Injustice: Gods Among Us
50 Achievements
1,000
150-200h
Xbox 360
Xbox One
Xbox Series
Ultimate Battler
Complete Battle Mode
50
How to unlock the Ultimate Battler achievement in Injustice: Gods Among Us - Definitive Guide
This achievement unlocks upon successfully clearing all 20 Battle Mode challenges in "Battles" Mode. Battle Mode can be accessed from the main menu by going to Single Player > Battles. In Battles Mode there are 20 different kind of battle mode challenges with different conditions, some of which must be unlocked first. Most challenges require you to defeat a randomized lineup of 10 opponents and you must defeat all 10 of them with specific conditions for each fight such as: being poisoned the entire fight, playing as a random character, fight with only 25% health, mystery buffs, and more. Except for Classic Battle, every Battle Mode has its own set difficulty, and usually the difficulty level is connected to each opponent you face varying from Very Easy to Hard. Usually the first few opponents are very easy to defeat but the opponents will become more resilient and difficult to beat as you progress.
*Updated 5/20* Injustice Patch v1.03 Release Notes
Unlocking Battle Mode Challenges
When first starting the game, only 5 Battle Modes will be available; the other 15 must be unlocked. To unlock them you need to use acquired Access Cards and unlock them in the Archives located under Bonus Features. You'll naturally get them when going for the "Hoarder" achievement. Access Cards are acquired whenever you level up and you should have enough cards to unlock the other 15 Battle Modes by the time you reach Level 20. In short, you should have plenty of cards for this while going for "The Hero We Deserve" achievement.
Breakdown
Clearing all 20 of these Battle Modes should not be too difficult at first. For 15 of the 20 Battles you can continue and select "Retry" if you are ever defeated. This allows you to have a rematch against the opponent who beat you so that you can continue where you last left off. You get as many tries as you need to complete the challenge. The ONLY Modes you will have to clear without using a retry are: Survivor, Speed Run, Unstoppable, The Max, and Impossible.
You can see if you have already completed a Battle by highlighting the selection and pressing the -button to see the Leaderboards on that battle. Your GT will be displayed at the bottom of the leaderboard. If there is a 0 next to your name that means you have not cleared it yet. If you have some sort of score value next to your name that means you have cleared it already. Listed below are all 20 Battle Mode challenges and the conditions for each one:
1. Classic – Defeat a series of randomly chosen heroes and villains set at your desired difficulty level.
2 Heroes Only – Can you stand against the might of the world’s most powerful heroes?
3. Villains Only – Test your skills against the most dangerous villains the universe has ever know!
4. Poisoned – Poison courses through your veins, constantly draining your health!
5. Survivor – Your Heath Meter carries over from match to match! Perform feats of exceptional skill to obtain bonus health.
6. Mirror Match – Fight as your opponent in a series of mirror matches!
7. Mystery – Each match grants a mystery buff or debuff to your fighter!
8. Fully Charged – Both you and your opponent have unlimited Super Meter but Super Moves are disabled!
9. Combo Heaven – You must perform a combo of the required number of hits and win the match! Transitions and Super Moves are Disabled.
10. Help From Above – Your opponents health will be restored to full every 30 seconds!
11. Injured – Begin each match with only one quarter of your maximum health!
12. Give And Take – You and your opponent gain health on each landed attack! You must defeat your opponent before time runs out!
13. Sidekick – Two opponents per match on a single arena will push your abilities to the max!
14. Speed Run – Can you defeat all of your opponents in under 2 minutes total?
15. Random Fighter – Fight each opponent with a randomly chosen hero or villain!
16. Countdown – You must defeat each of your opponents in under 30 seconds!
17. Unstoppable – Defeat all of your opponents without losing a single match!
18. The Max – You have one chance to defeat all of your opponents at maximum difficulty!
19. Full House – Try to defeat the entire cast of Injustice!
20. Impossible! – Attempt to defeat the entire cast of Injustice with a single Health Meter!
A quick guide to most of the Battles listed above can be found in the link below. The focus of this solution will mainly be on The Max and Impossible!2 Heroes Only – Can you stand against the might of the world’s most powerful heroes?
3. Villains Only – Test your skills against the most dangerous villains the universe has ever know!
4. Poisoned – Poison courses through your veins, constantly draining your health!
5. Survivor – Your Heath Meter carries over from match to match! Perform feats of exceptional skill to obtain bonus health.
6. Mirror Match – Fight as your opponent in a series of mirror matches!
7. Mystery – Each match grants a mystery buff or debuff to your fighter!
8. Fully Charged – Both you and your opponent have unlimited Super Meter but Super Moves are disabled!
9. Combo Heaven – You must perform a combo of the required number of hits and win the match! Transitions and Super Moves are Disabled.
10. Help From Above – Your opponents health will be restored to full every 30 seconds!
11. Injured – Begin each match with only one quarter of your maximum health!
12. Give And Take – You and your opponent gain health on each landed attack! You must defeat your opponent before time runs out!
13. Sidekick – Two opponents per match on a single arena will push your abilities to the max!
14. Speed Run – Can you defeat all of your opponents in under 2 minutes total?
15. Random Fighter – Fight each opponent with a randomly chosen hero or villain!
16. Countdown – You must defeat each of your opponents in under 30 seconds!
17. Unstoppable – Defeat all of your opponents without losing a single match!
18. The Max – You have one chance to defeat all of your opponents at maximum difficulty!
19. Full House – Try to defeat the entire cast of Injustice!
20. Impossible! – Attempt to defeat the entire cast of Injustice with a single Health Meter!
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=48...
Battle Mode Strategy
Using the character you're most comfortable with and hitting the CPU with your longest, most damaging BnB combos is a possible way to clear these Battles. For the #9 Combo Heaven mission, be sure to use Aquaman and use his Trident Rush move and the meter Burn version to clear it easily, it's done by pressing Down, Toward + X then RT. When doing this move press Toward your opponent to stay in range, you can move away or toward while performing Trident Rush to get more hits. Testyourmight.com has a number of listed combos you could follow if needed. However, if you struggle with completing any of these modes then a highly effective character to use for this would be Doomsday.
Doomsday Combo
1. Angle jump at your opponent and press Down + A for a Body Splash crossup.
2. Then combo into this chain as you land: X, Y, A,
3. Link that into a Venom Tackle (Down, Toward + A) then Meter Burn(RT) once it connects for extra damage.
This is literally the only move and combo you need in order to clear 18 of the 20 Battles and it can also be used for Survivor, Unstoppable, and Impossible! Feel free to make use of Doomsdays other weapons such as his unblockable Supernova, Iron Skin ability(B-button) and his Super Move if needed. 2. Then combo into this chain as you land: X, Y, A,
3. Link that into a Venom Tackle (Down, Toward + A) then Meter Burn(RT) once it connects for extra damage.
Below in the video is the combo being executed as well as a successful run through Survivor Mode. Credit goes to Obie83 and dalleval for the combo upload and RA1NKING for the Survivor run.
"The Max"
In this Battle challenge you have to defeat all 10 randomized opponents who are set to Very Hard difficulty without using a Retry. Many people find this to be the hardest Battle Mode challenge of the 20 to complete. The CPU has fast reflexes, will read any move you throw at them, and exploit an opening to combo you into oblivion. At times it feels like the CPU knows exactly how to counter you and when. Opponents such as Aquaman and Green Lantern are even able to defeat you in just a few combos. Luckily, there is a character you can use to make this more bearable.
By selecting Hawkgirl you can simply spam her Mace Charge by pressing Away, Toward + Y to chip away at the CPU's health until they open themselves up to a hit for good damage. The move comes out quickly, inflicts good chip damage, and gets your Super meter up fast. Just be sure to properly zone some opponents by jumping back first before doing it and use your Super Move whenever you see the CPU is about to attack to gain the upper hand. Your Super Move is a definite X-Factor to your success. Play smart and stay out of corners because the CPU will thrash you when your back is against the wall. RA1NKING has posted a video of this method done so pay special attention to how he deals with certain opponents. Credit for the video upload and methods goes to RA1NKING, Dark Rocky X, PRSNightfire and themuffinboyy.
Using this move, you will still want to avoid certain opponents whenever attempting The Max. Because the 10 opponents you receive are always random, you can simply start up The Max, and if you get specific characters who give Hawk Girl problems, just press start scroll over to Battles, then exit. Repeatedly start up The Max until you get an easier lineup of opponents that suit you. Do your best to avoid facing any of these 7 bad match-up characters:
° Aquaman
° Green Lantern
° Lex Luthor
° Raven
° Deathstroke
° Wonder Woman
° Batman
If you happen to encounter any of the above mentioned characters, try to delay your Mace Charge as they get off the ground for better results- don't just mindlessly spam it. Connect with it, then dash up to them. Wait for them to nearly get fully up from the ground then quickly input it again. These characters can easily punish the Mace Charge on start-up with their special moves. They don't fall for the Mace Charge that easily and may be too aggressive for this method to work entirely. Although they're not unbeatable, it will make your Hawk Girl runs go much smoother without having to face any of them.
Projectile users such as Ares, Green Arrow, Killer Frost, Sinestro, and Cyborg, you'll also want to perform the Mace Charge on up close. Once it connects, quickly dash toward them up close as they wake up then input Mace Charge again. Repeat, and the CPU should fall for it every time. An ideal line-up of characters you'll want to face in The Max using this method are:
° Superman
° Nightwing
° Shazam
° The Joker
° Bane
° Solomon Grundy
° Black Adam
° Catwoman
° Green Arrow
° The Flash
It's really all about match-ups and hitting enough Mace Charges and Super Moves for each fight. It can be slightly luck based if the CPU doesn't behave properly. Be patient with this method, it does in fact work, but it will take some practice albeit maybe even a few losses to get it just right. You can even Practice against The Max opponents. If you go to Single Player > Single Fight. You can Practice against "The Max" opponents by first selecting Hawkgirl then your opponent in Single Fight. After choosing the opponent you wish to practice this tactic on, select the Very Hard difficulty option. During the match, the CPU will fight exactly the same way as they do in "The Max". It's how I practiced against Aquaman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern using the Hawgirl method just in case I ran into them in Battle Mode. Those specific characters are very tricky to beat with Mace Charge alone and may require a more refined strategy with Hawkgirl when using the Mace Charge. For a full Hawkgirl Versus guide to all 24 opponents in The Max, see the links below. ° Nightwing
° Shazam
° The Joker
° Bane
° Solomon Grundy
° Black Adam
° Catwoman
° Green Arrow
° The Flash
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?p=57...
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showpost.php?p=5791...
Note: If you're not comfortable using Hawkgirl, the Doomsday method may also work here as some people have had luck clearing it with him as well.
"Impossible!"
For this mode you must defeat all 24 characters from the game in a row with your health bar and Super meter carrying over each match. If you lose you will be taken back to the main menu, no retries allowed. The difficulty setting for the opponents vary from Very Easy to Hard in this mode. You do in fact get 25% or more of your health replenished after each fight depending on how well you fought. An extra 10% of health will be awarded to you for each bonus objective you complete. After each match you win, the game will tell you your bonuses during your win pose. Try to complete some of the following objectives to get as many Health bonuses as you can:
° Win the match: 25%
° Perform a 30% Combo: 10%
° Use an Interactive object: 10%
° Win a Clash: 10%
° Complete a Transition: 10%
This means you can leave a fight with as much as a 65% Health bonus if you fight properly. Impossible! isn't too difficult, but you'll have to play smart and careful with your health meter. Use the above mentioned Doomsday method for this, since Hawk Girl has too many bad match ups and will take too long to win fights spamming Mace Charge. The first 10 opponents or so are usually very easy to defeat, but somewhere half-way through you'l face opponents who won't fall for your combo so easily. Try crouch blocking against them if they are aggressive and use the pause button until they open them self up then punish. Personally, I found the crouching heavy attack(Down +A) to work well up close. ° Perform a 30% Combo: 10%
° Use an Interactive object: 10%
° Win a Clash: 10%
° Complete a Transition: 10%
You want to be smart with your Health and Super Meter because both of these carry over to the next match. Never blow your Super meter on a Super Move, your combo is good enough. Only use meter for Meter Burn with your Venom Tackle or to win clashes, that's it. More than likely while on their 2nd Health Bar(red health), the CPU will try to Clash you when you land a combo on them, so more meter increases your chances of winning or tying those clashes to prevent health loss. Remember, that using single hit heavy attacks(A-button) help prevent the CPU from clashing against you. But be warned as then you'll have to worry the CPU attempting their Super Move on you. Also use interact-able objects whenever you can, and keep sticking to the combo. Only start pausing against the more resilient CPU and scout for openings. Focus on keeping your health as high as you can and you'll get through all 24 foes. Just make sure you have at least a little over a red health bar going into fights. For me, I had just a sliver of white health going into most fights and I was still able to finish strong. Buckles Supreme has a video of this being done below.
Hopefully these methods prove effective for you. Please comment if anything needs to be added or changed.
32 Comments
Any Impossible specific tips? I just can't seem to maintain my HP high enough by the 15-16th battle...
By eurytomid on 10 May 2013 16:33
Bit of a silly question, but what do you mean by pausing until you see an opening? Do you mean literally pausing the game, or just not attacking?
Also, do you know what relative difficulty these are at? I think Classic is the only one you can choose, so knowing what difficulty to practice on would help a bunch!
Also, do you know what relative difficulty these are at? I think Classic is the only one you can choose, so knowing what difficulty to practice on would help a bunch!
By GhidorahZero on 10 May 2013 17:55
This is not a complete solution, it will only serve as an addition to excellent guide made by FeLizP.
If you was not very successful when trying the Spam Mace method or Doomsday combos in The Max mode, here's an alternative way to try.
The main strategy consist in performing a 46% damage combo with Solomon Grundy. The video at the end of this guide will give you a visual idea of how to pull it off.
Considering the standard controls of the game, being the left side of the screen, to do this combo, the following steps should be input:
.Swamp Hands (Meter Burned): , , + .
. + , (Air) + , , , .
.During first animation: , , .
.During second animation: , , .
It may seem a bit complicated at first, but it is very easy to connect everything when you catch the perfect timing.
As you will see in the video below, there is no defense for Meter Burned Swamp Hands, and this movement also "holds" your opponent, opening an safe opportunity to start the entire combo. To have enough time to reach your opponent, you need to execute the Swamp Hands at most 2 dashs distance.
Another tip is, as early as possible, once you get the complete sequence, you should try to immediately start it again, while the opponent is on standing animation. This will prevent it from escaping, and will give you an frame advantage over almost any other enemy attack.
When you're without the Burn Meter, you can try using " + , " to start your combo when your opponent is near you, or " + ," (Because this two low punches generally breaks the AI defense). These are also two good options to try the first hit, which will give you one Meter right away.
The characters that you should avoid are: Lex, Doomsday and Slade. Besides, Flash and Aquaman can also be quite difficult, but they are beatables.
If you are with the latest Title Update, this combo will get 43% instead of 46%, and the behavior of some enemies might be different compared to that found in the video. So I strongly advise that you try it offline without any title update.
Using this strategy, and maybe with a little luck, I managed to complete The Max in about 6 attempts, so I think it is worth a few tries. I only hope to help somehow.
If necessary, feel free to ask for some tips on specific opponents in the comments.
p.s.: This guide was edited with the addition of the awesome gamepad icons that were recently implemented by TA.
The following video is not mine, it belongs to MrShadowSax, thanks him for that.
That's it. Good Luck!
If you was not very successful when trying the Spam Mace method or Doomsday combos in The Max mode, here's an alternative way to try.
The main strategy consist in performing a 46% damage combo with Solomon Grundy. The video at the end of this guide will give you a visual idea of how to pull it off.
Considering the standard controls of the game, being the left side of the screen, to do this combo, the following steps should be input:
.Swamp Hands (Meter Burned): , , + .
. + , (Air) + , , , .
.During first animation: , , .
.During second animation: , , .
It may seem a bit complicated at first, but it is very easy to connect everything when you catch the perfect timing.
As you will see in the video below, there is no defense for Meter Burned Swamp Hands, and this movement also "holds" your opponent, opening an safe opportunity to start the entire combo. To have enough time to reach your opponent, you need to execute the Swamp Hands at most 2 dashs distance.
Another tip is, as early as possible, once you get the complete sequence, you should try to immediately start it again, while the opponent is on standing animation. This will prevent it from escaping, and will give you an frame advantage over almost any other enemy attack.
When you're without the Burn Meter, you can try using " + , " to start your combo when your opponent is near you, or " + ," (Because this two low punches generally breaks the AI defense). These are also two good options to try the first hit, which will give you one Meter right away.
The characters that you should avoid are: Lex, Doomsday and Slade. Besides, Flash and Aquaman can also be quite difficult, but they are beatables.
If you are with the latest Title Update, this combo will get 43% instead of 46%, and the behavior of some enemies might be different compared to that found in the video. So I strongly advise that you try it offline without any title update.
Using this strategy, and maybe with a little luck, I managed to complete The Max in about 6 attempts, so I think it is worth a few tries. I only hope to help somehow.
If necessary, feel free to ask for some tips on specific opponents in the comments.
p.s.: This guide was edited with the addition of the awesome gamepad icons that were recently implemented by TA.
The following video is not mine, it belongs to MrShadowSax, thanks him for that.
That's it. Good Luck!
20 Comments
Dude, after finding this video on youtube, I had no problem doing this, and I'm sad to know that this was not much help to you, but listen, I will delete my title update again, and then I will only fight against Green Arrow and Raven through some offline Player Vs CPU matches on hardest, so maybe I can give you some specific tips for those opponents, but the times that I tried, I didn't realize that the behavior of the opponents was varying very differently from that found in the video.
I wish I could make my own video, but I would have to use a camera, and the quality would be very bad.
I wish I could make my own video, but I would have to use a camera, and the quality would be very bad.
By Zeh Marcoss on 07 Aug 2014 16:20
Ok man. One thing I forgot to mention, I use the first version of the game, because I don't have the "Complet Edition", and don't know if that makes any difference.
After deleted the Title Update, I needed to move some content which I had previously downloaded to access the multiplayer, for a separate flashdrive, otherwise, my game just freezes before the character selection screen.
So I face the Green Arrow on Very Hard, and I must say, I lose the first two fights by little, I was dropping some combos and already had a while since I played Injustice for the last time, but then I was able to win the next five matches without many complications, and the same happened against Raven.
Green Arrow tried to spam arrows at me, but I just had to wait for an opportunity to input the first combo. I was able to absorb the impact of some arrows during Meter Burn Swamp Hands animation, and you do not need to walk back all the time as was done in the video, you can try to stay in low guard, waiting for the right moment to use the Swamp Hands, or you can try press "Down Y, B" when he's near you. Do not be afraid to start the combo while he's around, you have the advantage of absorbing one hit.
Once you hit the full combo, as early as possible, you need to start it again (if you have Meter Burn), while the opponent is in rise standing animation. This will prevents it from escaping, and more importantly, will give you an frame advantage on any other attack, including the Raven grabs...
Remember to never spend the Burn Meter in Wager clash, it is very important for you to use during combos.
Hope to have helped in some way with these tips, but if necessary, I can try to record my own video fighting these two characters you mentioned.
After deleted the Title Update, I needed to move some content which I had previously downloaded to access the multiplayer, for a separate flashdrive, otherwise, my game just freezes before the character selection screen.
So I face the Green Arrow on Very Hard, and I must say, I lose the first two fights by little, I was dropping some combos and already had a while since I played Injustice for the last time, but then I was able to win the next five matches without many complications, and the same happened against Raven.
Green Arrow tried to spam arrows at me, but I just had to wait for an opportunity to input the first combo. I was able to absorb the impact of some arrows during Meter Burn Swamp Hands animation, and you do not need to walk back all the time as was done in the video, you can try to stay in low guard, waiting for the right moment to use the Swamp Hands, or you can try press "Down Y, B" when he's near you. Do not be afraid to start the combo while he's around, you have the advantage of absorbing one hit.
Once you hit the full combo, as early as possible, you need to start it again (if you have Meter Burn), while the opponent is in rise standing animation. This will prevents it from escaping, and more importantly, will give you an frame advantage on any other attack, including the Raven grabs...
Remember to never spend the Burn Meter in Wager clash, it is very important for you to use during combos.
Hope to have helped in some way with these tips, but if necessary, I can try to record my own video fighting these two characters you mentioned.
By Zeh Marcoss on 07 Aug 2014 23:30
This solution is specifically for "The Max", check the main solution by FeLizP for other details:
SUMMARY:
This method for beating The Max involves Doomsday instead of Hawkgirl. You'll need to delete the patch as described in the main guide for this to work, because it seems to me like the AI has been retroactively fixed to handle certain situations (If you try to spam Hawkgirl's Mace Charge in the lastest patch, they'll more often than not jump backwards and hit you out of the air, something they never do without the patch).
The premise for this method is very simple: Just spam Doomsday's jump down+Heavy "splash" attack repeatedly. If you keep jumping back and forth over the opponent with the splash, they won't know what to do. Most of the time they'll block, but sometimes they'll try to counterattack and get hit, or try to intercept you in the air and get hit by the splash. If you see that you're going to hit it for sure, continue with the combo "LMH, Venom", the one described in the main guide and in the video below (Uploaded by Obie83), but without the meter burn. You'll want to save your meter for clutch supers or clashes.
MATCH-UPS:
This method sadly doesn't work on every character. These are the ones you'll want to avoid:
AVOID AT ALL COSTS:
-Lex Luthor (Tends to do reversal Corps Charge, catching you on the way up)
-Green Arrow (Will almost always shoot you out of the air with his up-arrows)
-Bane (He often uses his airgrab as well as his "Shoryuken"-type move, both almost always works. He might be beatable by other means early in the run, but not with this method.)
-Green Lantern (Often uses his ring grab as a reversal, which will catch most of the time, and deal massive damage if meter burned)
AVOID UNLESS THEY'RE AMONG THE FIRST 3:
-Batman (Tends to catch you with his upwards zipline most of the time at later stages.)
-Solomon Grundy (He will more constantly catch you with his airgrab at later stages.)
HARD, BUT DOABLE:
-Ares (I don't know if he's thinner, but the splash tends to miss A LOT. Luckily he rarely lands more than a few hits if he tags you)
-Nightwing (At later stages he might start catching you with his Scatter Bomb while in Escrima mode, otherwise easy)
CAN BE ANNOYING:
-Harley Quinn (tends to avoid your stuff sometimes and catch you with a jab into a combo in the way up)
-Sinestro (Tends to zone you out a lot, might use his "Shoryuken" sometimes and Meter Burn it, putting you fullscreen away)
-Raven (Her full-screen grab attack can catch you from behind if she uses it on wake-up. Haven't seen her combo from it in that situation though)
-Aquaman (Deals a lot of damage, and is sometimes smart enough to Anti-Air you with his crouching Medium. His character trait keeps you from comboing after a connected splash as well)
UNCERTAIN (Never ran into them while going for the achi, handle with care):
-Doomsday (I think he might be a huge threat, if he can even turn up while you play as him)
-Black Adam (In theory he shouldn't be too annoying. His character trait might hit you a lot though)
-DLC characters (If they're in after you buy them, I haven't, so I don't know)
STRATEGY:
Sadly I don't have time to make a video example, but I'll try to explain some more details here. This method is pretty mindless at its core, but you'll need to be wary of the details if you wish to succeed.
-Before picking "The Max" in the battle menu, while hovering over it, you'll see a preview of the characters you'll face. It's pretty easy to see if Lex or Bane is in there since they are so huge. Batman can be recognized from his pointy ears, and Green Lantern has the green sheen on his hand. If you see any of the six "AVOID"-characters (Unless Grundy and/or batman is at the very start), back out of the battle menu end then enter it again for a new set of characters.
-Some characters won't be hit by the splash if you jump over them while you're point blank. Try to stand a little bit away while jumping in. If you hit somone out of the air with the splash you'll have some time to reposition yourself, and can jump forward on reaction if you see them backroll.
-Memorize the moves will get hit by your splash if the opponent attempts them. That way you'll be prepared to do your combo if the situation arises.
-Save your super meter. The CPU likes to use meter burns a lot, and therefore rarely has any meter stocked, use this to your advantage if you're in trouble to initiate a clash and get up to 33% HP back. You can also walk forward and then use your Super, the opponent tends to do something if you approach a certain range. If they only have a pixel of HP left, you might throw out on or two hail Mary Meter Burned Venoms to finish them off. Another use of meter is to use Meter Burned Supernova to instantly get close to zoners, mainly Deathstroke. If you feel really daring, you could try meter burning back+Heavy and go for a transition, but this is not something I ever did myself.
-Using your character trait can be useful for several purposes. It helps you get close against zoning characters like Sinestro, Hawkgirl and Deathstroke, it prevents you from getting hit by the CPU's devastating combos, and if they have a pixel of life left, it can often be used to jab them through the offense for the kill.
-Try to use interactibles as often as possible. Not only do they deal a lot of damage, but it prevents the opponent from doing the same.
-Notice the patterns of the CPU. A lot of characters are quite predictable. In general they aren't shy to show you how much they read your inputs, and they often use a meter burned Forward or Back+Heavy to force their way through your moves. Hitting them with LL or LM will break through this and allow you to continue with a combo.
-If you're stuck in the corner (or anywhere else) with no better options left to use, the best thing you can do is just keep blocking, then try to land a crouching Light, followed by a jump over their heads into Splash. They rarely use moves fast enough to catch you on the way up in this situation. In midscreen situations you can also get away pretty effectively with a backdash against some characters (You'll have to use trial and error to determine which ones, I can't remember).
CONCLUSION:
After testing match-ups for a few hours to notice who not to fight and the quirks of various characters, I beat this battle after about five tries. The execution level needed for this method is lower than the Hawkgirl mace charge one, and I'm pretty sure it's faster too. I also has less unfavorable match-ups. So if you're stuck, consider using this method. Please leave a comment if you used this method successfully, or feel like there's something missing.
SUMMARY:
This method for beating The Max involves Doomsday instead of Hawkgirl. You'll need to delete the patch as described in the main guide for this to work, because it seems to me like the AI has been retroactively fixed to handle certain situations (If you try to spam Hawkgirl's Mace Charge in the lastest patch, they'll more often than not jump backwards and hit you out of the air, something they never do without the patch).
The premise for this method is very simple: Just spam Doomsday's jump down+Heavy "splash" attack repeatedly. If you keep jumping back and forth over the opponent with the splash, they won't know what to do. Most of the time they'll block, but sometimes they'll try to counterattack and get hit, or try to intercept you in the air and get hit by the splash. If you see that you're going to hit it for sure, continue with the combo "LMH, Venom", the one described in the main guide and in the video below (Uploaded by Obie83), but without the meter burn. You'll want to save your meter for clutch supers or clashes.
(Note that while the Splash doesn't combo into the light in the video, it will do so if you press light before you land)
MATCH-UPS:
This method sadly doesn't work on every character. These are the ones you'll want to avoid:
AVOID AT ALL COSTS:
-Lex Luthor (Tends to do reversal Corps Charge, catching you on the way up)
-Green Arrow (Will almost always shoot you out of the air with his up-arrows)
-Bane (He often uses his airgrab as well as his "Shoryuken"-type move, both almost always works. He might be beatable by other means early in the run, but not with this method.)
-Green Lantern (Often uses his ring grab as a reversal, which will catch most of the time, and deal massive damage if meter burned)
AVOID UNLESS THEY'RE AMONG THE FIRST 3:
-Batman (Tends to catch you with his upwards zipline most of the time at later stages.)
-Solomon Grundy (He will more constantly catch you with his airgrab at later stages.)
HARD, BUT DOABLE:
-Ares (I don't know if he's thinner, but the splash tends to miss A LOT. Luckily he rarely lands more than a few hits if he tags you)
-Nightwing (At later stages he might start catching you with his Scatter Bomb while in Escrima mode, otherwise easy)
CAN BE ANNOYING:
-Harley Quinn (tends to avoid your stuff sometimes and catch you with a jab into a combo in the way up)
-Sinestro (Tends to zone you out a lot, might use his "Shoryuken" sometimes and Meter Burn it, putting you fullscreen away)
-Raven (Her full-screen grab attack can catch you from behind if she uses it on wake-up. Haven't seen her combo from it in that situation though)
-Aquaman (Deals a lot of damage, and is sometimes smart enough to Anti-Air you with his crouching Medium. His character trait keeps you from comboing after a connected splash as well)
UNCERTAIN (Never ran into them while going for the achi, handle with care):
-Doomsday (I think he might be a huge threat, if he can even turn up while you play as him)
-Black Adam (In theory he shouldn't be too annoying. His character trait might hit you a lot though)
-DLC characters (If they're in after you buy them, I haven't, so I don't know)
STRATEGY:
Sadly I don't have time to make a video example, but I'll try to explain some more details here. This method is pretty mindless at its core, but you'll need to be wary of the details if you wish to succeed.
-Before picking "The Max" in the battle menu, while hovering over it, you'll see a preview of the characters you'll face. It's pretty easy to see if Lex or Bane is in there since they are so huge. Batman can be recognized from his pointy ears, and Green Lantern has the green sheen on his hand. If you see any of the six "AVOID"-characters (Unless Grundy and/or batman is at the very start), back out of the battle menu end then enter it again for a new set of characters.
-Some characters won't be hit by the splash if you jump over them while you're point blank. Try to stand a little bit away while jumping in. If you hit somone out of the air with the splash you'll have some time to reposition yourself, and can jump forward on reaction if you see them backroll.
-Memorize the moves will get hit by your splash if the opponent attempts them. That way you'll be prepared to do your combo if the situation arises.
-Save your super meter. The CPU likes to use meter burns a lot, and therefore rarely has any meter stocked, use this to your advantage if you're in trouble to initiate a clash and get up to 33% HP back. You can also walk forward and then use your Super, the opponent tends to do something if you approach a certain range. If they only have a pixel of HP left, you might throw out on or two hail Mary Meter Burned Venoms to finish them off. Another use of meter is to use Meter Burned Supernova to instantly get close to zoners, mainly Deathstroke. If you feel really daring, you could try meter burning back+Heavy and go for a transition, but this is not something I ever did myself.
-Using your character trait can be useful for several purposes. It helps you get close against zoning characters like Sinestro, Hawkgirl and Deathstroke, it prevents you from getting hit by the CPU's devastating combos, and if they have a pixel of life left, it can often be used to jab them through the offense for the kill.
-Try to use interactibles as often as possible. Not only do they deal a lot of damage, but it prevents the opponent from doing the same.
-Notice the patterns of the CPU. A lot of characters are quite predictable. In general they aren't shy to show you how much they read your inputs, and they often use a meter burned Forward or Back+Heavy to force their way through your moves. Hitting them with LL or LM will break through this and allow you to continue with a combo.
-If you're stuck in the corner (or anywhere else) with no better options left to use, the best thing you can do is just keep blocking, then try to land a crouching Light, followed by a jump over their heads into Splash. They rarely use moves fast enough to catch you on the way up in this situation. In midscreen situations you can also get away pretty effectively with a backdash against some characters (You'll have to use trial and error to determine which ones, I can't remember).
CONCLUSION:
After testing match-ups for a few hours to notice who not to fight and the quirks of various characters, I beat this battle after about five tries. The execution level needed for this method is lower than the Hawkgirl mace charge one, and I'm pretty sure it's faster too. I also has less unfavorable match-ups. So if you're stuck, consider using this method. Please leave a comment if you used this method successfully, or feel like there's something missing.
READ THE WHOLE DESCRIPTION BEFORE WATCHING THE VIDEOS:
This is not a complete run of myself attempting the MAX challenge but rather a playlist of me fighting opponents that most people consider bad match-ups and tend to avoid when going for this challenge, such as Deathstroke, Lex Luthor, Superman, Green Lantern, Aquaman and The Flash. Here I'll show you an effective and "easy" way to beat these opponents.
The character used will be Solomon Grundy and the strategy adopted will be the one described by Zeh Marcoss in his solution but I adapted it a little bit to fight each of these opponents. You'll see how I control the tempo of the fights and trigger the AI to behave in a beneficial manner that grants me the upper hand during the whole fight.
Read his solution first so you have a general idea of the inputs you're gonna pull off. The main combo seems hard to perform at first sight but it's actually really easy to master the timing and execution of it after a little practice in training mode.
There are videos of people completing the MAX challenge with Solomon Grundy already on YT using this strategy but in some fights the player barely made it and some opponents were behaving differently for me, such as Superman. I'm not being cocky here or neglecting other people's work, please. In fact if wasn't for these players I wouldn't come up with this solution in the first place, so I must recognize their work, but here you'll find a consistent strat that works every single time and has not a luck based factor when facing them.
I'm linking the videos I used for reference and taught me how to play with Solomon Grundy. The 1st one is a successful run of the MAX challenge captured by MrShadowSax and the 2nd is a tutorial video guide recorded by STWproductionz that will teach you the moves, combos and strategy in general you're using against your opponents.
I'm linking my playlist after these 2 videos because I think it's better you learn how to play with Solomon first and observe the fighting pace of these players so when you watch my videos you know exactly what I'm doing and have enough data to compare their pace with mine. And by doing this I'm crediting the people who helped me come up with this solution as well, of course. A massive thanks to MrShadowSax and STWproductionz for their assistance.
I decided to do these videos for a few reasons. First because I couldn't find anyone who attempted this challenge using this strategy with Solomon Grundy that risked their runs fighting these opponents, instead they always recommend you avoid them because this strat that normally works perfectly against other opponents doesn't suit these 6 character I'm showing so well. Second because some of them or at least one of these 6 kept poping on my opponents line-up almost every time when I was going for this challenge. Sometimes I'd take a good line-up but a Superman or a Deathstroke would ruin my run or even 3 or more of these characters showed up, so I figured that instead of avoiding them it would be easier and faster to learn how to beat these opponents.
I could post a successful run of myself beating the MAX challenge but since there are already videos of people who did that and the line-up characters are ramdom I figured it'd be more helpful to show how to overcome opponents that you'd avoid and require a different approach. That way you'll be ready for any opponent that stumble across your way and you'll no longer have to back out this challenge every time you get a bad match-up in your line-up. Plus this strategy works for any other opponent as well.
I'm not very good at fighting games, I usually struggle developing a consistent and effective fighting style, both against the CPU as real players, and find it hard to memorize the characters combo inputs as well but Solomon Grundy is a very easy character to play with and causes ridiculously massive damage by inputing not many commands. Of course I didn't succeed right away, only after some practice I managed to master each of these match-ups, and if I did it you can do it too.
This is just a complement for the already existant solutions that will help you defeat these opponents, as I mentioned before, Zeh Marcoss pretty much covered everything and I advise reading his whole solution before reading mine. Since I didn't find any videos on how to defeat these opponents using this strategy I figured if I recorded me playing it could help other players that struggles in this match-ups as I did. Just keep practicing and trying until you're familiar with every opponent behavior and you'll eventually easily defeat them all. You can see this is actually me playing by the gamertag LERISBILLSALOVE on the gamercard on the left top corner of the screen.
I recommend watching the videos in the order the playlist shows because I captioned them in a specific order and reference the previous fights as I go. The order is as follows: Deathstroke, Lex Luthor, Superman, Green Lantern, Aquaman and The Flash. If you find these videos helpful and want me to do any other match-up that you consider bad or are struggling to overcome please leave a message on my inbox here on TA or on the YT comment section and I'll record a video asap.
Well, I think that's enough said! Without further ado here is the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgBfL3VFnCtdd0NCWJwmw...
This is not a complete run of myself attempting the MAX challenge but rather a playlist of me fighting opponents that most people consider bad match-ups and tend to avoid when going for this challenge, such as Deathstroke, Lex Luthor, Superman, Green Lantern, Aquaman and The Flash. Here I'll show you an effective and "easy" way to beat these opponents.
The character used will be Solomon Grundy and the strategy adopted will be the one described by Zeh Marcoss in his solution but I adapted it a little bit to fight each of these opponents. You'll see how I control the tempo of the fights and trigger the AI to behave in a beneficial manner that grants me the upper hand during the whole fight.
Read his solution first so you have a general idea of the inputs you're gonna pull off. The main combo seems hard to perform at first sight but it's actually really easy to master the timing and execution of it after a little practice in training mode.
There are videos of people completing the MAX challenge with Solomon Grundy already on YT using this strategy but in some fights the player barely made it and some opponents were behaving differently for me, such as Superman. I'm not being cocky here or neglecting other people's work, please. In fact if wasn't for these players I wouldn't come up with this solution in the first place, so I must recognize their work, but here you'll find a consistent strat that works every single time and has not a luck based factor when facing them.
I'm linking the videos I used for reference and taught me how to play with Solomon Grundy. The 1st one is a successful run of the MAX challenge captured by MrShadowSax and the 2nd is a tutorial video guide recorded by STWproductionz that will teach you the moves, combos and strategy in general you're using against your opponents.
I'm linking my playlist after these 2 videos because I think it's better you learn how to play with Solomon first and observe the fighting pace of these players so when you watch my videos you know exactly what I'm doing and have enough data to compare their pace with mine. And by doing this I'm crediting the people who helped me come up with this solution as well, of course. A massive thanks to MrShadowSax and STWproductionz for their assistance.
I decided to do these videos for a few reasons. First because I couldn't find anyone who attempted this challenge using this strategy with Solomon Grundy that risked their runs fighting these opponents, instead they always recommend you avoid them because this strat that normally works perfectly against other opponents doesn't suit these 6 character I'm showing so well. Second because some of them or at least one of these 6 kept poping on my opponents line-up almost every time when I was going for this challenge. Sometimes I'd take a good line-up but a Superman or a Deathstroke would ruin my run or even 3 or more of these characters showed up, so I figured that instead of avoiding them it would be easier and faster to learn how to beat these opponents.
I could post a successful run of myself beating the MAX challenge but since there are already videos of people who did that and the line-up characters are ramdom I figured it'd be more helpful to show how to overcome opponents that you'd avoid and require a different approach. That way you'll be ready for any opponent that stumble across your way and you'll no longer have to back out this challenge every time you get a bad match-up in your line-up. Plus this strategy works for any other opponent as well.
I'm not very good at fighting games, I usually struggle developing a consistent and effective fighting style, both against the CPU as real players, and find it hard to memorize the characters combo inputs as well but Solomon Grundy is a very easy character to play with and causes ridiculously massive damage by inputing not many commands. Of course I didn't succeed right away, only after some practice I managed to master each of these match-ups, and if I did it you can do it too.
This is just a complement for the already existant solutions that will help you defeat these opponents, as I mentioned before, Zeh Marcoss pretty much covered everything and I advise reading his whole solution before reading mine. Since I didn't find any videos on how to defeat these opponents using this strategy I figured if I recorded me playing it could help other players that struggles in this match-ups as I did. Just keep practicing and trying until you're familiar with every opponent behavior and you'll eventually easily defeat them all. You can see this is actually me playing by the gamertag LERISBILLSALOVE on the gamercard on the left top corner of the screen.
I recommend watching the videos in the order the playlist shows because I captioned them in a specific order and reference the previous fights as I go. The order is as follows: Deathstroke, Lex Luthor, Superman, Green Lantern, Aquaman and The Flash. If you find these videos helpful and want me to do any other match-up that you consider bad or are struggling to overcome please leave a message on my inbox here on TA or on the YT comment section and I'll record a video asap.
Well, I think that's enough said! Without further ado here is the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgBfL3VFnCtdd0NCWJwmw...
This will be one of the latest trophies to unlock in the entire game. In this mode there are 20 different kind of battles with different conditions, here you need to pass between stages and beat your rival. The difficulty will increase so if you think your first enemy is hard, wait until you reach the 8th or 10th!
From the beginning this mode only shows the first 5 battles unlocked the rest will be locked. To unlock them you need to buying the Access Card related in Archives located in Bonus Features option, so try to not waste this cards before you unlock the 15 remaining Battle Scenarios.
Remember to gain those Access Card you need to rise your level. Before you can reach the 20 level you will have enough of this Cards to unlock all Battles.
Once you unlock a Battle you are free to test your skills here. The last battle is by far the hardest, it's called Impossible! and here you need to beat the whole Injustice crew with a single Health Meter! The good news is you can retry almost all battles as many times as you need to if you fail some of them, without having to replay the whole battle again except for Impossible!
You can see if you have already defeated a Battle by pressing to see the Leaderboards on that battle, if you see your name score at 0 then you need to play that battle.
The full list of the Battles and their battle conditions are:
From the beginning this mode only shows the first 5 battles unlocked the rest will be locked. To unlock them you need to buying the Access Card related in Archives located in Bonus Features option, so try to not waste this cards before you unlock the 15 remaining Battle Scenarios.
Remember to gain those Access Card you need to rise your level. Before you can reach the 20 level you will have enough of this Cards to unlock all Battles.
Once you unlock a Battle you are free to test your skills here. The last battle is by far the hardest, it's called Impossible! and here you need to beat the whole Injustice crew with a single Health Meter! The good news is you can retry almost all battles as many times as you need to if you fail some of them, without having to replay the whole battle again except for Impossible!
You can see if you have already defeated a Battle by pressing to see the Leaderboards on that battle, if you see your name score at 0 then you need to play that battle.
The full list of the Battles and their battle conditions are:
- Classic – Defeat a series of randomly chosen heroes and villains set at your desired difficulty level.
- Heroes Only – Can you stand against the might of the world’s most powerful heroes?
- Villains Only – Test your skills against the most dangerous villains the universe has ever know!
- Poisoned – Poison courses through your veins, constantly draining your health!
- Survivor – Your Heath Meter carries over from match to match! Perform feats of exceptional skill to obtain bonus health.
- Mirror Match – Fight as your opponent in a series of mirror matches!
- Mystery – Each match grants a mystery buff or debuff to your fighter!
- Fully Charged – Both you and your opponent have unlimited Super Meter but Super Moves are disabled!
- Combo Heaven – You must perform a combo of the required number of hits and win the match! Transitions and Super Moves are Disabled.
- Help From Above – Your opponents health will be restored to full every 30 seconds!
- Injured – Begin each match with only one quarter of your maximum health!
- Give And Take – You and your opponent gain health on each landed attack! You must defeat your opponent before time runs out!
- Sidekick – Two opponents per match on a single arena will push your abilities to the max!
- Speed Run – Can you defeat all of your opponents in under 2 minutes total?
- Random Fighter – Fight each opponent with a randomly chosen hero or villain!
- Countdown – You must defeat each of your opponents in under 30 seconds!
- Unstoppable – Defeat all of your opponents without losing a single match!
- The Max – You have one chance to defeat all of your opponents at maximum difficulty!
- Full House – Try to defeat the entire cast of Injustice!
- Impossible! – Attempt to defeat the entire cast of Injustice with a single Health Meter!
This strategy is for The Max (see comments for Impossible tips). There are plenty of other guides out there that cover the Doomsday strategies that will get you through all the other battles, and there’s nothing I can add to those, so I’d recommend just looking those up if you’re having trouble with other battles. As for Impossible, you’ll just have to see what works best for you among the various strategies. I beat Impossible on pure luck, it's way too difficult to plan out. I am not personally a very skilled fighting game player. I don’t even think I could call myself average. An honest assessment of my own skill is that I’m somewhere around the dividing line between the low end of average and below average. Depends on the day. YET, I was able to finish Ultimate Battler. I’ve been achievement/trophy hunting for 9 years, and I have to say this is the single hardest achievement or trophy I’ve ever accomplished, so if you’d honestly assess your own skill about how I assess my own, please know that this will be very hard, it will take you a very long time, and it will frustrate you to no end. But, with these tips and a lot of patience, I truly believe you can do it too.
These tips and strategies are for the pre-patched version of the game. This means that you will want to delete the update patch for the game to be sure that this information is as accurate as possible. The strategy still works on the patched (or gold/ps4) version of the game, it just doesn’t work as well, as the patch fixes some holes in the AI. The trade-off there is that the patch also fixed some issues with the controls. I was at a point where I could do the combo in my sleep, but every once in a while, it just wouldn’t continue beyond the Pain Chain move. There were also times where I seemed to be stuck in a block. I would release the d-pad to begin my attack, and Grundy would just continue blocking. I personally found it to be worth it to put up with the frustration of the occasionally sloppy controls to exploit the weaker AI, but you may feel otherwise. This guide also won’t include any tips for fighting Batgirl, Zatanna, Zod, Lobo, Scorpion, or Martian Manhunter. Since this was the pre-patched version of the game, I didn’t have these fighters in my lineups, so if you’re going for this on the ultimate edition, Godspeed. If you want to take your own notes and send them my way, I’d be happy to edit this solution and credit you for your tips on these DLC characters.
First of all, these tips will be referring to the Solomon Grundy strategy. There are several variants of the strategy out there, but they all revolve around using his Health Chain combo. I used the combo suggested by STWproductionz on Youtube, see this link for his combo and other tips:
I’ll be referring to Swamp Hands as just SH for the rest of this guide, and unless stated otherwise, I’m always referring to the meter-burned version of Swamp Hands. Take 20-30 minutes in practice mode getting fluent with meter-burning Swamp Hands and using the Health Chain combo. The AI is merciless in The Max, and you will not have a chance to practice in a live battle.
Stick with the Health Chain combo. A question I had when starting this, which no guide answered, was why the Health Chain was recommended instead of the Attack or Defense Chains. I can’t speak for other guide writers, but after some experimentation and experience, the 4 reasons I stick with the Health Chain are: it does more damage than the other 2, it’s easier to remember without getting flustered and missing your timing, the times to input your next move are much easier to identify, and since you WILL be on the receiving end of several combos, having the health bonus is the most useful of the 3 bonuses.
The other move you’ll need to be comfortable using is Walking Corpse (henceforth referred to as WC), particularly as a wakeup attack. I never quite got the timing down to a science on this, but I generally tried to input the button commands during Grundy’s stand-up animation, which was successful 75-90% of the time. WC walks through any and all attacks. You’ll still take the damage, but nothing short of a knockout will stop you. This is essential for getting some breathing room when you’re cornered, as you’ll either connect with your opponent, or they’ll jump over you, letting you out of the corner. Against certain opponents with projectile-heavy arsenals (Green Lantern and Sinestro, for example), WC was essential, as it nullified almost all their strategies for punishing you from a distance. Certain characters do have back/forward+3 attacks which employ animations which will let them get out of being hit with WC, even if they’re standing in a spot where it should have hit them. There’s no way around this, it’s just one of those things that make The Max as hard as it is.
Keep in mind, as I mentioned above, this will take practice. Do not expect to walk into The Max and beat it on your first, tenth, or maybe even 100th attempt. I went for The Max on a system that didn’t have my main save data on it, so when I started going for the Max, I was at 0 wins, 0 losses. Considering you can only lose once per battle before having to start over, I can look at my number of losses to get a fairly accurate estimate of how many times I had to try The Max before I beat it. I beat The Max on somewhere around my 350th try, give or take. So don't concern yourself with opponents at the end of the line-up when you're still getting up to speed. You won't make it that far anyway, so use your early tries as practice. Once you get to a point where you can string 5-6 wins together consistently, then you're at a point where you might be able to win with the right lineup and a little luck, so that's when you can start taking a look at your whole lineup. Something I noticed missing in other guides is the tip that you can just scroll to The Max on the battle screen and get a preview of your lineup. You don’t have to actually start the battle to see the whole thing. Sometimes the larger characters like Doomsday can eclipse other characters, so you won’t see some until you do actually start the battle, but at the very least, you can see who you’re up against first. After a while you’ll recognize characteristic traits popping out in the back, even if you can’t see the whole fighter, like Deathstroke’s sword hilt or rifle scope, Doomsday’s shoulder spikes, Lex’s geometric silhouette, etc. If you preview your lineup and see a fighter you don’t want, exit to the main screen and go back in for a new lineup. There will still be instances where you won’t see an unbeatable fighter in the lineup until you actually start the battle and see them all scroll past you, but this will at least save you a lot of time on the battles when you can see those unbeatables.
Every guide I see says to spam interactables. Do NOT treat that as a universal rule. There are enough characters with projectiles, upward diagonal attacks, and just general speed that you should only even try interactables against certain characters. Even then, you have to consider the type of interactable. My advice is to use them extremely sparingly, and if you’re up for exercising your memory, read on.
---1. You should never go for an interactable if your opponent is less than 1 dash away, no matter who it is or what type of interactable it is (unless you want to get hit, more on that later). They ALL have melee attacks that can hit you from that distance. You might get lucky, but it’s not worth it.
---2. Some characters, like Sinestro and Raven, can hit you anywhere on the field, and their projectiles are fast enough to hit you before you can hit them, even if they’re standing up from a knockdown. Like #1, you might get lucky, but I don’t recommend ever trying it. This also applies to the Flash. Despite having no projectiles, he can easily close the gap and hit you with a melee attack most of the time, and dodge the object the rest of the time.
---3. There are 4 types of interactables that I’ll talk about. I won’t list which characters you can use each attack against, as to beat The Max, you’ll have to know every character well enough to know these things anyway.
------a. First is the glass walls in Atlantis. You’re almost always guaranteed to successfully hit with this attack as long as your character isn’t at the maximum distance from you. You’re also almost always guaranteed to take a hit in the process. Your call.
------b. Next are the interactables that you activate from the ground and keep you on the ground when using them. This includes things like the globe in the Watchtower, the space pod in the Fortress of Solitude, and the gas tanks and toolchest on Ferris Air Field. These are the riskiest interactables and have the lowest chance of succeeding. They’re only ever safe against characters like Bane (no projectile attacks) and even then, only at maximum distance.
------c. Third are interactables that you activate on the ground, jump into the air, and throw downward, like the ground robots at the Hall of Justice or the tree in Themyscira. These are safe against the same characters as b, as well as characters that don’t have (or don’t use, for whatever reason) their high projectile attacks, like Superman, Shazam, Grundy, or Killer Frost. These are still quite risky though, as some characters, like Joker, can’t hit you in the air, but they CAN hit you before you ever make it into the air. Avoid any character with quick projectile attacks.
------d. Last are the interactables that you jump to activate and throw downwards like the lion heads on Themyscira or the TV monitors on Joker/Arkham Asylum. These are slightly safer than C, as you’re only at risk from characters with attacks that can hit you in the air. So even characters like Harley and Joker with quick projectile attacks that will stop you from using C projectiles can’t hit you with these as long as you have enough distance.
---4. Sometimes it’s worth going for interactables even knowing you’ll fail just to get them out of play. For example, if I go to throw a TV monitor at Sinestro, he WILL hit me with a meteor drop, but that meteor drop will do less damage to me than the TV will if he throws it himself. Know who the power characters are and who can use these interactables against you, and use your judgement.
I've found that it's extremely difficult to win Max battles if you're using your meter for anything other than Swamp Hands. That means no supers, no meter burning other attacks, no block breaks, no clashes, and no wagering in the opponent's clash (or at least leaving yourself one bar). To this end, it becomes essential to learn to bait your opponents into hitting you with projectile attacks. The health chain combo doesn’t generate an entire bar of special meter by itself, so you’re going to have to take some damage to generate enough special meter for your next SH. A regular (non-MB) SH is great for this. Some characters will jump over it without counter attacking, and this still generates a bit of special for you, which might be enough. But even if they do hit you, as long as you’re far enough away, that’s all they can do – 1 hit (for the most part; a few characters like Sinestro, Aquaman, and Black Adam have multi-hit projectiles). This is FAR preferable to being on the receiving end of an entire combo. Going for interactables is another great way to bait them. Against the characters that you know will stop you, this is a quick way to elicit a hit from them. And if for some reason they don’t try to stop you, or they miss, you managed to take a big bite out of their life bar.
Despite the fact that every character is supposed to be at maximum difficulty, it just doesn’t always feel that way, so don’t let yourself ever get too comfortable. Sometimes the computer just doesn’t go for the counter, and it walks right into your attack. Sometimes you can’t get a single attack out before it finishes you completely. If you aren’t an expert player (and I do mean expert), any one of the 24 characters can completely eat you alive. There is no such thing as a free win in this mode. Some characters can be beaten more reliably, but no character is ever a guarantee.
BASIC MOVES
Crouching 1-3 combo: This is a very quick 2 hit combo that is successful against most enemies as long as it’s timed right. You can often crouch to lure an enemy into close range, and the second hit of the combo will knock them down (assuming it connects, of course). This can be used to get an opponent into a vulnerable position to start your SH combos, and it’s also a relatively safe combo for biding your time and building up your special meter.
Jumping 3: You can’t block in the air, so jumping is almost always a losing proposition in The Max. That being said, your jump+3 attack has more success than most other basic attacks in this mode. Certain characters are just really suckers for it for whatever reason (Joker, Harley, Shazam, and Superman come to mind, though there are others), and it can come in handy against some characters that counter you if you go for SH at close range. Don’t make it your bread and butter, but you should at least be comfortable with the timing of it – make sure you don’t hit 3 until you’re right next to your opponent; you should be making contact at the very beginning of the attack animation, not the end. Too early and you’ll get countered every time.
Crouching 2: This move is rare but in specific circumstances, can come in handy and get you some special meter. The situation were I found this most useful was in regards to overhead interactables at the center of the stage, like the Fortress of Solitude and Ferris Air Hanger. I would start off the match by crouching, and rapidly pause/unpause to give me a chance to predict their jump. This allowed me to uppercut my enemy when they would go for the interactable, giving me the first attack special bar. I never had any success grabbing the interactable myself anyway so this was usually the best course of action. This move also came in handy when certain enemies got tired of my crouching 1-3 combos and tried to jump in on me. Truth be told they were usually successful, but once in a while I caught them.
CHARACTER SPECIFIC TIPS -
***RELIABLE WINS
Shazam - Shazam is quite easy. The only thing to watch out for with Shazam is his Atlas Torpedo move. Initiate SH from too far away, and he'll use it, which evades SH. Learn your proper distance for Shazam, and he will have absolutely no answer for you. Your only challenge will be getting that special meter up without taking too much damage, but other than that, with mostly close-range attacks, short combos, and a very slow and easily evaded projectile, Shazam should generally be a cakewalk.
Joker - No real trick to Joker. None of his attacks are dashing attacks that help him evade SH, his rolling laughing gas tank is very easy to see coming, and once you’re fluent enough with SH, he can’t shoot you fast enough to stop you.
Grundy - For your mirror matches (which were quite rare to be honest, I fought Grundy exactly once), you'll run into the same problems that make this an effective strategy for you. Keep your twin at a distance or he'll use WC and go to combo town on you, and SH does not break through WC. Other than that, I felt like Grundy was an easy win. Your results may vary since I'm basing this off of a single fight, but for that exact reason, it probably doesn't matter.
Bane - Use SH when Bane is about 1 dash away. Bane’s forward+3 attack makes him jump, so close-range SH will miss just about every time. Since you want to keep some distance from Bane, try not to corner him. The closer you are to Bane, the more perfect your timing has to be. If Bane does get you cornered, he can be hard to shake off since his stomping combo is fast enough to break you out of SH. WC can get you some breathing room.
Harley Quinn – Harley has to be hit from around 1 dash away. Closer than 1 dash, and she will do her foot-first dive toward you which lets her evade SH and kick off her combo. As long as you keep out of range of that one attack, Harley rarely has an answer for you outside of her cupcake throwing move, but she doesn’t use that all that often for whatever reason. If she does use it, it will slow you down too much to close the gap and start your combo. Consider it a lost cause if she uses this move, regroup, and try again. The other thing to watch out for with Harley is her super move. It’s generally a blessing when a character goes for their super against you if it’s anyone but Harley, because obviously they burn off their entire special meter, and it often does less damage than a combo. In Harley’s case though, her super ends in a way that bounces you toward her, and her super can chain into a combo for a ridiculous amount of damage. Harley spent most of my time playing The Max in my “Hit or Miss” section, until I figured out a trick close to the end of my time dealing with The Max. When you go for a regular SH, Harley will almost always jump over it (like most characters), but once she’s within a certain distance, she’ll jump over it and shoot down at you. This attack does minimal damage but generates special meter for you just the same. Once I figured this trick out, I never lost to Harley again. Keep her at a distance, keep baiting her into doing this attack, and you’ll absolutely stomp her.
***HIT OR MISS
Aquaman - Aquaman is irritating. His 8000-hit combo is just a chore to sit through (you know the one I mean), and his attacks have so much range that it's hard to maintain breathing room. SH can shrug off most of his attacks, so hitting Aquaman isn't too difficult, you just have to watch out for his mega-combo that does more damage than ours, and his character trait. If you see Aquaman activate Waters of Life (character trait), just back away. The computer is never very aggressive in The Max if you just walk backwards with a bit of space between you and the AI. Waters of Life fades fairly quickly, so you don't have to backpedal for long. Waters of Life lets Aquaman recover quickly from being juggled, so there's basically no way to use combos on him while it's active. As long as you're not cornered when he activates it, you should be ok. Close-range WC is also successful a lot of the time, as Aquaman is generally already going for an attack by the time you’re that close. Dashing toward him and immediately going for WC worked like a charm more often than not.
Black Adam – Black Adam can be challenging just because he has several attacks that can hit you from almost anywhere on the screen, and he moves quickly. There are no special tricks to hitting Black Adam. Your best bet is to try to hit him with SH from at least 1 dash away, but he can close the distance quickly, so it’s difficult to keep him at a distance in the first place.
Cyborg – Cyborg is a cakewalk if you can keep him at a distance, but that can be challenging to do. Once Cyborg gets in close, it’s very hard to get him off of you. One nice perk is that Cyborg’s character trait only gives him back a very minimal amount of health, and it leaves him standing in one place for long enough to hit him with an interactable or SH. His projectiles are also very slow moving.
Nightwing - Nightwing's forward+3 involves him jumping, so he will simply do that if you attempt to hit him with Swamp Hands while he's at close range. If Nightwing gets you in a corner, it's over. Nightwing just has too many moves and too many ways to juggle you. Your only salvation under normal circumstances is that he can't immediately go into another combo because you get knocked away. So if you're in the corner... bad news. His moves hit far too fast for even a wakeup attack, so you're just doomed. Your only chance is one of his combos bouncing you over his head and on to the open side of the field. Nightwing is beatable, but only if you can keep him at a distance. The other factor to pay attention to is his stance. When Nightwing is in Eskrima Sticks stance, you have a much wider sweet spot to work with. He doesn’t have any moves that cover a significant amount of distance and get him off the ground, so as long as he’s out of melee range, you’re generally safe. When he’s in Staff stance though, his back+3 attack uses his staff as a pole to vault him forward. It gets him off the ground and moves him forward quickly. So if Nightwing isn’t at least a dash away, he’ll vault over SH and attack you. The other difference is that, when in Eskrima Sticks stance, Nightwing only has his ground sparks attack, which is a bit slow to start up, so you can safely hit him with interactables (2) from a distance. In staff stance, Nightwing can hit you anywhere on the field with his Ground Blast move, which hits quickly, so only jumping interactables are safe (and still only from a distance).
Sinestro - Sinestro is way too fast with his projectiles, and if you try Swamp Hands from 1 dash away or more, he WILL interrupt you. Sometimes he uses his meteor drop, and that's just slow enough to successfully hit him with SH, but he'll be free by the time you stand up. It can be tricky to find an opening in his melee attacks since several of them dash toward you, but your best bet is hitting him from just inside 1 dash range. Once Sinestro was in melee range, he went for his back+3 attack 9 times out of 10, which is slow and keeps him in one place. Don’t go for SH until Sinestro is in melee range, and once he is, don’t hesitate.
Green Lantern - GL is an opponent you need to keep at a distance, and never jump if you’re anywhere near him. Keep GL outside of 1 dash away, and make sure you’re comfortable using WC, as it is a fantastic trump card to use against all of his various projectile attacks.
Wonder Woman - Wonder Woman is tricky because of her differing stances. In Lasso stance, she will always use her meter burn tiara throw when you go for SH, and 2 hits is enough to stop your attack. The worst part about this is that it's just enough time for the meter burn animation, so you'll lose that bar of meter but have nothing to show for it. If you're close enough to her, the hits are spaced out just enough to get SH out, and if you're right around the apex of the tiara throw, it'll only hit once. In Sword/Shield stance, she doesn’t use her shield throw nearly as often. She does use it, just less frequently, no idea why. WW also has more long-range moves in Lasso stance. Basically, be careful when she's in Lasso stance, and be more aggressive when she's in Sword/Shield stance.
Killer Frost - Frost is another character with a long-range attack that can hit you anywhere, and her ice daggers are also quick enough to interrupt SH, so you'll need to hit her from the furthest distance you can manage while still being able to close the gap before SH ends. This is tough because you don’t have a millisecond to spare. If your timing is good enough, you can hit her before she actually throws the daggers, but most of the time, she’ll hit you with them. You need to be far enough away where you can activate SH, but close enough to close the gap before she’s free. When I stared writing this guide, I had KF categorized as unbeatable, just to give you an idea of how frustrating she can be.
Superman - Superman is very hit and miss. Sometimes he really utilizes his flying attacks, so he's hard to hit, but other times, he's all about brute force, and he's very easy to hit. Use your jumping interactables if you're at least 1 dash away from him, and make good use of your crouching combo. I think part of what they fixed with the patch was Superman's aim. Any time I was crouched and Superman attempted his flying ground smash move, he almost always missed and landed behind me, leaving himself open for an attack. This was often the only time I could hit him with SH. I don’t know why, but Superman was one of the only characters who jumped away from SH, so the big trick to beating him is timing SH just right. One small note that I would utilize with caution: I felt like Superman fought using different techniques depending on the skin he used. I felt like Regime Superman didn’t jump as much and went for more straight punch combos, while regular Superman jumped more and was harder to hit. Again, that may have completely been in my head, especially considering that makes no sense for them to fight differently, but pay attention in your Superman fights and see what you think.
Batman – Batman has a LOT of projectiles at his disposal between his grapple gun, his character trait, and his batarangs. His slide kick also lets him close distance quickly. Your saving grace with Batman is that most of his combos knock you away from him when they finish, so as long as you aren’t cornered, you have a chance. You want to go for SH just outside 1 dash with Batman. Sometimes Batman goes for his grapple gun, and sometimes it’s the batarangs, and I couldn’t identify a pattern to save my life. If he throws batarangs, they’re going to hit you and slow you down, so it might be difficult to close the gap in time. When he tries his grapple gun though, the rope(?) disappears as soon as SH hits him, so you’re free and clear to close in on him. Any closer than 1 dash, and Batman will slide at you, which is quick enough to allow him to escape SH.
Hawkgirl – Hawkgirl is a rare member of the lineup, but when she’s there, she’s beatable. Hawkgirl is another character with a jumping smash attack, and inside of 1 dash, she’ll use her mace charge attack if you go for SH. This means you want to hit her with SH just outside of 1 dash-length. Since you’ll be more than 1 dash away, you’ll have to be quick to close the gap and hit her with your own smash attack to start the combo. The other tricky thing with Hawkgirl is her flying ability. If/when Hawkgirl takes to the air, just walk backwards. There’s no point trying to hit her in the air, and she usually won’t attack if you’re backpedaling. You can try to hit her with SH right when she lands, but the timing can be tough, and if often leaves her too far away to close the gap before she can move again. Hawkgirl has attacks that can hit you if you go for interactables, but she rarely utilized them against me, so I was able to hit her with interactables pretty reliably. She does HAVE the attacks to stop you though, so try them at your own risk.
Raven - You have to hit Raven at close range. If you're at any kind of distance, she'll use her Soul Crush attack, which hits instantaneously. The start up animation is very short, and there's no travel time for the projectile to reach you, so your only chance is close range. This is difficult because Raven has a spinning attack that moves her forward. It doesn't quite have the range of a dashing attack but it's enough to give you a pretty small window to work with. I would also recommend NEVER going for interactables with Raven. She is just too fast with her Soul Crush attack. MAYBE you can hit Raven with an interactable once in a while, but her attack is so fast and can hit you anywhere on the screen, so I felt like it's just never worth it. If you just want to get the object out of play, sure, go for it, but never go for it with the goal of hitting her.
Green Arrow – GA needs to be hit with SH from melee range. His dash move is quick enough where he’ll evade SH if you try it from any kind of distance. He’ll even dash if he’s at melee range, but he’ll dash toward you, and you’ll act as a wall for him to dash into, which means he’ll still be in the affected area when you launch SH, so it will grab him. The fact that you have to let GA get so close to hit him is what makes him such a challenging opponent. Any of the 24 characters are dangerous at close range, but nearly all the other characters can either be hit from further away, or their close-range attacks are slow enough where you have a pretty gracious period in which to hit them.
Catwoman - Catwoman is very fast, has attacks that hit both high and low at the same time, and has a dashing move that lets her evade SH. You have to be at least 1 dash away from her to hit her with SH, otherwise she'll use her back+3 and completely evade it. The trick to Catwoman is keeping your distance, and that's very challenging to do with her. You also run into the problem that if you have too much distance, you can't close the gap quickly enough and probably have to use SH twice just to get your combo off. She also spends so much time in the air that it's difficult to reliably hit her with SH. Catwoman can be beaten relatively easily on a stage with lots of jumping interactables since she doesn’t have much of an answer for them, but since there’s no way to predict the stage you’ll fight her on, you don’t want to roll the dice on a later battle with her.
***VERY HARD TO BEAT - DON'T FIGHT LATER IN YOUR LINEUP
Doomsday - Doomsday has so many dashing attacks that make it hard to keep any distance from him, and his Iron Skin ability lets him walk through most of your attacks. He's not unbeatable, but he requires a lot of aggression. He'll pound on you a LOT, so that should give you enough super meter to constantly be on him once he's wailed on you for a bit. As he's standing up from an attack, hit him with the next SH. Stay close enough to him where he won't use his Venom Tackle, and you should be able to continue hitting him with combos. The trick to Doomsday is hitting him with that first combo, though. Doomsday has had several perfect matches against me because I was never able to even get the first attack off. My only successes came from perfectly timed wakeup attacks and lucky crouching 1-3 combos, and those were rare.
Ares - Ares is extremely difficult to hit. His teleportation move is instantaneous, and the fact that he ends up behind you puts you at a huge disadvantage. Ares therefore requires flawless timing to beat, because your only real chance is to time SH perfectly to hit him just as he stands up so that you can hit him in the very small window you have. As for how to get him down in the first place, a crouching 1-3 was the only way I had any kind of consistent success, but that only worked 75% of the time at best. Ares IS beatable but I got so frustrated with fighting up that I ended up treating him as unbeatable.
Lex - His character ability lets him shrug off one hit no matter how powerful, and it recharges quickly. Combine that with attacks that can hit you anywhere on the field and some dashing moves, and he’s always going to be a hard-fought battle. The trick with Lex is to hit him with attacks that will drop his shield. His lance blast is slow-moving, and his orbital strikes take a bit to activate, so as long as you have some distance, you should be able to hit him with interactables or a regular SH to drop his shield. Make sure you’re at least 1 dash away from Lex before going for the SH, otherwise he’ll grab you with his gravity pull, and he can do that again and again. Again, Lex is VERY difficult to beat - most guides classify him as unbeatable with the Grundy strategy - but with the right timing, it’s doable.
***DON'T BOTHER AT ALL
Deathstroke - He can interrupt any attack you throw at him with his dual pistols. Grundy is just too slow to be able to do anything against Deathstroke.
Flash – Just too fast. Grundy is a slow moving character, and the Flash has too many ways to evade anything and everything you throw at him. You can occasionally hit him with one combo, but his character trait lets him inflict so much damage on you with a single combo that you’re VERY unlikely to pull it off enough times to win before he can destroy you.
These tips and strategies are for the pre-patched version of the game. This means that you will want to delete the update patch for the game to be sure that this information is as accurate as possible. The strategy still works on the patched (or gold/ps4) version of the game, it just doesn’t work as well, as the patch fixes some holes in the AI. The trade-off there is that the patch also fixed some issues with the controls. I was at a point where I could do the combo in my sleep, but every once in a while, it just wouldn’t continue beyond the Pain Chain move. There were also times where I seemed to be stuck in a block. I would release the d-pad to begin my attack, and Grundy would just continue blocking. I personally found it to be worth it to put up with the frustration of the occasionally sloppy controls to exploit the weaker AI, but you may feel otherwise. This guide also won’t include any tips for fighting Batgirl, Zatanna, Zod, Lobo, Scorpion, or Martian Manhunter. Since this was the pre-patched version of the game, I didn’t have these fighters in my lineups, so if you’re going for this on the ultimate edition, Godspeed. If you want to take your own notes and send them my way, I’d be happy to edit this solution and credit you for your tips on these DLC characters.
First of all, these tips will be referring to the Solomon Grundy strategy. There are several variants of the strategy out there, but they all revolve around using his Health Chain combo. I used the combo suggested by STWproductionz on Youtube, see this link for his combo and other tips:
(skip to 1:35 for the combo itself). Note that I personally feel that he overstates the effectiveness of the jumping attack. It did work a lot of the time, and it was definitely a good trick to have in the bag (and you’ll need several), but it didn’t work anywhere near as well or as often as it seems to have for the video maker.
I’ll be referring to Swamp Hands as just SH for the rest of this guide, and unless stated otherwise, I’m always referring to the meter-burned version of Swamp Hands. Take 20-30 minutes in practice mode getting fluent with meter-burning Swamp Hands and using the Health Chain combo. The AI is merciless in The Max, and you will not have a chance to practice in a live battle.
Stick with the Health Chain combo. A question I had when starting this, which no guide answered, was why the Health Chain was recommended instead of the Attack or Defense Chains. I can’t speak for other guide writers, but after some experimentation and experience, the 4 reasons I stick with the Health Chain are: it does more damage than the other 2, it’s easier to remember without getting flustered and missing your timing, the times to input your next move are much easier to identify, and since you WILL be on the receiving end of several combos, having the health bonus is the most useful of the 3 bonuses.
The other move you’ll need to be comfortable using is Walking Corpse (henceforth referred to as WC), particularly as a wakeup attack. I never quite got the timing down to a science on this, but I generally tried to input the button commands during Grundy’s stand-up animation, which was successful 75-90% of the time. WC walks through any and all attacks. You’ll still take the damage, but nothing short of a knockout will stop you. This is essential for getting some breathing room when you’re cornered, as you’ll either connect with your opponent, or they’ll jump over you, letting you out of the corner. Against certain opponents with projectile-heavy arsenals (Green Lantern and Sinestro, for example), WC was essential, as it nullified almost all their strategies for punishing you from a distance. Certain characters do have back/forward+3 attacks which employ animations which will let them get out of being hit with WC, even if they’re standing in a spot where it should have hit them. There’s no way around this, it’s just one of those things that make The Max as hard as it is.
Keep in mind, as I mentioned above, this will take practice. Do not expect to walk into The Max and beat it on your first, tenth, or maybe even 100th attempt. I went for The Max on a system that didn’t have my main save data on it, so when I started going for the Max, I was at 0 wins, 0 losses. Considering you can only lose once per battle before having to start over, I can look at my number of losses to get a fairly accurate estimate of how many times I had to try The Max before I beat it. I beat The Max on somewhere around my 350th try, give or take. So don't concern yourself with opponents at the end of the line-up when you're still getting up to speed. You won't make it that far anyway, so use your early tries as practice. Once you get to a point where you can string 5-6 wins together consistently, then you're at a point where you might be able to win with the right lineup and a little luck, so that's when you can start taking a look at your whole lineup. Something I noticed missing in other guides is the tip that you can just scroll to The Max on the battle screen and get a preview of your lineup. You don’t have to actually start the battle to see the whole thing. Sometimes the larger characters like Doomsday can eclipse other characters, so you won’t see some until you do actually start the battle, but at the very least, you can see who you’re up against first. After a while you’ll recognize characteristic traits popping out in the back, even if you can’t see the whole fighter, like Deathstroke’s sword hilt or rifle scope, Doomsday’s shoulder spikes, Lex’s geometric silhouette, etc. If you preview your lineup and see a fighter you don’t want, exit to the main screen and go back in for a new lineup. There will still be instances where you won’t see an unbeatable fighter in the lineup until you actually start the battle and see them all scroll past you, but this will at least save you a lot of time on the battles when you can see those unbeatables.
Every guide I see says to spam interactables. Do NOT treat that as a universal rule. There are enough characters with projectiles, upward diagonal attacks, and just general speed that you should only even try interactables against certain characters. Even then, you have to consider the type of interactable. My advice is to use them extremely sparingly, and if you’re up for exercising your memory, read on.
---1. You should never go for an interactable if your opponent is less than 1 dash away, no matter who it is or what type of interactable it is (unless you want to get hit, more on that later). They ALL have melee attacks that can hit you from that distance. You might get lucky, but it’s not worth it.
---2. Some characters, like Sinestro and Raven, can hit you anywhere on the field, and their projectiles are fast enough to hit you before you can hit them, even if they’re standing up from a knockdown. Like #1, you might get lucky, but I don’t recommend ever trying it. This also applies to the Flash. Despite having no projectiles, he can easily close the gap and hit you with a melee attack most of the time, and dodge the object the rest of the time.
---3. There are 4 types of interactables that I’ll talk about. I won’t list which characters you can use each attack against, as to beat The Max, you’ll have to know every character well enough to know these things anyway.
------a. First is the glass walls in Atlantis. You’re almost always guaranteed to successfully hit with this attack as long as your character isn’t at the maximum distance from you. You’re also almost always guaranteed to take a hit in the process. Your call.
------b. Next are the interactables that you activate from the ground and keep you on the ground when using them. This includes things like the globe in the Watchtower, the space pod in the Fortress of Solitude, and the gas tanks and toolchest on Ferris Air Field. These are the riskiest interactables and have the lowest chance of succeeding. They’re only ever safe against characters like Bane (no projectile attacks) and even then, only at maximum distance.
------c. Third are interactables that you activate on the ground, jump into the air, and throw downward, like the ground robots at the Hall of Justice or the tree in Themyscira. These are safe against the same characters as b, as well as characters that don’t have (or don’t use, for whatever reason) their high projectile attacks, like Superman, Shazam, Grundy, or Killer Frost. These are still quite risky though, as some characters, like Joker, can’t hit you in the air, but they CAN hit you before you ever make it into the air. Avoid any character with quick projectile attacks.
------d. Last are the interactables that you jump to activate and throw downwards like the lion heads on Themyscira or the TV monitors on Joker/Arkham Asylum. These are slightly safer than C, as you’re only at risk from characters with attacks that can hit you in the air. So even characters like Harley and Joker with quick projectile attacks that will stop you from using C projectiles can’t hit you with these as long as you have enough distance.
---4. Sometimes it’s worth going for interactables even knowing you’ll fail just to get them out of play. For example, if I go to throw a TV monitor at Sinestro, he WILL hit me with a meteor drop, but that meteor drop will do less damage to me than the TV will if he throws it himself. Know who the power characters are and who can use these interactables against you, and use your judgement.
I've found that it's extremely difficult to win Max battles if you're using your meter for anything other than Swamp Hands. That means no supers, no meter burning other attacks, no block breaks, no clashes, and no wagering in the opponent's clash (or at least leaving yourself one bar). To this end, it becomes essential to learn to bait your opponents into hitting you with projectile attacks. The health chain combo doesn’t generate an entire bar of special meter by itself, so you’re going to have to take some damage to generate enough special meter for your next SH. A regular (non-MB) SH is great for this. Some characters will jump over it without counter attacking, and this still generates a bit of special for you, which might be enough. But even if they do hit you, as long as you’re far enough away, that’s all they can do – 1 hit (for the most part; a few characters like Sinestro, Aquaman, and Black Adam have multi-hit projectiles). This is FAR preferable to being on the receiving end of an entire combo. Going for interactables is another great way to bait them. Against the characters that you know will stop you, this is a quick way to elicit a hit from them. And if for some reason they don’t try to stop you, or they miss, you managed to take a big bite out of their life bar.
Despite the fact that every character is supposed to be at maximum difficulty, it just doesn’t always feel that way, so don’t let yourself ever get too comfortable. Sometimes the computer just doesn’t go for the counter, and it walks right into your attack. Sometimes you can’t get a single attack out before it finishes you completely. If you aren’t an expert player (and I do mean expert), any one of the 24 characters can completely eat you alive. There is no such thing as a free win in this mode. Some characters can be beaten more reliably, but no character is ever a guarantee.
BASIC MOVES
Crouching 1-3 combo: This is a very quick 2 hit combo that is successful against most enemies as long as it’s timed right. You can often crouch to lure an enemy into close range, and the second hit of the combo will knock them down (assuming it connects, of course). This can be used to get an opponent into a vulnerable position to start your SH combos, and it’s also a relatively safe combo for biding your time and building up your special meter.
Jumping 3: You can’t block in the air, so jumping is almost always a losing proposition in The Max. That being said, your jump+3 attack has more success than most other basic attacks in this mode. Certain characters are just really suckers for it for whatever reason (Joker, Harley, Shazam, and Superman come to mind, though there are others), and it can come in handy against some characters that counter you if you go for SH at close range. Don’t make it your bread and butter, but you should at least be comfortable with the timing of it – make sure you don’t hit 3 until you’re right next to your opponent; you should be making contact at the very beginning of the attack animation, not the end. Too early and you’ll get countered every time.
Crouching 2: This move is rare but in specific circumstances, can come in handy and get you some special meter. The situation were I found this most useful was in regards to overhead interactables at the center of the stage, like the Fortress of Solitude and Ferris Air Hanger. I would start off the match by crouching, and rapidly pause/unpause to give me a chance to predict their jump. This allowed me to uppercut my enemy when they would go for the interactable, giving me the first attack special bar. I never had any success grabbing the interactable myself anyway so this was usually the best course of action. This move also came in handy when certain enemies got tired of my crouching 1-3 combos and tried to jump in on me. Truth be told they were usually successful, but once in a while I caught them.
CHARACTER SPECIFIC TIPS -
***RELIABLE WINS
Shazam - Shazam is quite easy. The only thing to watch out for with Shazam is his Atlas Torpedo move. Initiate SH from too far away, and he'll use it, which evades SH. Learn your proper distance for Shazam, and he will have absolutely no answer for you. Your only challenge will be getting that special meter up without taking too much damage, but other than that, with mostly close-range attacks, short combos, and a very slow and easily evaded projectile, Shazam should generally be a cakewalk.
Joker - No real trick to Joker. None of his attacks are dashing attacks that help him evade SH, his rolling laughing gas tank is very easy to see coming, and once you’re fluent enough with SH, he can’t shoot you fast enough to stop you.
Grundy - For your mirror matches (which were quite rare to be honest, I fought Grundy exactly once), you'll run into the same problems that make this an effective strategy for you. Keep your twin at a distance or he'll use WC and go to combo town on you, and SH does not break through WC. Other than that, I felt like Grundy was an easy win. Your results may vary since I'm basing this off of a single fight, but for that exact reason, it probably doesn't matter.
Bane - Use SH when Bane is about 1 dash away. Bane’s forward+3 attack makes him jump, so close-range SH will miss just about every time. Since you want to keep some distance from Bane, try not to corner him. The closer you are to Bane, the more perfect your timing has to be. If Bane does get you cornered, he can be hard to shake off since his stomping combo is fast enough to break you out of SH. WC can get you some breathing room.
Harley Quinn – Harley has to be hit from around 1 dash away. Closer than 1 dash, and she will do her foot-first dive toward you which lets her evade SH and kick off her combo. As long as you keep out of range of that one attack, Harley rarely has an answer for you outside of her cupcake throwing move, but she doesn’t use that all that often for whatever reason. If she does use it, it will slow you down too much to close the gap and start your combo. Consider it a lost cause if she uses this move, regroup, and try again. The other thing to watch out for with Harley is her super move. It’s generally a blessing when a character goes for their super against you if it’s anyone but Harley, because obviously they burn off their entire special meter, and it often does less damage than a combo. In Harley’s case though, her super ends in a way that bounces you toward her, and her super can chain into a combo for a ridiculous amount of damage. Harley spent most of my time playing The Max in my “Hit or Miss” section, until I figured out a trick close to the end of my time dealing with The Max. When you go for a regular SH, Harley will almost always jump over it (like most characters), but once she’s within a certain distance, she’ll jump over it and shoot down at you. This attack does minimal damage but generates special meter for you just the same. Once I figured this trick out, I never lost to Harley again. Keep her at a distance, keep baiting her into doing this attack, and you’ll absolutely stomp her.
***HIT OR MISS
Aquaman - Aquaman is irritating. His 8000-hit combo is just a chore to sit through (you know the one I mean), and his attacks have so much range that it's hard to maintain breathing room. SH can shrug off most of his attacks, so hitting Aquaman isn't too difficult, you just have to watch out for his mega-combo that does more damage than ours, and his character trait. If you see Aquaman activate Waters of Life (character trait), just back away. The computer is never very aggressive in The Max if you just walk backwards with a bit of space between you and the AI. Waters of Life fades fairly quickly, so you don't have to backpedal for long. Waters of Life lets Aquaman recover quickly from being juggled, so there's basically no way to use combos on him while it's active. As long as you're not cornered when he activates it, you should be ok. Close-range WC is also successful a lot of the time, as Aquaman is generally already going for an attack by the time you’re that close. Dashing toward him and immediately going for WC worked like a charm more often than not.
Black Adam – Black Adam can be challenging just because he has several attacks that can hit you from almost anywhere on the screen, and he moves quickly. There are no special tricks to hitting Black Adam. Your best bet is to try to hit him with SH from at least 1 dash away, but he can close the distance quickly, so it’s difficult to keep him at a distance in the first place.
Cyborg – Cyborg is a cakewalk if you can keep him at a distance, but that can be challenging to do. Once Cyborg gets in close, it’s very hard to get him off of you. One nice perk is that Cyborg’s character trait only gives him back a very minimal amount of health, and it leaves him standing in one place for long enough to hit him with an interactable or SH. His projectiles are also very slow moving.
Nightwing - Nightwing's forward+3 involves him jumping, so he will simply do that if you attempt to hit him with Swamp Hands while he's at close range. If Nightwing gets you in a corner, it's over. Nightwing just has too many moves and too many ways to juggle you. Your only salvation under normal circumstances is that he can't immediately go into another combo because you get knocked away. So if you're in the corner... bad news. His moves hit far too fast for even a wakeup attack, so you're just doomed. Your only chance is one of his combos bouncing you over his head and on to the open side of the field. Nightwing is beatable, but only if you can keep him at a distance. The other factor to pay attention to is his stance. When Nightwing is in Eskrima Sticks stance, you have a much wider sweet spot to work with. He doesn’t have any moves that cover a significant amount of distance and get him off the ground, so as long as he’s out of melee range, you’re generally safe. When he’s in Staff stance though, his back+3 attack uses his staff as a pole to vault him forward. It gets him off the ground and moves him forward quickly. So if Nightwing isn’t at least a dash away, he’ll vault over SH and attack you. The other difference is that, when in Eskrima Sticks stance, Nightwing only has his ground sparks attack, which is a bit slow to start up, so you can safely hit him with interactables (2) from a distance. In staff stance, Nightwing can hit you anywhere on the field with his Ground Blast move, which hits quickly, so only jumping interactables are safe (and still only from a distance).
Sinestro - Sinestro is way too fast with his projectiles, and if you try Swamp Hands from 1 dash away or more, he WILL interrupt you. Sometimes he uses his meteor drop, and that's just slow enough to successfully hit him with SH, but he'll be free by the time you stand up. It can be tricky to find an opening in his melee attacks since several of them dash toward you, but your best bet is hitting him from just inside 1 dash range. Once Sinestro was in melee range, he went for his back+3 attack 9 times out of 10, which is slow and keeps him in one place. Don’t go for SH until Sinestro is in melee range, and once he is, don’t hesitate.
Green Lantern - GL is an opponent you need to keep at a distance, and never jump if you’re anywhere near him. Keep GL outside of 1 dash away, and make sure you’re comfortable using WC, as it is a fantastic trump card to use against all of his various projectile attacks.
Wonder Woman - Wonder Woman is tricky because of her differing stances. In Lasso stance, she will always use her meter burn tiara throw when you go for SH, and 2 hits is enough to stop your attack. The worst part about this is that it's just enough time for the meter burn animation, so you'll lose that bar of meter but have nothing to show for it. If you're close enough to her, the hits are spaced out just enough to get SH out, and if you're right around the apex of the tiara throw, it'll only hit once. In Sword/Shield stance, she doesn’t use her shield throw nearly as often. She does use it, just less frequently, no idea why. WW also has more long-range moves in Lasso stance. Basically, be careful when she's in Lasso stance, and be more aggressive when she's in Sword/Shield stance.
Killer Frost - Frost is another character with a long-range attack that can hit you anywhere, and her ice daggers are also quick enough to interrupt SH, so you'll need to hit her from the furthest distance you can manage while still being able to close the gap before SH ends. This is tough because you don’t have a millisecond to spare. If your timing is good enough, you can hit her before she actually throws the daggers, but most of the time, she’ll hit you with them. You need to be far enough away where you can activate SH, but close enough to close the gap before she’s free. When I stared writing this guide, I had KF categorized as unbeatable, just to give you an idea of how frustrating she can be.
Superman - Superman is very hit and miss. Sometimes he really utilizes his flying attacks, so he's hard to hit, but other times, he's all about brute force, and he's very easy to hit. Use your jumping interactables if you're at least 1 dash away from him, and make good use of your crouching combo. I think part of what they fixed with the patch was Superman's aim. Any time I was crouched and Superman attempted his flying ground smash move, he almost always missed and landed behind me, leaving himself open for an attack. This was often the only time I could hit him with SH. I don’t know why, but Superman was one of the only characters who jumped away from SH, so the big trick to beating him is timing SH just right. One small note that I would utilize with caution: I felt like Superman fought using different techniques depending on the skin he used. I felt like Regime Superman didn’t jump as much and went for more straight punch combos, while regular Superman jumped more and was harder to hit. Again, that may have completely been in my head, especially considering that makes no sense for them to fight differently, but pay attention in your Superman fights and see what you think.
Batman – Batman has a LOT of projectiles at his disposal between his grapple gun, his character trait, and his batarangs. His slide kick also lets him close distance quickly. Your saving grace with Batman is that most of his combos knock you away from him when they finish, so as long as you aren’t cornered, you have a chance. You want to go for SH just outside 1 dash with Batman. Sometimes Batman goes for his grapple gun, and sometimes it’s the batarangs, and I couldn’t identify a pattern to save my life. If he throws batarangs, they’re going to hit you and slow you down, so it might be difficult to close the gap in time. When he tries his grapple gun though, the rope(?) disappears as soon as SH hits him, so you’re free and clear to close in on him. Any closer than 1 dash, and Batman will slide at you, which is quick enough to allow him to escape SH.
Hawkgirl – Hawkgirl is a rare member of the lineup, but when she’s there, she’s beatable. Hawkgirl is another character with a jumping smash attack, and inside of 1 dash, she’ll use her mace charge attack if you go for SH. This means you want to hit her with SH just outside of 1 dash-length. Since you’ll be more than 1 dash away, you’ll have to be quick to close the gap and hit her with your own smash attack to start the combo. The other tricky thing with Hawkgirl is her flying ability. If/when Hawkgirl takes to the air, just walk backwards. There’s no point trying to hit her in the air, and she usually won’t attack if you’re backpedaling. You can try to hit her with SH right when she lands, but the timing can be tough, and if often leaves her too far away to close the gap before she can move again. Hawkgirl has attacks that can hit you if you go for interactables, but she rarely utilized them against me, so I was able to hit her with interactables pretty reliably. She does HAVE the attacks to stop you though, so try them at your own risk.
Raven - You have to hit Raven at close range. If you're at any kind of distance, she'll use her Soul Crush attack, which hits instantaneously. The start up animation is very short, and there's no travel time for the projectile to reach you, so your only chance is close range. This is difficult because Raven has a spinning attack that moves her forward. It doesn't quite have the range of a dashing attack but it's enough to give you a pretty small window to work with. I would also recommend NEVER going for interactables with Raven. She is just too fast with her Soul Crush attack. MAYBE you can hit Raven with an interactable once in a while, but her attack is so fast and can hit you anywhere on the screen, so I felt like it's just never worth it. If you just want to get the object out of play, sure, go for it, but never go for it with the goal of hitting her.
Green Arrow – GA needs to be hit with SH from melee range. His dash move is quick enough where he’ll evade SH if you try it from any kind of distance. He’ll even dash if he’s at melee range, but he’ll dash toward you, and you’ll act as a wall for him to dash into, which means he’ll still be in the affected area when you launch SH, so it will grab him. The fact that you have to let GA get so close to hit him is what makes him such a challenging opponent. Any of the 24 characters are dangerous at close range, but nearly all the other characters can either be hit from further away, or their close-range attacks are slow enough where you have a pretty gracious period in which to hit them.
Catwoman - Catwoman is very fast, has attacks that hit both high and low at the same time, and has a dashing move that lets her evade SH. You have to be at least 1 dash away from her to hit her with SH, otherwise she'll use her back+3 and completely evade it. The trick to Catwoman is keeping your distance, and that's very challenging to do with her. You also run into the problem that if you have too much distance, you can't close the gap quickly enough and probably have to use SH twice just to get your combo off. She also spends so much time in the air that it's difficult to reliably hit her with SH. Catwoman can be beaten relatively easily on a stage with lots of jumping interactables since she doesn’t have much of an answer for them, but since there’s no way to predict the stage you’ll fight her on, you don’t want to roll the dice on a later battle with her.
***VERY HARD TO BEAT - DON'T FIGHT LATER IN YOUR LINEUP
Doomsday - Doomsday has so many dashing attacks that make it hard to keep any distance from him, and his Iron Skin ability lets him walk through most of your attacks. He's not unbeatable, but he requires a lot of aggression. He'll pound on you a LOT, so that should give you enough super meter to constantly be on him once he's wailed on you for a bit. As he's standing up from an attack, hit him with the next SH. Stay close enough to him where he won't use his Venom Tackle, and you should be able to continue hitting him with combos. The trick to Doomsday is hitting him with that first combo, though. Doomsday has had several perfect matches against me because I was never able to even get the first attack off. My only successes came from perfectly timed wakeup attacks and lucky crouching 1-3 combos, and those were rare.
Ares - Ares is extremely difficult to hit. His teleportation move is instantaneous, and the fact that he ends up behind you puts you at a huge disadvantage. Ares therefore requires flawless timing to beat, because your only real chance is to time SH perfectly to hit him just as he stands up so that you can hit him in the very small window you have. As for how to get him down in the first place, a crouching 1-3 was the only way I had any kind of consistent success, but that only worked 75% of the time at best. Ares IS beatable but I got so frustrated with fighting up that I ended up treating him as unbeatable.
Lex - His character ability lets him shrug off one hit no matter how powerful, and it recharges quickly. Combine that with attacks that can hit you anywhere on the field and some dashing moves, and he’s always going to be a hard-fought battle. The trick with Lex is to hit him with attacks that will drop his shield. His lance blast is slow-moving, and his orbital strikes take a bit to activate, so as long as you have some distance, you should be able to hit him with interactables or a regular SH to drop his shield. Make sure you’re at least 1 dash away from Lex before going for the SH, otherwise he’ll grab you with his gravity pull, and he can do that again and again. Again, Lex is VERY difficult to beat - most guides classify him as unbeatable with the Grundy strategy - but with the right timing, it’s doable.
***DON'T BOTHER AT ALL
Deathstroke - He can interrupt any attack you throw at him with his dual pistols. Grundy is just too slow to be able to do anything against Deathstroke.
Flash – Just too fast. Grundy is a slow moving character, and the Flash has too many ways to evade anything and everything you throw at him. You can occasionally hit him with one combo, but his character trait lets him inflict so much damage on you with a single combo that you’re VERY unlikely to pull it off enough times to win before he can destroy you.
1 Comment
So now that I have completed Impossible, I wanted to post an update with tips for that battle, but it just isn't possible to go into the same amount of detail as I did with The Max. The Max is difficult because the computer reads your controller inputs, and it exploits every possible opening to inflict as much damage as possible with perfect strategies and combos. The ONLY saving grace of this is that it makes the computer predictable. I know that Raven WILL hit me with Soul Crush every time I go for an interactable. I know Sinestro WILL hit me with a meteor drop if I try SH from more than a dash away. That means I know exactly how to bait those characters into doing those moves, and I know exactly what not to do to avoid those things. You don't have that luxury with Impossible, but make no mistake, it's still FAR easier. I finished Impossible in 10-15 tries (over 2-3 days), compared with The Max's 350 (over a month). It's just a bit more frustrating because you never know what you're getting. The AI on Impossible is not as perfect, which leads to unpredictable strategies, so the kinds of tips I gave for The Max just aren't very useful. With that said, read on for my Impossible tips:
I used Doomsday for Impossible. His Iron Skin ability saved me from several combos and gave me opportunities to hit my super move, as well as to hit level transitions. I only went for these sparingly, as they were always high-risk propositions, but sometimes I just needed that extra 10% of my health bar that bad.
MOVES:
I relied on the standard Doomsday combo as my bread and butter - Body splash -> Square/Triangle/X combo -> Venom Tackle -> immediately dash forward once -> forward body splash -> repeat. You want to be jumping while they're still on the ground, and coming down on the with a body splash right when they're standing up. Sometimes I meter-burned my Venom Tackles, sometimes I didn't. I generally saved my special meter for MB Supernovas, though.
MB Supernova: This is an essential move for closing the distance. Sometimes I timed my Venom Tackle poorly, or hit the enemy with an interactable, and usually finishing the first life bar sends your enemy tumbling away. These are generally your most vulnerable times, especially against characters that have a good skill set for keeping you at bay, like Sinestro, GL, and Aquaman. A MB Supernova drops you right on top of them and gives you your opening to start up your combos. Only Sinestro had a good counter for this move, as his meteor drop is fast enough to knock you out of the sky. He didn't always do it though, so try it a few times, and if he meteor drops you every time, change tactics.
Iron Skin: Your character trait. Unfortunately your moves can still be interrupted while Iron Skin is active, but you take less damage, and you can't be knocked down, so you're at least safe from huge combos. Iron Skin does take a few frames to activate, so I never activated it unless my opponent had just been knocked down. A few other things to keep in mind: Superman's character trait lets him destroy Iron Skin, so don't sacrifice an opening for an attack just to activate it, as he may just activate his own character trait and nullify it. You also do still take damage so don't get reckless and stupid and end up knocked out. Lastly, Iron Skin's duration is shorter than your super move animation, level transitions, and the transition between opponent life bars. If you want to activate it so that you can achieve one of those three things, go for it, but if you want to keep it active, don't do it right before one of those 3 events, because you'll have wasted it.
CHARACTERS:
As I said, the characters are too unpredictable to give extensive notes. What I will say though, is that certain characters are a huge pain, and you do NOT want to face them later in your lineup. These characters are Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Flash, Batman, and Catwoman. All 5 of these characters have upward attacks that they furiously abuse when you go for body splashes, and since that's an essential component of Doomsday's combo, they're very problematic. Since the AI isn't set to Very Hard, you'll still be able to hit all of them from time to time, but the more of these that you can face in your first 10 fights, the better. If you end up getting them later, spam your interactables, make sure you keep Iron Skin active as much as possible, and cross your fingers.
That's all for Impossible. Luck plays a much bigger role in Impossible than it did in The Max, but overall it was much easier to beat. You just need patience. There will very likely be times where you face an opponent at a very low number, like 9 or 10, who will stomp you, and you'll question how you're ever supposed to make it to 24 if 9/10 is this hard. Just hang in there. The difficulty is erratic, and while you may get dropped all the way to your last 1/10th of a life bar in fight number 10, fights 11-16 may all be total stomps in your favor, and you might regain your entire life bar. During my successful run, Catwoman almost finished me at fight number 16 (we're talking barely 2-3 pixels of life left), but 17-23 were all very easy fights, and I walked into fight 24 against Black Adam at full health. The only time I recommend quitting and trying again is if you can see one of the 5 fighters I mentioned waiting for you anywhere in the 20-24 range. It's just not worth the frustration. You might win, but probably not, and your time is better spent trying again (to say nothing of how much you'll be sparing your mental health).
Good luck!
I used Doomsday for Impossible. His Iron Skin ability saved me from several combos and gave me opportunities to hit my super move, as well as to hit level transitions. I only went for these sparingly, as they were always high-risk propositions, but sometimes I just needed that extra 10% of my health bar that bad.
MOVES:
I relied on the standard Doomsday combo as my bread and butter - Body splash -> Square/Triangle/X combo -> Venom Tackle -> immediately dash forward once -> forward body splash -> repeat. You want to be jumping while they're still on the ground, and coming down on the with a body splash right when they're standing up. Sometimes I meter-burned my Venom Tackles, sometimes I didn't. I generally saved my special meter for MB Supernovas, though.
MB Supernova: This is an essential move for closing the distance. Sometimes I timed my Venom Tackle poorly, or hit the enemy with an interactable, and usually finishing the first life bar sends your enemy tumbling away. These are generally your most vulnerable times, especially against characters that have a good skill set for keeping you at bay, like Sinestro, GL, and Aquaman. A MB Supernova drops you right on top of them and gives you your opening to start up your combos. Only Sinestro had a good counter for this move, as his meteor drop is fast enough to knock you out of the sky. He didn't always do it though, so try it a few times, and if he meteor drops you every time, change tactics.
Iron Skin: Your character trait. Unfortunately your moves can still be interrupted while Iron Skin is active, but you take less damage, and you can't be knocked down, so you're at least safe from huge combos. Iron Skin does take a few frames to activate, so I never activated it unless my opponent had just been knocked down. A few other things to keep in mind: Superman's character trait lets him destroy Iron Skin, so don't sacrifice an opening for an attack just to activate it, as he may just activate his own character trait and nullify it. You also do still take damage so don't get reckless and stupid and end up knocked out. Lastly, Iron Skin's duration is shorter than your super move animation, level transitions, and the transition between opponent life bars. If you want to activate it so that you can achieve one of those three things, go for it, but if you want to keep it active, don't do it right before one of those 3 events, because you'll have wasted it.
CHARACTERS:
As I said, the characters are too unpredictable to give extensive notes. What I will say though, is that certain characters are a huge pain, and you do NOT want to face them later in your lineup. These characters are Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Flash, Batman, and Catwoman. All 5 of these characters have upward attacks that they furiously abuse when you go for body splashes, and since that's an essential component of Doomsday's combo, they're very problematic. Since the AI isn't set to Very Hard, you'll still be able to hit all of them from time to time, but the more of these that you can face in your first 10 fights, the better. If you end up getting them later, spam your interactables, make sure you keep Iron Skin active as much as possible, and cross your fingers.
That's all for Impossible. Luck plays a much bigger role in Impossible than it did in The Max, but overall it was much easier to beat. You just need patience. There will very likely be times where you face an opponent at a very low number, like 9 or 10, who will stomp you, and you'll question how you're ever supposed to make it to 24 if 9/10 is this hard. Just hang in there. The difficulty is erratic, and while you may get dropped all the way to your last 1/10th of a life bar in fight number 10, fights 11-16 may all be total stomps in your favor, and you might regain your entire life bar. During my successful run, Catwoman almost finished me at fight number 16 (we're talking barely 2-3 pixels of life left), but 17-23 were all very easy fights, and I walked into fight 24 against Black Adam at full health. The only time I recommend quitting and trying again is if you can see one of the 5 fighters I mentioned waiting for you anywhere in the 20-24 range. It's just not worth the frustration. You might win, but probably not, and your time is better spent trying again (to say nothing of how much you'll be sparing your mental health).
Good luck!
By Thanatos8285 on 18 Apr 2018 17:05
This guide was translated automatically.
I found a way to get through the battle to the maximum. You need to play as Superman without patches. Keep the enemy at mid screen distance. Then jump and when the enemy also jumps, shoot the laser. Without the patch, any enemy will definitely jump in response. Passed it the second time.
2 Comments
When playing Superman without patches, Flash is very problematic for him, since he does not jump like the others, but makes a dash upward, knocking Superman down. Try to choose so that it doesn’t exist (I had to replay the maximum 10 times, a flash appeared every now and then somewhere).
By kindred_blades on 11 Apr 2014 23:03
It makes sense to lose any battle with the first character about 30 times. After this, as in MK, the computer will simplify the battle. And you can do this with every battle. If we lose, the difficulty level decreases.
By Detigo on 01 Dec 2015 14:59
This guide was translated automatically.
So, first of all, I want to say that there is nothing impossible in Mission to the Maximum . Yes, the computer behaves very aggressively, yes, it performs very long and beautiful combos, but it can be defeated. After all, even there the computer makes mistakes. Let's begin.
My tactics are based on completing this battle as Solomon Grundy. This video guide helped me.
Grundy has a wonderful specialty - R2 - this attack immobilizes the enemy for several seconds, making it possible to carry out a signature combo. It looks like this in full: R2, , , , , - on one energy scale it blows away 41%! True, in the proposed video, Grundy also adds a jump kick . This is already business taste. My combo was enough for me. In addition, you can dilute all this with the tactic of squatting, waiting for the enemy to want to jump on you. Punish with an uppercut And , , - takes off about 30%. However, not all so simple. R2 must be carried out at a strictly defined distance, and some enemies completely refuse to be caught by this technique. But first things first.
By clicking on the video, you can watch the first fight against Harley Quinn. She, like many other Persians, is caught R2 is very willing. The distance is approximately half the screen. Practice a few times - and everything will be as it should.
Now about those characters with whom there are problems:
Deathstroke . The nastiest of them all. The fact is that the computer plays for him like the last noob, i.e. it’s stupid to spam machine gun, pistol, machine gun, pistol with shots, as a result, it’s almost impossible to catch him R2, it’s difficult to approach and perform a combo at all. Try to choose the battle so that he is not in the stairs. If he does get caught (it’s especially offensive if he turns out to be one of the last), sit down and wait for him. Typically, he will come up and try to jump hit you. At this moment we do an uppercut And , , . Repeat until victory.
Similar tactics with Superman. He is also very difficult to catch R2, he either makes a dash followed by a powerful combo, or jumps up and also kicks, be healthy. Therefore, we sit down and wait for him.
Flash. Something between Superman and Deathstroke. Like Superman, instead of calmly getting caught R2 does a dash and then his infinite combo. I managed to defeat him only once, I don’t know how. In general, I also advise choosing a battle without him.
Doomsday. This big guy is capable of getting on your nerves, because... to yours R2 he does a shoulder ram. And when he puts on his armor, he can hang himself. The only chance to defeat him is to try to pin him in the corner. He will not get out of this position even if he uses a shoulder ram.
Scorpio and Raven are equally nasty, due to the fact that both have a teleport on their back, making it difficult to catch them R2 edge is easy
Shazam and Batman - you need to catch them a little further than half the screen. Otherwise, Shazam attacks with a torpedo strike, and Batman attacks with a tackle.
Killer Frost - surprisingly, her daggers penetrate armor! That is why she, like Shazam and Batman, needs to be attacked a little further than half the screen, or (an option for extreme sports) - at point-blank range. She usually tries to pierce you with an iceberg from this position.
Well, that seems to be all. Other Persians are caught normally, exposing themselves to powerful combos.
And now the very last moment: finding itself on the verge of death, the computer makes a collision, thereby restoring health. This is especially offensive when he has one hit left (this happened to me, and I lost the fight to Martian Manhunter, and he was second to last) So it makes sense after R2press once again ! this guarantees a double hit, after which the enemy will not be able to heal.
My tactics are based on completing this battle as Solomon Grundy. This video guide helped me.
Grundy has a wonderful specialty - R2 - this attack immobilizes the enemy for several seconds, making it possible to carry out a signature combo. It looks like this in full: R2, , , , , - on one energy scale it blows away 41%! True, in the proposed video, Grundy also adds a jump kick . This is already business taste. My combo was enough for me. In addition, you can dilute all this with the tactic of squatting, waiting for the enemy to want to jump on you. Punish with an uppercut And , , - takes off about 30%. However, not all so simple. R2 must be carried out at a strictly defined distance, and some enemies completely refuse to be caught by this technique. But first things first.
By clicking on the video, you can watch the first fight against Harley Quinn. She, like many other Persians, is caught R2 is very willing. The distance is approximately half the screen. Practice a few times - and everything will be as it should.
Now about those characters with whom there are problems:
Deathstroke . The nastiest of them all. The fact is that the computer plays for him like the last noob, i.e. it’s stupid to spam machine gun, pistol, machine gun, pistol with shots, as a result, it’s almost impossible to catch him R2, it’s difficult to approach and perform a combo at all. Try to choose the battle so that he is not in the stairs. If he does get caught (it’s especially offensive if he turns out to be one of the last), sit down and wait for him. Typically, he will come up and try to jump hit you. At this moment we do an uppercut And , , . Repeat until victory.
Similar tactics with Superman. He is also very difficult to catch R2, he either makes a dash followed by a powerful combo, or jumps up and also kicks, be healthy. Therefore, we sit down and wait for him.
Flash. Something between Superman and Deathstroke. Like Superman, instead of calmly getting caught R2 does a dash and then his infinite combo. I managed to defeat him only once, I don’t know how. In general, I also advise choosing a battle without him.
Doomsday. This big guy is capable of getting on your nerves, because... to yours R2 he does a shoulder ram. And when he puts on his armor, he can hang himself. The only chance to defeat him is to try to pin him in the corner. He will not get out of this position even if he uses a shoulder ram.
Scorpio and Raven are equally nasty, due to the fact that both have a teleport on their back, making it difficult to catch them R2 edge is easy
Shazam and Batman - you need to catch them a little further than half the screen. Otherwise, Shazam attacks with a torpedo strike, and Batman attacks with a tackle.
Killer Frost - surprisingly, her daggers penetrate armor! That is why she, like Shazam and Batman, needs to be attacked a little further than half the screen, or (an option for extreme sports) - at point-blank range. She usually tries to pierce you with an iceberg from this position.
Well, that seems to be all. Other Persians are caught normally, exposing themselves to powerful combos.
And now the very last moment: finding itself on the verge of death, the computer makes a collision, thereby restoring health. This is especially offensive when he has one hit left (this happened to me, and I lost the fight to Martian Manhunter, and he was second to last) So it makes sense after R2press once again ! this guarantees a double hit, after which the enemy will not be able to heal.