Black Adam is, in a word, strange. He’s not exactly a rushdown character and yet not exactly a zoner either. He has traps that he can place on the ground, but they are very small and don’t do much for area denial. Instead, I found that it’s best to use these abilities after a combo that ends in a knockdown to set up oki mix-ups.
Adam has a number of electricity based moves as well, which cause a shock hit-state. Shock is one of the many types of special hit-states in Injustice that can increase your opponent’s hit-stun beyond normal amounts. Adam’s bolts are slow, though, and at first glance only seem to be effective as combo extenders. But that’s not saying they don’t have potential, as there’s likely a bit of tech hidden here that will come out with extended experimentation.
One thing I noticed was that Adam’s aerial normals came out at weird angles. He has a downward kick with both legs that hits almost completely vertically, which I found to be hard to connect with on jump-ins. It does have a hit-box on the back that made for some interesting cross-ups, but the arc was so weird that I simply had more luck approaching from the ground.
Adam’s trait button (described at the demo as the “superhero power” button) summons three orbs of electricity that rotate around him, similar to Vergil’s spiral swords in UMvC3 but with a couple key differences. First of all, while they do damage to the opponent on contact, they do not put the opponent into hit-stun. More importantly, they nullify opponent’s attacks and projectiles, making it an amazing tool for getting in on other zoners, especially when used with his aforementioned traps.
I feel as if Black Adam is a character who will take a longer amount of time to accurately nail down. He isn’t a simple character to use, that’s for sure. I was impressed with the unique toolset that he had, but I just couldn’t get it to work with the time I had with him. I’m looking forward to trying him out further when the game releases, if only because his gameplay archetype is so non-standard.
