Lazy, Lifeless, Live-service garbage
Playing through Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League will plague you with one recurring question – “Who is this game for?”
It’s a valid question because on first evidence one would retort “Nobody.” And after playing through the 8 hour campaign and spending another 5-6 hours mindlessly collecting achievements, that point could not be re-emphasized enough.
Suicide Squad isn’t just a bad game at a conceptual level. It’s a lazy, lifeless, live-service cash-grab that not only destroys the legacy of the Arkham games that have come before, it does irreversible damage to Rocksteady as a studio too.
The game entered development in 2017 and since then, it’s had numerous overhauls and rewrites, eventually culminating in a game that can’t quite decide what sort of story it wants to tell – or how to tell it. On the surface, a game playing as the villainous Suicide Squad isn’t actually a bad idea. It’s an edgy, quirky concept that could have explored Gotham and Metropolis from a slightly different angle. But then that relies on writers who are actually aware of the comic book material – and know how to adapt it.
Kill The Justice League makes no illusions over what it wants you to do – you need to kill the Justice League. But what’s really jarring and has irked so many people (and rightly so) is the manner in which this comes about. It’s a game that not only disrespects the legacy that’s come before, it uses the exact same end-result to off its beloved heroes. Except Wonder Woman, who you don’t directly kill here.
The game puts you in the shoes of one of four Suicide Squad members, but there’s no question that they’re woefully unbalanced. Deadshot is by far the best option here (given the game almost mechanically revolves exclusively around shooting and he is, unsurprisingly, the best shot). There’s also Harley Quinn, who is clearly the narrative golden child, chewing up most of the scenes and having almost all the most important plot tidbits revolve around her. Nestled between these two characters are King Shark and Boomerang. The latter of which is easily the weakest of the four.
At the forefront of this group is Amanda Waller, who has big plans for Task Force X, whose job eventually involves killing the entire Justice League, who are under the control of Brainiac (except Wonder Woman, for reasons that are never explained). In fact, the narrative relies heavily on a great deal of contrivances and plot leniency throughout.
Why is it the Justice League couldn’t stave off Brainiac but yet these B-list villains can? Why is the only option to kill the league and not try to find a cure? Wouldn’t killing Brainiac destroy the curse over the Justice League? Why is Harley Quinn of all people giving out moral advice? It’s just bad writing all round and the game makes absolutely no attempt to explain any of it.
Unfortunately, things aren’t improved from a gameplay perspective either. The game is split into six chapters and despite having a big world to explore, most of the jobs and missions here revolve around mindlessly killing alien goons, or transporting gear or playing Capture The Flag.
In fact, if you played Marvel’s Avengers few years back, Suicide Squad feels like it tries to recapture what made that game so bad, and sets an even lower bar. In fact, there are no unique missions here to speak of, save for one where you infilitrate the Bat Cave, but even that grows tedious and tiresome, rehashing the same mechanics as other parts of the game.
The one bright spot here comes from the boss fights but even there the game has issues. In fact, the fight early on against The Flash is a well-designed bout and arguably the highlight of the entire game. It’s just too bad that the developers feel the same way and decided to copy and paste this fight for the final boss too, which really does feel like the rotten cherry atop a poorly made and mouldy cake.
Aesthetically, the game looks… fine. There’s nothing particularly outstanding here and if anything, the graphics are actually a step down from what we’ve seen before in Arkham Knight. There’s not too much graphical pop-in, but the lack of detail for landscapes, and the general lack of distinct features across the city makes traversal a real chore.
Games have come a long way in recent years, with superhero titles in particular like the Arkham games and Spider-Man showing how much this genre could thrive with the right direction. Instead, Rocksteady seem to have fallen into all the same traps as Marvel’s Avengers, changing their pupils, just like in a cartoon, from circles to dollar signs.
The desire here is clearly to create a live-service game that milks this DC franchise for all its worth, lasting for years at a time. However, after playing through this one, Rocksteady will be lucky to keep this one going for a few months.
Suicide Squad has zero redeeming features. It’s a game that tries to be edgy and fails. It tries to be fun but fails. And above all else, it tries to appeal to a wide audience and appeals to nobody. This is a lazy, poorly written mess that deserves to be treated the same way Batman is in this game – like disposable trash that’s thrown out after a monologue about how bad it is. This sets a high bar (or very low, depending on your perspective!) for worst game of the year.
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Verdict - 3/10
3/10