Injustice 2 Presents New Characters, Finishing Moves, Same Awesome Brutality at E3 2016

Injustice: Gods Among Us fans looking for something new, well, you're going to get a lot of it in Injustice 2. With the new gear system, new finishing moves, new characters, and new multi-tiered arenas to fight on, plus the same visceral beat-downs and many returning fan-favorites, there's plenty for fans old and new to be excited about in the new game.

During a theater presentation at E3 2016, NetherRealm studios started by showing off the new "Gear" system. These items of armor – thousands of possibilities for each – are dropped randomly as you play, and can boost your strength, your abilities, your defense, your health, and be equipped immediately after each fight. You get to choose exactly how you want to create your version of Superman or Batman or any other character, complete with both the attribute shifts and a new look for the characters on screen. It's extremely easy to manage – a single click either equips or puts it into your inventory. It's that easy. If you want your Batman to have a red bat, a full face mask, and pointed armor gauntlets, you can.

New characters showed off during both the closed door presentation and when WB Games took Comicbook.com to private hands-on stations included Gorilla Grodd, Supergirl, and Atrocitus the Red Lantern. Grodd has a little power boost from his regular abilities in the comics (and on The CW's The Flash), where his super strength and telepathy are joined by telekinesis, a much easier ability to show off in a fighting game. Grodd moves very uniquely compared to the rest of the playable characters, with true gorilla-like movement, and big heavy swings of his arms and legs when attacking. His telekinesis, a unique ability, lets him hover for devastating drop attacks, and provides his own classic take on "Why are you hitting yourself?" where he uses his opponent's own fists to deliver a beat down. Oh, and he can eat his opponent's face, though it's not shown with any great detail.

Supergirl plays like a combination of Batman and Superman – she's a little faster than Superman in her individual strikes, and seems to have much easier combos than her cousin. Her walking unique move, blasting full force with her heat vision while walking toward her foe, is a great way to deliver a massive final combo, and invokes some of the coolest moments of the TV series. Her supermove might be the most outrageous of them all, as she drags her foe into space, flies them around the Sun itself, then blasts them with heat vision back to Earth, colliding with meteors that come crashing down upon them along the way. Ouch.

Atrocitus is accompanied by his Red Lantern pal, the housecat Dax-Starr. As Red Lanterns can, both of them use both their Red rings and a firy blood vomit to fight. Dax can provide support to Atrocitus throughout, throwing up a shield, emitting quick blasts from his ring, and other moves. His supermove sees him summon the Red entity, The Butcher for a devastating blow, while reciting the Red Lantern oath.

Of course, the returning characters are also getting new supermoves, with Batman taking a character, shooting them into the air where they're grabbed by the Batwing, flown high up, dropped, and shot in rapid succession as they fall. Superman's new move sees him punching characters repeatedly through the air in a very cinematic fashion, until grabbing them by the face to throw them back down. Aquaman's is a modified version of his old one, using a typhoon to launch them in the air, spearing them with his trident, and feeding them to a massive prehistoric shark.

That's just a taste of what you can expect when Injustice 2 hits in 2017, but it should be plenty to get any fan excited.