While it has a long and awkward name, even if it wasn’t the free game of the month, I probably would’ve played Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League at some point. It came from Rocksteady, who gave us the Arkham series. They proved they had the pedigree to do a superhero game and do it well. Right?
First things first, the graphics and world design are no slouch here. Lots of details to both the character designs and world space. SS:KTJL moves the story from the streets of Gotham to the shinning city of Metropolis. The two cities are night and day. Metropolis features a lot of bright colors and inviting art deco architecture. With the sky rail and zeppelin stations, Metropolis feels like it’s years ahead of Gotham. For the Arkham series, Rocksteady went with what felt like a more grounded design. Gotham felt like the average American city with some quirks. Metropolis feels grouded more in the world of comic books. If nothing else, it shows Rocksteady’s versatility, and I did enjoy finding new interesting spots as I explored. The riddles were a bit harder as I am not as up to snuff on my Superman lore as I am with Batman.
A big change from the Arkham series is the gameplay. You aren’t playing as the silent stalker that is Batman, you’re playing as a bunch of bombastic supervillains. There’s no stealth gameplay at all in Suicide Squad. No stealth is fine, but what it’s replaced with is average shooter combat. One of the big letdowns for me is that you have 4 different characters you play as, and yet they all play the same. The only real variety is each characters’ traversal method, which isn’t enough to hang your hat up on. I think of Marvel Avengers. A similar style of game, but while their heroes all had the same foundation, they built on them to make them feel unique. Here, Harley, Deadshot, Shark, and Boomerang all have the exact same movesets. But, for the first half of the game, I did enjoy the combat. Jumping around the battlefield switching between melee and ranged attacks was frantic and fun. By late game it was still fun but started to feel dull. And the traversal methods felt very limited for trying to get across the city. They have a cooldown, so you have to stop every once in a while to recharge. It’s a marked step down from the fun grapple/gliding mechanics of Arkham. I think Shark had the best traversal for sustained movement, and Harley’s was my least favorite.
Several of the Arkham series staples do return here, namely Riddler and his AR movement challenges, listening to goons’ radio chatter, and being accosted by the big bad over the speakers. This is a weird spin off game, but it doesn’t sully the reputation of the previous entries much. They gloss over how Batman came back after the Scarecrow fight and joined the Justice League, very standard comic book stuff. Harley makes passing references to plot points from the old games and that’s about it. 90% of the time, you’d forget this had anything to do with the Arkham series. I’ll also hazard a guess the development of this game started around the same time as the first Suicide Squad movie, because there seems to be more inspiration drawn from that vs the John Cena one. Harley’s outfit, Deadshot being Will Smith-esque, I think he even shouts “Hell Nah” at one point, and Captain Boomerang’s schlubby homeless guy look.
The big mark against this game is it’s of the “live service” variety, which means it’s about to lose its support after about a year as is customary. A lot of the game’s ills can be directly attributed to the game’s live service nature. The bland combat makes it easy to learn and grind. There’re only about 4 mission types that get reskinned and reused for every side mission and main mission. They are all bland “defend this point” or “kill X amount of thugs” missions that all take place in random overworld spaces. Rarely are the story missions unique or offer special locations to explore. While there is a story with nice cutscenes, there’s not a lot of build up to fighting each Justice League member. You just do generic side quests until someone gives you the McGuffin to kill that particular League member. In-game cosmetics are skimmed down to encourage spending real money on them. Which I don’t mind paying for cosmetics, the Arkham games had DLC cosmetics, but this game does that awful tactic of having a “premium currency” where you can buy 500 fun bucks, but the cheapest item is 600 fun bucks. And I realized it makes cosmetics come out to cost around $10, which is asking too much. And I finally had my fill of live service schlock after I beat Superman. The game sets you up to take down Brainiac, who was controlling the League, but it starts introducing the seasons and a sharp difficulty spike and that we have to kill 13 Brainiacs. It felt like some bull & I decided I’d seen enough of this game & made good on the title.
I’ve hinted at the story a bit, so let’s get into that. You play as the Suicide Squad, I expected you’d have to pick one character and play the game solo unless you brought friends, like Marvel Avengers, but you can actually switch between all four members at nearly any time and they follow you as NPC companions that aren’t completely useless. The Squad is recruited by Amanda Waller & dropped in Metropolis with bombs in their heads with the goal of stopping Brainiac who is ransacking the city to transform into an alien world. To do this he has infected the Justice League to serve as his commanders. Well, most of the Justice League, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, or Green Arrow decided not to show up, and I’d consider at least Aquaman an A-list member. You take out the Justice League in ascending popularity, starting with the Flash, then moving to Green Lantern, then Batman, and finishing off with Superman. Wonder Woman is also there, but she is the one hero who wasn’t mind probed by Brianiac. She shows up to keep the powered heroes from mopping the floor with us. Her main goal is she still wants to help save her fellow heroes. It leads to a character moment during her fight with Superman where she finally decides to pull out her sword. Otherwise, she felt very underutilized. I’m unsure why they decided not to make you fight Wonder Woman. Were they afraid it would be too similar to the Superman fight? The story mode isn’t that long, so adding a Wonder Woman fight wouldn’t’ve been hateful.
One of the early levels is unique for not being a copy/past mission. It sees you exploring the Batman Experience, which recaps the Arkham series, but it’s also an Arkham style stealth level from the perspective of the thugs. It was a highlight of the gameplay. I remember noticing the floor vents and explosive gel that I used as Batman in the Arkham games. Batman has gone full mental and racks up a higher kill count than any of the other League members. I know it’s been done in the comics plenty of times, but the idea of Batman going evil or at least sacrificing his morals, is something I’d be excited to see a game explore.
Another big part of the story is the Squad becoming friends and working to find a way out of their predicament. Most of the Amanda Waller scenes are just “Do what I say or I blow up the bomb in your head” over and over again, pretty one note. The banter between the Squad is one of the highlights of the game though. They each have fun personalities that play off of each other, with Deadshot being the stoic straight man, Boomerang is a bum who talks a big game, Harley is that crazy girl you meet at a party, and Shark is the least villainous of the 4. He’s a bit like Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy, but smarter. He’s enthralled by Earth society but lacks some of the social awareness. All four together create some comedic moments that did get an honest chuckle out of me. They start out at each other’s throats, but by the end of the game, they’re a dysfunctional family.
All in all, sometimes a game falters because the developers make weird design choices or because the publisher meddles in the process. I think Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League suffers from the latter. There are little glimpses here and there of what could’ve been a good game if it wasn’t live service game. I’m sure it wasn’t the passion of Rocksteady to design repetitive missions and battle pass content. Were this a more traditional game, I think it’d be a better experience overall, maybe not matching the Arkham series, but still a good game. There’s glimpses of a good game in here with the character interactions and a few of the more unique levels, but it’s all held back by the live servicy stuff, leading to an overall middle of the road experience. I was hoping this would be another game that's bad reputation was undeserved, like Mass Effect Andromeda. If you are a fan of the Arkham games or the Suicide Squad, I can recommend this game for free or a really deep sale.
