The reveal of the gameplay of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has evoked the specter of Marvel’s Avengers, and not the glories of Batman Arkham.
We wouldn’t call ourselves “superhero fans” but, if we had to pick our favorite, it would be hands down Batman. The best superhero movies are Batman movies, and the best superhero games are Batman games. It’s a fact.
Marvel’s Spider-Man came close, but it wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the groundwork laid by Rocksteady, the developer behind the Batman: Arkham series. The English studio achieved legendary status with its trilogy dedicated to the Dark Knight, closing the series with the outstanding Arkham Knight.
When it was announced that Rocksteady’s next game would be set in that same universe and follow the Suicide Squad – Harley Quinn, King Shark, Captain Boomerang and Deadshot – as they try to take down a corrupted version of the Justice League, we were thrilled at the idea: a new underdog story, and it’s not too often you get to play as the anti-heroes these days. Plus, Rocksteady is the best. It took eight years to finish this game, which is the same time it took Rockstar to release Red Dead Redemption 2. What could go wrong?
What about the Batman Arkham studio? —
We began to worry after the game’s second appearance, which was once again just a cutscene. No gameplay. It had all the hallmarks of a Rocksteady game – richly detailed and emotional characters, witty and brilliant writing that understands the source material – but we needed to see it in action. During last night’s State of Play, we finally got what we wanted, and now we’re more concerned than ever.
Batman: Arkham Knight had stealth, combat, puzzles, investigations, vehicles, multiple protagonists, and a brilliant story. He didn’t just show you Batman punching anyone in the head and sending poor villains to the hospital. Suicide Squad seems to hit the last two points – it has multiple protagonists and a good story – but the gameplay shown was completely monotonous.
It looks like a game about shooting purple alien things to get better guns to shoot purple alien things with bigger health bars. The words “gear score” were mentioned, a big big flag for us gamers sick to death of shooting and looting games. Looter shooters are a genre dominated by Bungie and progressively filled with game corpses wanting a slice of Destiny’s space pie.
Come Marvel’s Avengers? —
Suicide Squad’s main competitor is Marvel’s Avengers, a game that was already canceled before Rocksteady’s approach to the genre even hit the market, which is the fate of a service game that can’t find a steady audience. The always online requirement – which Suicide Squad will have – essentially renders the games unplayable once the servers are down: can you imagine the bitterness if Suicide Squad – which includes Kevin Conroy’s last performance as Batman – happened the same thing?
At one point in the gameplay trailer, the developers talked about what differentiates the four playable characters from each other: Deadshot is good with weapons, Harley is acrobatic, and so on. But the gameplay shows none of this. They are all good with weapons. They’re all capable of jumping around the environment like a kid in Fortnite’s No Builds mode – even Captain Boomerang, known for using, well, a boomerang, in his portion of the gameplay jumps around the environment with a shotgun and rifle by assault. King Shark seems to lean towards heavy weapons, but in the trailer we could also see Harley Quinn using a gatling gun quietly.
It’s always difficult to decipher the feel of a game from a video, so we’ll reserve our final judgment for when we’ve played Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The Arkhams were physical and heavy, and you could “feel” every broken bone and fractured jaw. Here we only see a crosshair that turns red and a mutant that is knocked down. A potentially interesting feature of the combat system is the ability to give your weapons traits of other villains, but this feature was shown with Bane’s abilities, which apparently do nothing but make green stuff shoot instead of the basic bullets .
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League non convince (per ora) —
The character design, art, and writing are all up to Rocksteady’s high standards, but none of this will make sense if the project’s underlying gameplay centers around hamster-wheel-style player retention, instead of keep him engaged and interested in what is going to happen in the story. All this talk of the Battle Pass, endgame content, and new characters makes it clear that it will indeed be a service game eventually, and these titles need to be designed in a certain way to give players small doses of dopamine with repetitive actions.
We’ve always been huge Rocksteady fans, so we’ll still give Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League a shot, but the gameplay presentation left us colder than a shot of Mr. Freeze’s ice weapons. The hope is that there is still more to see before launch.
Written by Kirk McKeand for GLHF
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