Rocksteady extends its Batman Arkham universe with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, pitting players, in the role of DC’s comic book villains, against its legendary heroes.
Taking a group of character-controlled B-list DC characters and putting them up against the top-tier members of the Justice League is either arse-backwards or a very ballsy move on developer Rocksteady’s part. To be fair, it’s the same sort of bravado that blew up in Warner’s face with the first Suicide Squad movie but paid dividends the second time around.
The game starts with the motley crew of Joker’s ex-girlfriend Harley Quinn, the assassin Deadshot, Australian Captain Boomerang and the walking fish King Shark getting recruited into Amanda Waller’s Task Force X. They have a special mission. The extra-terrestrial villain, Brainiac has taken over Metropolis, killing millions. The Justice League have also fallen to Brainiac and now do his bidding. As you can guess, it’s up to the Suicide Squad to kill the Justice League.
Unlike the Batman Arkham games that preceded it, Suicide Squad isn’t just a single-player narrative adventure game, instead, it’s a co-op live service game. You can still play it solo, but the intent is that the game is played with others with new content continuously pumped at players. Like Fortnite, Sea of Thieves and other successful games that utilise this format, premium content and battle passes create an ongoing revenue flow for the publisher. Players can still, however, continue to play the game for free without the extras.
It’s been a very lucrative genre for some publishers, but an absolute disaster for others, The Avengers and that mother-of-all-failures, Anthem, for example. It’s still too early to call for Suicide Squad, but the game’s story and very well realised game world give it an advantage.
The writing is faultless, the way the members of the Suicide Squad are portrayed is spot on. King Shark is a fish out of water, Captain Boomerang is a self-serving prick, Harley Quinn is suitably maniacal and Deadshot is conflicted. They are all under the command of Amanda Waller, played equally psychotically by Jedi Survivor’s Debra Wilson. The game draws on James Gunn’s slightly madcap take on the gang, allowing the game to deliver some laugh-out-loud moments.
The gameplay is mission-based, with players traversing the vast city of Metropolis. The city is meticulously detailed, offering some vertical gameplay. All over the city, Brainiac’s legion of monsters are all vying for a fight, it’s almost impossible to get to a destination without a skirmish on the way.
Locomotion is a big part of the game, with each character having a unique way of getting about. Harley Quinn has Batman’s grapple, aimed by a drone to give her abilities akin to Spider-man’s web-swinging. Captain Boomerang uses a device based on The Flash’s powers to travel almost instantly to a destination, King Shark can jump and Deadshot has a jetpack.
The character’s inspired abilities make combat entertaining and sometimes exhilarating. Timed attacks and breaking shields using weapon combos mix things up. The game has a looter-shooter element like the Borderlands games, meaning that you are always swapping out your equipment to gain an advantage.
The fetch quests are punctuated by confrontations with members of the Justice League, propelling the story. Unfortunately, it is the story that carries the game, particularly a worry as it is the gameplay that live service games rely on for continued success.
As well as the story, game visuals are the other standout. As with all the Batman Arkham games, Kill the Justice League looks amazing. The characters all look superb, maintaining the aesthetics of the series and giving the comic-book setting a real-world feel.
The return of characters and villains from the previous games and some new ones from the DC comics, reimagined for this new game, add a bit of fan service. Metropolis swaps the gothic look of Gotham City for a futuristic cityscape, albeit one that has suffered at the hands of Brainiac’s invasion.
I still can’t get over feeling that this game has been forced on me, that the suits at Warners knew this was a game we didn’t want. We wanted a Justice League game, but we were not going to get it.
I’m not saying that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a bad game- it is not at all. The story, the characters, the setting, and the combat all mesh nicely into a game that’s fun to play with friends or solo. But I still feel it’s a wasted opportunity and worry about the game’s longevity as a live service game.
At best, the game is an interesting and entertaining take on the DC universe. At worst Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a game that draws upon a failed movie and its much better sequel, relying on the goodwill of the Arkham games whilst irreverently mining the legacy of DC’s iconic heroes.
Rating: Good