Injustice Character Close-Up of Black Adam

Black Adam is one of the characters in the soon-to-release Injustice: Gods Among Us that has me most excited.  He is an awesome character and has a fairly unique appeal in the DC Universe despite having powers that are largely shared by Shazam.  As exciting as his announcement of being playable was, at the time of that announcement there was a total lack of actual gameplay footage to let us analyse how he will actually play.

Now that we have such footage, let us take a closer look at him.

Modern-Day Pharaoh

Right away it becomes obvious–the game captures Black Adam’s aesthetic nicely, based on his combat stance being more of an aloof pose than anything practical.  He immediately shows off some very promising juggle potential, having multiple moves to knock enemies up or bounce them on the ground, even in mid-air, and multiple ways of following up the moves.

He also shows a stun, an ability that hovers three orbs about himself that persist until coming into contact with his foe, and multiple projectiles.  While he has the obvious lightning bolts, both from the air and more directly, it is his ball lightning attack that seems most abusable of his ranged game.  It sticks to the ground and detonates after a few seconds, creating some nice trap potential and giving him a ranged juggle set-up.

The combos shown in the video do not seem to hit particularly quickly, preferring to strike a few times rather than layering on dozens of smaller hits (like his opponent Green Arrow) and the aerial dive kick he uses to close the distance looks to be good at setting such combos up, albeit it is also a move that seems readily punishable by a canny foe.

Black Adam’s finisher has him uppercut, then knee his opponent high into the air before grabbing them and throwing them back to the ground to be zapped and then stood upon.

Even his victory pose is cool.  “This will always be a world of dictators,” followed by a foot on his opponent and a further electric shock.

My biggest remaining question after studying Black Adam in depth is to wonder how I’m ever going to choose whether to prioritize getting decent with him over Sinestro or vice versa.  Injustice…  You are causing me problems with your overwhelming awesome.