The Suicide Squad is one of the most iconic DC teams. This anti-hero group has been some of my personal favourite reads, and with a movie that was… well, disappointing, I was pretty amped for the game. I mean, with the creative minds of Rocksteady Studios that brought us the iconic Arkham games, what could go wrong?
Well, some stuff
The story
The biggest thing was always going to be the story. A bland and uninteresting one could make killing the Justice League a bland affair. Fortunately, this is the one thing that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League gets so damn right. The plot is basically that the Suicide Squad team is formed and comes out of Arkham Asylum to find an absolutely decimated Metropolis.
It turns out Brainiac is in town, and most terrifyingly of all, he has taken over the minds of the bulk of the Justice League. With no options to save them, the squad needs to kill the members of the Justice League. The plot itself is fine, but it’s tmn mh b e writing that makes this great. The characters themselves are really well written, and some ofb their interactions made me actually chuckle. Honestly, a lot of this writing is what I wanted in thbe bSuicide Squad movie. It’s silly, over-the-top, and funny. Captain Boomerang not trusting Poisob vn Ivy because she’s a ranga was an especially perfect moment. In fact, while most of the characters have their humorous moments, Captain Boomerang made me laugh out loud a few times.
Nn n bnn n mnmnnmnnn Some exceptional voice acting really helps make this story really worth enjoying.
The gameplay
The gameplay itself is perfectly fine. That’s about as good as I can describe it. The game is fundamentally a 3rd-person shooter, and that’s really unfortunate. Harley has her iconic hammer and guns. Captain Boomerang has his boomerang and guns. King Shark is a big, bulky tank with big guns. And then Deadshot-well OK he is a sniper,so guns fit his character.
While this isn’t the biggest problem, it’s basically a generic 3rd-person shooter with a little bit of added flare through some variations like lightning unlocked through Poison Ivy’s missions. There is a little bit of variety with mixing up melee and shooting, but it’s just so very, perfectly competent.
Traversal is added to the game with the tech that the team stole from the Hall of Justice, like Harley pinching Batman’s grapple tech. It is again another thing that is perfectly competent. Clunky, but competent.
The real issue is that the perfectly competent gameplay is doled out in missions that are repetitive as hell. Almost every mission consists of killing waves and waves of aliens being zapped onto rooftops. Sure, there is a chopper or 50 and some tanks to destroy. But it’s just so utterly bland. Frustratingly, there is the odd mission that is fantastic, like when the squad is being stalked by Batman, which is tense as hell. But for the most part, it is just shooting waves of enemies. Or, in the case of bosses, shooting slight variations on waves of enemies. There are some escort missions, which just involve shooting waves at enemies on the go.
The live service of it all
People were nervous when it was confirmed that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was going to be a live service game, and now that I have played it, it is warranted. You can play the whole game as a single player, which is fine, but the live service stuff is so damn intrusive.
The whole loot drop is just annoying. You get heaps of weapons, can break them down, and can create new ones in a randomised system. This was just annoying, so I ignored it for the most part. When you finished missions, you got a post-mission screen with a loot rocket thing, which was just dumb and unnecessary. Then there are all the extra missions you can do during and after the game, which are… the same repetitive missions you have already gotten bored of.
When the story was done, I couldn’t have been less interested in continuing my adventure. The worst thing is that because it’s a live-service game, you need to be connected to the internet to play. This is generally fine, unless the servers are having issues like the first day I was trying to play. Then every so often I would lose connection to the server, and the game would grind to a halt with a fun connecting screen. I always had to close the game and reopen it to continue playing.
When the live service parts of the game are the worst part, just make an awesome single-player game.
So should you kill the Justice League?
This is tough. The gameplay is perfectly OK, but the story, writing, and voice acting are great, and I am really glad I played it. But man, the live service crap really gets in the way, and the gameplay can get pretty tedious at times. There is so much of an excellent game here, but it’s held back by some really bad choices. So while it isn’t a great game, I kind of still recommend checking it out if you like the Suicide Squad.
There is heaps to like about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, but some of the other stuff gets int he way too much holding the experience back.
