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I’m not a fan of the Suicide Squad. Well, not the incarnations based on the movies anyways. The comic versions were pretty cool though, with Bane and all. The premise is cool (though I prefer Marvel’s take on it with the Thunderbolts) but the foursome in the cast aren’t exactly my favourite villains. Not from the movie, and certainly not in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
The only reason I wanted to play the game was because I’m interested in Rocksteady’s Arkham-verse, and this game takes place in it.
So…does the game actually warrants my (and your) attention?
What is Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League?
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a third person loot shooter with RPG elements. It’s developed by Rocksteady and published by Warner Bros Games. It’s available right now on the PC, Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles.
Our copy was awesomely provided by the folks at Epicsoft Asia, the game’s local distributor. Thanks so much guys!
Much has been made about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. People wanted more from the Arkham-verse, but Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League wasn’t it. Nobody wanted a shooter, much less a loot shooter. Hell, nobody wanted the Suicide Squad. At all.
Tough luck. Want them or not, the Suicide Squad is here and this is the official continuation of the Arkham-verse. Wait…what about those of us who shelled out for Arkham VR? Wasn’t that supposed to be a tease to where the universe was headed?
Hahaha…no.
Rocksteady just plain ignored those events and came out with the lamest way to continue Batman’s story after the events of Arkham Knight. I’m not going to spoil it, but if you’re a fan of the Arkham games from before, you’ll cry…and not even in a good way. I guarantee it.
I love that Rocksteady even had an in-game refresher for those who missed out on the Arkham games. The Batman Experience exhibition was super cool and I really enjoyed just walking through it and listening to the exhibits. It’s only the last exhibit (which fills in what happened after Arkham Knight) that I (and I reckon many others) went, “WTF IS THIS?! That’s not how Batman would act!”
Anyways, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is set about 5 years after Arkham Knight.
This time, Brainiac’s invaded Metropolis and have brainwashed most of the Justice League (this incarnation of the Justice League only has the basic lineup; Green Lantern (John Stewart), the Flash, Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman) into becoming his minions.
The Suicide Squad’s sent in to kill them, and then kill Brainiac. Simple plot.
Honestly? I liked the story.
It wasn’t as cool as Arkham Knight’s but the plot was a decent (if rather disappointing) progression for the Arkham-verse. Seeing evil versions of the Justice League was pretty cool, especially when it came to Evil Batman.
Good lord. Evil Batman.
Kevin Conroy nailed his performance. This is hands-down, one of his best (if not THE best) Batman performances in his career. I love how he puts a drawl into Batman’s voice. You’d think it’d be stupid, but it just makes Batman even more menacing! Whenever Batman talks, it’s like honey for the ears. I just want more more more!
Every single time Batman does status reports, or talks to Brainiac’s forces or even taunts the Suicide Squad, Conroy’s performance is sublime. That’s why it’s so devastating knowing that we’ll never get a follow-up to this.
We’ll miss you, Kevin Conroy. You were the voice of Batman for so many.
What’s surprising is how the rest of the cast gave stellar performances too…well, except for John Stewart. Like I mentioned, I grew up with the DCAU, so my ideal John Stewart Green Lantern was the Justice League/ Justice League Unlimited version.
I don’t really like the animosity between him and Deadshot. I’m not sure if that’s a carryover from the comics (I’m not that familiar with the Green Lanterns or Deadshot) but if it is, I don’t like it. It seems kind of forced in-game.
What I don’t get is why Rocksteady decided it’d be a good idea to shoehorn in The Riddler and his Riddler trophies and clues? It’s one of the most annoying things in the Arkham series and they brought it back here. If they wanted to have a scavenger hunt, why not use a different villain? Practically anybody but the Riddler!
Another annoyance was how King Shark seemed like a toned down version of the MCU Drax. Deadpan, forthright and weird. I didn’t like it when the MCU did it for Drax, and I don’t like it here. I will admit I did get a few chuckles from some of his reactions and lines, but overall, don’t really like this version of King Shark.
Playing as King Shark’s cool though. He has a ton of shield and health and his skills gel well with his heavy weapons capability. I don’t like his jumping around (reminds me of the Hulk) but he’s always my second go to, after Deadshot.
Deadshot is…well, meh. He has the personality of cardboard, which is ironic, because he’s the most fun to play for me. Jetpack traversal, proficiency with rifles and skills that give you the ability to deal massive damage with one shot? Sign me up! I can kill more enemies with Deadshot from a distance than I do with any of the other characters up close. He’s like Iron Man, if Iron Man used sniper rifles to kill people from blocks away.
Harley’s decent though. Feels like a logical evolution of her character from Arkham City, but I just wished Rocksteady had gone with a different character design and not one that’s inspired by the Suicide Squad/ Birds of Prey movies. I don’t really like her as a character too. Her traversal (which is pretty much like Batman without the gliding) is really boring for me and her skills aren’t that interesting.
Boomerang’s the lone standout with the squad.
Despite liking him the least before playing the game, Boomerang’s the character I love the most after. He’s just funny…in a super dumb (but vindictive) kind of away. It’s adorable! Ironically, he’s the opposite of Deadshot for me. He’s boring to play as (his Boomerang teleport traversal is really crap) and his skills aren’t that interesting too. I only play as Boomerang when the missions give him extra XP.
The one of the issues with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League isn’t the shooting. It’s the lack of variety.
Missions basically fall into a couple of different categories; killing waves of enemies while protecting something (usually plants), kill waves of enemies to trigger a rescue objective, kill waves of enemies while escorting something or kill waves of enemies a specific way.
Noticed the pattern yet? Everything has you killing, killing, killing and more killing. It gets repetitive, especially when you’re facing the same handful of enemy types throughout the game. Speaking of which, whoever came out with the Sniper enemy archetype, you need to get a swift kick to the nuts.
The snipers are the most annoying enemies I’ve encountered in games in recent memory! These assholes snipe you from a distance with what I assume are railguns. That’s fine. It’s their tendency to teleport all over the place that’s annoying. You can’t just rush to them too, because unless you’ve countered their shot (which overloads their tech) you can’t get close to them without them teleporting away! Super super super annoying! If you’re playing as a character without an accurate long range weapon, good luck on trying to get a counter shot in.
If you overlook that part though, combat is actually quite fun and addictive. The gunplay feels solid and the amount of gun types (I love the chainguns) gives you a variety of options on how the murdering gets down. It’s just one particular aspect of it that sucks.
Specifically, how the game handles shield recharging. You’d expect that shields would recharge if you don’t take any damage, right? Like in most games since the dawn of time? WRONG! Here, there’s something called Shield Harvesting.
Basically, shooting enemies has a chance of turning them blue, to signify that taking them down with a melee attack will make them drop shield recharges. Shooting them in the legs, has a bigger chance of turning them blue. You can bet how that plays out right?
Yup, most of the time combat has you looking down at legs. Forget about speccing your character to deal massive damage via critical hits. It’s legs where the actions’ at! I’ve never played any game that made you target enemies’ legs in particular.
Was this game designed by a handicapped, wheelchair-bound person? Is that why it hates legs?
Thankfully, characters do get skills that can offset this weird mechanic. The skills doesn’t take it out action completely, but do mitigate the need to shoot legs instead of anywhere else.
Deadshot and his traversal options in particular shines. He can zoom in and out of the action or float in the air to pick off targets. His special moves all do massive damage and affect a huge area, and he has massive survivability skills too. No wonder then why I love him so much.
It got to the point that I’d max out Deadshot while all the others weren’t even level 10. Thankfully, the game still levels up your characters after the cap. However, instead of getting points for your character’s skill tree, they get point for the Squad Skills instead.
As the name suggests, the Squad Skills are skills that affect the whole team. They do everything from raising damage for the various weapon classes, to raising resistances and my favourite, giving you increased XP from all sources.
You can only get Squad Skill points from Level 30 characters though, so there’s a lot of incentive to stick with your maxed out character if you don’t want to switch.
There’s another annoyance I have a bone to pick with; the game’s indecisiveness. After the furor from idiots saying that they didn’t want a loot shooter, Rocksteady went back and redesigned stuff. I don’t know what because there’s still loot shooter elements in it, just supremely toned back to the point that you get only 1 or 2 pieces of loot for mission completion.
I don’t get it, why bother?
The whole point of a loot shooter is throwing massive amounts of drops at the player and letting them sort out the trash from the gems. It’s part of the fun! The amount of loot you get is hardly that of a loot shooter. It’s a slow drip feed! Nowhere near the constant barrage of new loot like in Borderlands or Destiny.
Being able to upgrade the guns to be on your level also kills the drive to hunt for the perfect gun drop. It’s a neat feature, but on the flipside, it also makes random drops worthless since you can just keep a gun from the beginning and use it at the end with no issues once upgraded.
The BIGGEST and by far, the most egregious, issue is how the game handles the Justice League fights. One word pretty much sums it up…underwhelming.
You’d have thought that the fights would be bombastic, cinematic and nerve wracking.
WRONG!
The fights are nothing more than memorization of patterns and luck. The boss fights for the Flash, Green Lantern and Superman are pathetically boring. Playing as Deadshot, I just stood back, counter shot and sniped away. Then I flew to another location and repeated the same thing. Only Superman gave me trouble because it was really hard to track him in the boss arena.
The Batman fight was a bit better, because it parallels his fights with Scarecrow in the Arkham games. I thought it was a nice touch with him being monster in this one.
The sequence (where the Suicide Squad has to trigger switches) is hellishly boring and too dragged out though.
Whoever thought walking in the dark while Batman jumps out to hurt you and a giant flaming bat homes in on you is fun should be taken out back and caned. It’s a waste of time, boring and not scary at all. Stupid game design, repeated 4 (FOUR!) times. Jeebus.
I can handle the fights being weak, after all, these dudes were brainwashed….but the cutscenes after left a sour taste in my mouth.
There is no climax or satisfying payoff, just muted cinematics with the Suicide Squad spouting some one liners and finishing off the downed hero.
Every single hero died like a punk. Only Wonder Woman went out like a champ.
For the rest though (yes, even Batman), it’s a pathetic way to end a boss fight.
Hell, even the final Brainiac fight didn’t feel like it mattered. While the plot will be continued in the upcoming seasons, the ending to the main game had me going, “Wut? That’s it?!”. I’ve not been this letdown by a game’s ending since…well, ever!
This was the main battle against the game’s big baddie and I didn’t even know it! I thought it’d just be one of many fights before the game ended. I didn’t think it’d be a rehash of the Flash fight!
I felt gypped! Cheated! Emotionally letdown!
It was the lamest ending I’ve ever been privy to…and I’ve played a LOT of games!
Technically though, there’s a lot to admire about the game.
The framerate stays mostly stable and the level of detail is pretty good at long distances. If you take a sniper rifle, you can even hit enemies flying around in the distance, though there are limits. I’ve shot at copters on the horizon and not register hits.
Even after accounting for bullet drop, the hits don’t register so all I can assume is that there’s a limit to how far the game will detect your bullets.
Visually, the city of Metropolis also looks much different than that of Gotham. Whereas Gotham was all grim and dark, Metropolis is bright and airy in the day. Even at night (the game has a day/night cycle now) or during the rain, Metropolis looks more welcoming than Gotham ever did.
I particularly love the frescoes (or graffiti if you prefer) of Superman that adorn the various walls of Metropolis neighbourhoods. It gives a homey sort of feel and is a far cry from the graffiti you find in the Arkham games.
It does feel a bit disjointed at times though…the neighbourhoods don’t really transition really well. Some parts (like the Lexcorp and Wayne Industries buildings) break up the skyline too much with their towering height and stick out like a sore thumb. I don’t really mind the Lexcorp building since it’s far off at the upper end of the map (which is filled with skyscrapers too) but the Wayne Industries building is in the middle of what looks to be a residential/commercial neighbourhood.
Totally out of place.
The Bottom Line.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League definitely doesn’t live up to its potential.
It’s pretty lacking in loot for a loot shooter and the game’s repetitive as hell.
However…that doesn’t make the game crap.
Yes, it has issues, but the story is actually fun, the writing is good and the shooting decent. Plus, the endgame content with the promise of multiverse seasons has massive potential. Not only is Rocksteady promising future content drops to be free, they’ve already teased the Joker and a version of Freeze (whether it’s a Mister or Miss is anybody’s guess) coming soon!
Rocksteady can literally work on the game for months to make it better, as they pump up the content with the free updates.
The question is whether Warner Games will let them following the tepid reaction of the game. I honestly hope that Warner Bros Games don’t pull a Square Enix (who cut and run after the Avengers game bombed) and do the same thing to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League too. The Avengers had massive potential that was snuffed out before it was realized. So does Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and I really hope Warner Bros Games supports it for as long as they can.
TLDR:
Not great but a decent game to kill time with, with huge potential to get better in the future.
The Good:
- Great writing and character banter.
- Kevin Conroy as Batman.
- Gunplay is decent.
- Boomerang is funny.
The Bad:
- Repetitive missions.
- Not enough loot drops.
- Not enough enemy types.
- Justice League boss fights.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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