our Batman combo, we’ll want to burn some meter to stun the enemy and continue our combo. So the button sequence is this: 1, 1, 2, down-back-1, R1. You’ll notice that I separated the sequence into attacks based on animation so that you get a better understanding of how to time your button pressing.
So now you’re pretty good at the game. You can come up with some pretty heavy hitting six hit combos in a matter of minutes by stringing together three hit combos with a stun or a knock up special attack by using meter burn if necessary. That’s awesome, but how do you do fifteen hit combos? It seems a bit obvious that it’s matter of adding another stun or knock up at the end of your combo. The programmers know that and they know that’s what the gamers want, and in Injustice, they created the back heavy and forward heavy knock ups. Holding back and heavy will knock the enemy to the other side of the screen and then they will bounce back to you. Holding forward and heavy will bounce them on the ground into a knock up. Being an expert Injustice player means knowing how to combine these moves with your regular combos and special moves to extend your combos.
So here’s how I come up with a combo: when I start playing a character, I try to find a 11 combo or any simple three hit combo that ends with a knock up. MMH has one that is 1, 1, up +3. At the end of this combo, he’s in the air and by the time he lands, your opponent is too low to really hit him again. Fortunately, MMH has a teleport that he can do in the air; it’s down, back, 3. So our combo goes 1, 1, up + 3, down-back-3. That teleport is a knock up, so we can keep going. Next we’ll add one of Martian Manhunter’s combos which is back + 2, 3, 3, 3. However, we’re not actually going to finish doing the combo onscreen. Because of the way the triple hit of the 333 is, you have to press the button all three times during the animation for the very first strike. But, we’re gonna add his Martian grab right after the third hit of the combo. So our button sequence is 1, 1, up + 3, down-back-3, back + 2, 3, 3, 3. Pretty brutal huh? But we’re not done yet. This part is tricky, but we’re going to press down-back-1 so that we’re pushing 1 during the third hit of the combo; we’re still going to push 3 all three times even though the final punch will be replaced by the Martian grab. So far we’ve got 1, 1, up + 3, back-down-3, back+ + 2, 3, 3, 3, down-back-1 and then, to make it a knock up, we’ll push R1 during the animation of Martian Grab. Once you’ve got this down, you can keep going by adding a back-heavy. Timing a back-heavy into a combo can be difficult, but once you’ve got it mastered, you will pretty much have all the utilities you need to be a combo master. And that’s pretty much it.
But wait! You have to defend yourself in a fight, right? This is true in fighting games just as much as it's true in a fight. Plus, remember that you only have 100 points to protect, so defending yourself is just as if not more important than killing your opponent. Think about it like this: the best way to win a fight is simply not to lose it. The longer you can stay alive, the more of an opportunity you have to dole out the necessary damage to overcome your opponent. This is the reason that I refer to health as points; in every arcade game ever made, it is theoretically possible to "never lose", thus the existence of the kill screen. In a proper arcade game, you are always provided the resource to never take damage and get as high a score as possible. You don't have to get all the blue ghosts in Mrs. Pac-Man, but you'll get an extra life on the first level if you do. This holds true for Injustice. The best way to do that is by blocking and dashing.
In Injustice: Gods Among Us, pressing back will block incoming attacks. When blocking, you are still vulnerable to low attacks; in the classics, this meant getting sweep kicked. To prevent this, you simply need to duck and block, but then you are susceptible to overhead hits. The best way to be a defensive player is to learn your opponent and learn his combos. If you're blocking a combo that starts with a low attack and ends with an over head, you'd have to time your ducking and standing appropriately. This is a matter of practicing and really focusing on what your opponent is doing and learning their patterns. A man with a habit isn't hard to find and an opponent with one combo isn't hard to defend against.
To further aid us in IGAU, we can push block! Push blocking is a fantastic control and it's pretty simple to do. Once you block, simply MB/R2 and you will push your opponent off of you. Mastering push blocking is a must, but that means knowing when to push block. Everything about being a good defensive player and still maintaining offense comes from being unpredictable and closing when you have an opening. Push blocking creates such an opening. When you know your opponent, you can use push blocking quite well and knowing your opponent is easier when you know the character their playing. For example, if I push block and I know my opponent is going to come right back at me, I can jump straight up and come down with the jump kick which opens me up to do a combo, and if I start a combo, it's not ending for at least ten hits. If I know my opponent is going to jump toward me, I can hit them with an upward attack like Harley Quinn's upward gun or Cyborg's double cannon. If I don't have an attack like this, I can dash forward and go right underneath them and attack them while they're still in the air. If my opponent backs off, I may use a flash attack or projectile to gain the upper hand. What you do really depends on what your opponent does.
Additionally, you can dash around and this is great for dodging incoming attacks and punishing your opponent for missing. In my opinion, it takes more to master successfully dashing away from attacks and beneath jumping opponents, but with some practice, you can really begin to use this to your advantage. When you successfully dash away from an attack, try following up with a combo that moves forward with each strike; if your opponent is stuck attacking, you will definitely hit them and that means getting off a combo. If each of your combos does no less than thirty percent damage, that's a huge loss. A lot of the characters in IGAU have an air dash and this is a very useful utility. As long as you are still in the air, you can air dash. This is useful for dodging attacks against zoners. Characters who have special moves that can be done in the air as well as an air dash have a world of opportunities open to them. MMH, for example, has a teleport he can do in the air. If I jump back and then just before landing dash back and then teleport, I can successfully dodge a string of attacks and knock my opponent up which means free combo and tons of damage.
Earlier when we were talking about attacking, I didn't mention throws. That's because I mostly use throwing as a defensive tactic. If you push L1, you will reach forward to grab and throw your opponent. If you manage to grab them, you will do some sort of throw move. You can't start or end combos with throws and you can't directly hit an opponent to combo after a throw. So what's the use? One, they look really cool and do decent damage. More importantly: throws can't be blocked! If you play online, often, your opponent will simply block for the entire fight and wait for an opening. Simply getting close and tapping on the L1 button will teach them not to do that. Mastering this concept is when you can begin to manipulate your opponent and really begin to control the screen.
So now you've got blocking all figured out, and you can dodge attacks and make your opponent pay for it. The final step in being a good defensive player (which ultimately means being a good offensive player) is staying unpredictable. If someone plays Ares and always teleports behind me when they're far away, I'm gonna start planning around that; an upper cut is a simple counter to this. Of course, if that player is good, they're going to either stop doing that or immediately block when they do and probably get off a combo. If I know that's gonna happen, I might change by tactic to a jump back, air dash back, air attack. You see how both players are adapting to their enemy? Picking up your opponents weaknesses and habits and using them to your advantage is where being a true expert comes from. The best way to do that is to learn all of the characters. I know if I'm far away from Catwoman, I'm safe because she has no long ranged projectiles. If my opponent locks in someone big and slow like Grundy, I'm gonna pick someone small and fast like Batgirl or Harley Quinn. The only way I can do this is to be practiced with a multitude of characters and by knowing all of the characters and their move sets and basic combo flows. So start practicing some characters you usually don't play and try to dish out a seven hit combo in two minutes or less. Good luck!
Common combos:
111
112
222
223
123
When checking for these combos, direction buttons may be necessary. Try'em all. Often, the combos are relatively the same. For example, 123 is often a knock up of some kind that can be used to lengthen combos quite a bit. For most of the ones where you must press back during one of the key presses, it's an over head knock up. Trust the button logic lol.
Combos I do: you can break the combos into sections where the ";" are, and often switch to other parts of the combo to mix and match. Try inserting other combos and parts of combos; you don't have to finish a combo to chain a super
Martian Manhunter
1, 1, up + 3; down-back-3; back + 2, 333, down-back-1, MB/R2; 2, 2, back-forward-2, MB/R2; back3. From there you have a few options. I either down-back-1 or back-forward-3
Jumpkick, down-back-3-down; forward + 1, 2, 3, 4; 2, 2, back-forward-2, MB/R2; back3; down-back-1, MB/R2, 2, 2, back-forward-3.
Batgirl
Jumpkick, 1, 1, 1, back-back-MB/R2; back-forward-1; jumpkick, back + 1, up + 3; UC/down+2; jump+2; 1, 1, back-forward-3, MB/R2, 2-down-forward, MB/R2, 1, 1, down-back-2, up;
remember you can take the combos apart and rearrange them as best you can. Combos are just knock ups and stuns chained to two to four hit combos. Think outside the box and throw a back-3 in there if you can.
Good Case studies for theory:
This guy is a really good offensive player. He also takes some damage because he doesn't block or dodge appropriately, and that is an expense of being a more aggressive player. By the end of it, he blocks a lot more because the computer's difficulty increases to a point of intolerance for those who don't block.
Often, I will go to practice mode and select the same character twice and put the bot on the highest difficulty. It's good to watch the computer do things and show you what is possible for your character to do.
If you have any suggestions or questions, please post them and I'll address or add information as best as possible.
