I went into the review of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, wanting to enjoy the game. There is a world in which Rocksteady returns to the form of Batman games and continues on a path that remains enjoyable for everyone. On the other hand, there is another world in which they lose the plot a bit and turn it into a live-service game full of bland, repetitive gameplay. Unfortunately, the latter is the world we live in.
Suicide Squad: Killing the Justice League is an interesting premise in and of itself. Task Force X is given the dirty jobs that people can’t know about for reduced sentences. What is even more interesting is that the heroes we all know and love are made so evil that Task Force X is sent in to stop the Justice League. But that’s not the big issue here in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Yes, it’s not the best-written game set in this universe, but it’s not terrible. It can be a little cringey and crude at times for no reason. Especially depending on who you play as.
In Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, we are given four choices of who we can play. There is Deadshot, a gun-wielding assassin with a jetpack as a traversal mechanism. He plays most like a low-budget third-person shooter, to the point where his melee attack is just another gun. King Shark is more of a brute; he wields heavy weapons like mini-guns. His traversal mechanic is that he can just jump really high and far. He feels a lot like Captain Boomerang, who I played.
“Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is just not a fun time.”
He is more agility-based, with a traversal mechanic of throwing a boomerang and teleporting to it. Finally, there is Harley Quinn, who I am sad to say has the worst traversal mechanic because I was really looking forward to playing her. She has a little bat wing that flies over her all the time that she can claw at and swing around. It just didn’t feel good to play with that mechanic.
The main reason I chose to play as Captain Boomerang is because he felt the most normal to control and traverse with. There is a flip side to this, though. He seems to swear and be crude for the sake of being crude. Think of an elementary school kid who just learned what the biog swear words are. He is very one note in his crudeness and reminds me the most of an edge lord.
It’s a shame because, as I said, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has a good premise and, with the exception of Captain Boomerang, some pretty decent storytelling. There is even an early Batman experience that explains why he came back from playing dead at the end of Arkham Knight. It’s well thought out and does a decent job of holding the story together. Then there is the gameplay…
“The gameplay loop is just flat-out bad.”
That’s really it when it comes to positive things I took away from my experience with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
The gameplay loop is just flat-out bad. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League sees you in the sprawling world of Metropolis, but it’s just the same recycled three or four purple alien things to fight. Except one might have a shield that just means you melee them first. The enemy design is bland and boring for a live service game that hopes people keep coming back for more.
I will say that the map in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is huge, but the lack of a fast-travel system, or the fact that it is littered with the same three missions but bigger numbers everywhere, is offensive as a player. Save this busload of people, kill enemies to get data, or use this specific attack on enemies to damage them. It all comes back to shooting enemies, which is bland, and the gunplay itself feels weak, as nothing really has auntie weight behind it when you shoot.
Then there is the whole loot system, which is a mess in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. You can find loot after killing enemies around town, but the best loot comes during missions. When a smash-to-black screen interrupts the gameplay, it comes up and says mission complete. Sometimes, a character will give you a thumbs up. Your loot will appear on this screen, and you can check its stats, although it’s not immediately obvious how to compare the two. The loot also feels like it doesn’t matter, with small incremental changes over my twelve hours. My weapons weren’t much different at the end than they were at the beginning.
“The map in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is huge, but the lack of a fast-travel system…is offensive as a player.”
This could also tie into the horrible skill tree that is present in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. It’s just nonsense. Nothing in this skill tree is even remotely interesting, and it just further shows that the Rocksteady of yesteryear isn’t around anymore. The most offensive part was how they wasted the players’ time. There is a five-ish minute cutscene that is completely black because our team is stuck in a crate. I got what they were going for, but it made it so boring; with nothing interesting happening visually and dull conversation, it cemented in me that it was not a fun time.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League falls significantly short of the truly fun experience I had hoped for. Despite a story with potential, the game is bogged down by monotonous gameplay and intrusive live service elements, detracting from what little fun there is to be found in the game. This game, unfortunately, represents a missed opportunity to build on the legacy of Rocksteady’s previous successes, leaving much to be desired in both execution and innovation.
