Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
Developer: Rocksteady Studios
Publisher: Warner Bros Games
Platforms: Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PC (Reviewed)
Release Date: 31 Jan 2024
Price: $49.99 USD – Available Here $119.95 AUD – Available Here
Overview
Some game studios tend to fill you with good expectations once you hear they’re working on a certain game. When it comes to porting former console exclusives to PC, I know that Nixxes rarely misses. You can count on Rockstar Games to give you a highly detailed single-player experience and you can always count on FromSoft to suck you in for a month or two with their games. I remember being surprised at how good I was in Batman: Arkham City at finding all those Riddler trophies without guides, and expertly taking down all the enemies in a room without anyone noticing a thing. I loved how almost gothic the first game in the Arkhamverse felt and it Arkham series managed to make Batman cool in video games again. Gave him a new life, if you will.
With that said, Rocksteady Studios has built quite a following with their Arkham trilogy and this game seems to be set in the same universe so we’re obviously in for a ride of our lives, right? Right?!
Story
This is where things start to get a bit confusing right off the bat. Sure, it is an Arkhamverse game but a lot of stuff will take you by surprise. Seems like a lot of things happened after Batman: Arkham Knight. Gotham looks way different now, way more colorful and Batman is just gliding around and doing his crime-fighting thing even though his identity was well-known at the end of Batman: Arkham Knight. Oh, and there’s also this thing now of Brainiac enslaving the whole city, turning all of your favorite superheroes bad so you have to step up as a cast of antiheroes to take down the real heroes.
I’ll admit it, it sounds fun to some extent. I just hate how we barely got even the hints of Flash, Superman, and Green Lantern in previous games but here they are now made into boss fights. When it comes to our ragtag group of unlikely heroes we have Harley and Deadshot, joined by Captain Boomerang and King Shark. The goal is simple – take down every member of the Justice League ending with Brainiac who has been controlling them all.
Gameplay
Have you ever come late to the party? That’s how I usually felt when I would install some multiplayer game that everyone dropped ages ago. Or when I played an MMO with dozens of daily players at best. That’s how it feels playing Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League sometimes. At this stage, the game is a neverending cycle of escort, defend, and capture the flag missions. But you know what I “really like” about the game? Tell me, what weapon do you think Captain Boomerang uses the most? That’s right, a shotgun! Remember King Shark and a machine gun? Maybe Harley and her iconic pistol? Joking aside, characters not using any of their abilities and expertise and instead just resorting to giving them guns is such a lazy cop-out and a missed opportunity.
As it comes with almost every live service game, you have gun crafting, stats rerolling, afflictions, statuses, equipment tier, and whatnot. There is also this thing of countering enemy attacks which just means pressing a certain button when they are slowly telegraphing that they’re about to attack. In short, if you play the first hour of the game, you’ve played it all. Notable mention goes to one of the most uninspiring boss fights in gaming history and they pretty much boil down to “move from point A to point B and shoot, wait for the boss to exhaust himself and shoot away”.
But what I consider a crime against humanity is the most dreadful user interface that I have ever seen in video games. Things get almost migraine-inducing when you play any “defend the x” mission and you get overwhelmed with enemies but they’re not really the problem as much as it is the UI clutter that they bring with themselves. Even the ending of the game, actually the whole game is just an intro for the whole live service gimmick where after you take down Brainiac, after the game you have to hunt down the “copies” of him in the other universes. How creative.
Visuals
I’ll give them one thing, the game is insanely well-optimized although you’ll need to play it on the medium recommended specs at least to get the most out of the game. The map is creative and rich with details although that will never be the Gotham I knew. At the same time, seeing the enemies (or lack of their variety) is what made me realize that folks behind this game maybe, just maybe……don’t really give a damn. You have your average everyday monster/ghoul/alien enemy, then there are those brutes that have more health, then enemies that mimic the abilities of the bosses you fought, flying enemies, hard-to-catch-but-give-good-loot-if-you-do enemies…It’s just easier if I pretend that I’m playing a nearly-dying MMO and my other bot squad members are just other players. The only thing where I see some work has been done is the customization of your characters (you mostly get costumes by solving Riddler puzzles and AR training tests) but that’s not so surprising because, you know, we have to market those upcoming battle passes and tier rewards now.
Audio
Not much to say here except that nothing really stands out when it comes to sound design. The weapon sounds like someone googled “assault rifle stock sound” and put it in the game and Amanda Waller giving you waypoints through a headpiece while playing the most generic tough boss lady gets old pretty fast. At least the voice acting of Kevin Conroy here reminds us of the potential of this game had….just before the first gameplay trailer came out.
Overall
You know, maybe it’s time to stop lying to ourselves. Things change, and people move on. Maybe those stupids that I remember from 10 years ago are not the same anymore. Different people, different goals. At this point, I’m not angry just disappointed. I’m disappointed that might turn out to be the final nail in the coffin of the Arkhamverse, maybe they arrived at this live service gimmick a bit late, and maybe the initial pitch of the game is vastly different than what we have now. In any case, I cannot in good conscience recommend the game at this stage and with such a generic gameplay loop. Batman deserved better.
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