”Your mission is to kill the justice league, God help us.”
The Arkhamverse just reloaded.
Noir storytelling mixed with stealth action gameplay made players feel like they were The Batman in Rocksteady’s previous Arkhamverse titles. The detective elements and sensational voice acting added to the mystique of Gotham City and all 3 titles (save for some critical receptions of the final game in the series: Arkham Knight) are held to the highest regards by gamers. Fast forward to the recent past when Rocksteady announces Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Fans of the Arkham Trilogy were ready to put money down for another great noir experience… until the first trailer hit and the colours popped, Suicide Squad members were flying in the sky of Metropolis and the slow stealth gameplay was a thing of the past. Reactions were predictable; gamers were mad at Rocksteady for trying something new of course. After a rocky day 1 of early access (the game was pulled due to bugs) the game launched on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Should the studio have stuck with the stealthy Dark Knight formula, or was the batty idea of creating a squad based aerial 3rd person live service shooter a Harley Quinn home run? Let’s leap in.
Squad Up Story
One thing Rocksteady has built a name for is comicbook storytelling. All three Batman centred titles crafted strong narratives and voice acted scripts. Animations have always been top notch for their time, and players were overall unanimously invested in these narratives. The same and more can be said for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Without going into spoilers, it’s pretty clear from the game’s title what players can expect. Characters from the Squad and from the League interact often and major story points are executed with crisp character animations and voice acting. Rocksteady has paid very careful attention to detail. Cutscenes are lengthy, but very engaging and well acted. Occasionally, I forgot I was playing a video game and I was eager to get to the next story beat. On that note, this is a great time to transition over to gameplay.
Gunning for More
Where Suicide Squad sings on perfect key in story, it falls flat in gameplay. Suicide Squad mixes aerial open world traversal with third person looting, shooting, and melee. This fast paced movement gets stale fast. The world of Suicide Squad is packed full of fan service especially in the Hall of Justice. But slowing down to look at the world only gives players more one dimensional and one coloured brainiac cronies to mow down with lacklustre guns. Granted, the Suicide Squad does have their own signature melee weapons (except Deadshot, he simply shoots pistols instead) but overall, combat feels empty. Any unique guns are hard to come by, and the looter shooter quickly loses steam when the guns don’t seem to get much cooler than what players started with and frankly, gunplay isn’t even the most fun part of combat.
There’s also skill trees which are called “Talents” for every character. These trees upgrade your chosen squad members stats in different categories. Occasionally though, these categories felt blurred and seemed confusing. For instance, on one tree labeled “Tools of the Trade” there was a 20x combo booster and critical hit ratio, but on the opposite tree the exact same 20x combo booster existed, and both were labeled as a sharpshooter build. This muddled the trees and made it difficult to understand just what I was building as a player. Other titles in the genre have done an excellent job streamlining skill trees. This felt like a mostly meaningless task other than improving my cooldowns so I could get through combat a bit quicker to get to the next cutscene.
After dealing with skill trees, players are tasked with going to their next mission. This is where the game exponentially slows down. Flying, swinging, boomeranging, or finning my way to the next objective just got tired after a while. Traversal is super fun at a first, but after several missions, it felt like a meaningless way to bulk up the gameplay time for the campaign.
After finishing missions, players are greeted with a slow motion still of their squad followed by rewards. The different weapons never add quite enough to gameplay though to overly noticeable. There are essentially three categories of weapons. Assault, Long Range, and melee. The game feels like it’s having an identity crisis most of the time. As a player, I kept having the thought that perhaps this was never supposed to be a looter shooter at all. I would much rather upgrade my boomerangs, baseball bats, etc than guns. Boss fights are occasionally frustrating and don’t flow well in the open arena areas. One in particular was quite hard to even locate the boss. This might have been intentional, but it was more frustrating than rewarding at the end.
There are Traversal Attacks which essentially function as “ultimates” you charge up and unleash. While these other combat systems were fun, I wanted to spend more time using those rather than mowing down enemies with legendary guns. The only character that matched using these guns was Deadshot and arguably he’s the character that fits this gameplay formula the smoothest. The amount of resources and things that are picked up after destroying enemies feel shoehorned in as well. It would be nice to streamline collectables and really focus on unique armour and costumes, however; because this is also a games as a service title, nothing can be too cool looking or else why would players be inclined to pay for skins? It’s a tough bullet to swallow.
If Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a players first foray into the Looting and Shooting genre, players might be forgiving, but if you’ve played titles like this, you may want to tamper your expectations.
Presentation Punches
It must be said that Suicide Squad’s bases are fully loaded for the Grand Slam when it comes to its presentation. Booting it up, and getting introduced to the tutorial settles players into the full triple A experience from Rocksteady. While the gameplay is forgettable, the story and cutscenes production value is an absolute success. It is abundantly clear that careful detail was paid to the graphics and fidelity. Playing on PS5, this was definitely one of the most impressive open world games I’ve ever played. Even playing on the PlayStation Portal, the game still ran incredibly well on the smaller portable screen. The voice acting really immerses players into the storyline and at times I forgot this was a video game, and not a motion picture. I found myself wanting to hurry through the gameplay and traversal just to get to the next story beat. The enclosed levels are highly detailed and feel more focused than the open world traversal moments. The city of metropolis is highly detailed and each rooftop feels vast… almost too vast. The magical moments in the game come from the cutscenes and closed in level designs for the most part. It’s clear that Rocksteady shines at storytelling and single player immersion, which had me constantly wondering why they went with the games as a service model anyways. Once I got passed questioning this decision, I enjoyed the game for what I wanted it to be and sat back to enjoy the story. The narrative of killing the Justice League is quite a risky plot line to tackle, and Rocksteady more than delivers from a presentation perspective.
Overhaul?
Overall, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a forgettable games as a service/looter shooter, brawler, narrative driven experience. Based on that first sentence, it’s hopefully clear that it’s a confusing task to put this game into a definitive genre. The title is fun in small doses. However, if a game asking players to go back and check out content updates after completing the 10-15 hour campaign, those doses should not be small. While the narrative is compelling, a player shouldn’t itch to simply get through the actual combat and action moments of a video game. The experiences of cutscenes and gameplay immersion should be equal, and sadly there’s a sharp contrast in levels of enjoyment. Watching the cutscenes if the story is of interest is strongly recommended though. It is clear Rocksteady put a stunning amount of care into the presentation of this game. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is by no means a terrible game, It just feels hollow. Content updates may revive this squad in the future, but only time will tell. If you’re a die hard DC Fan, and don’t mind the simplistic gameplay, than Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is definitely worth a shot. But at the triple A price tag, waiting for a sale of X amount of dollars off might be a better way to assemble the task force of playing through the action to see what happens next to the Justice League.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
Summary
Rocksteady’s foray into Games as a Service territory; Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, is stuck in a genre bending identity crisis. The game’s presentation is a major highlight. The graphics, cutscenes, and overall production value is high, but the gameplay is hollow. Shooting just doesn’t feel fun, but the melee attacks and special moves lend a hand in engagement. If players are here for the story, than cutscenes will be worth the entry alone, and I found myself itching to get to the next one rushing through all combat missions. If this is supposed to be the game of 2024 to continue going back to and playing, it just won’t quite do players expectations justice… Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League isn’t a bad game, it’s just not really a great one either.
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