It feels like WB has been trying to make Suicide Squad “a thing” across two separate movies, and it hasn’t quite stuck. This has now extended into the medium of video games, and yet I can’t say I’ve been won over here either. Rocksteady, the venerable developer of the Batman Arkham series is at the helm; and while they are good at single-player games, they couldn’t capture lightning in a bottle with a game-as-a-service. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a solid game brought down by live service repetition that makes this passable, at best.
With a “How We Got Here” trope, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League opens with showing what seems to be near the end of the game. It serves as a tutorial with juiced up characters at their peak of customization. Then, you’re taken back a week to the formation of the titular Suicide Squad, aka Team Force X. It’s a game that exists within the Arkham timeline from Rocksteady, just several years after Batman: Arkham Knight. At this point, other meta-humans are found, the Justice League is formed, and now Brainiac (Brain InterActive Construct, a Kryptonian AI) has taken control of the minds of the majority of the JLA. While the mission shouldn’t be lost on anyone, it’s revealed that in order to stop Brainiac, the Justice League has to die. It’s a weighty task to say the least, and not one I was ever excited to partake in.
This is a game that can be played in co-op, and it is a squad-based, so there are four characters to play as: Harley Quinn, King Shark, Captain Boomerang, and Deadshot. Each character has a unique personality from one another, and they do have ties to their DC film counterparts. For example, Harley Quinn resembles Margot Robbie in looks and Deadshot seems to lean towards Will Smith as his inspiration. So there are attempts to tie the characters to existing casting. Now, traversal and melee usage are different for each character. Harley Quinn uses Batman’s tech to swing and zip through the city, King Shark utilizes his muscles to leap vast distances, Deadshot uses a shoddy jetpack to get around, and Captain Boomerang uses Flash’s tech to zip around. When it comes to weapons, each character becomes virtually identical save for their unique melee weapons. It’s a choice that makes sense for the style of game it is, but is another detriment.
Since this is a looter shooter, you’ll recruit past villains like the Penguin and Poison Ivy who are put to work by Argus to craft weapons and upgrades for our anti-heroes. Weapon variety exists in all the colored tiers you’d come to expect, but with some DC flavoring as villains are branded on to the guns along with unique modifiers. There are five crafting resource currencies to collect and acquire, and I never found myself strapped for any of them, as they seem to be earned rather easily. This is probably something that won’t last, especially in the End Game, and even post-release content.
I will say that the combat is fast and frenetic, and offers a lot of variety regardless of the character you’ll be playing as. Most of the time you’ll be fighting on rooftops, rarely spending time on the ground. This is where each character’s traversal ability will come in handy as it becomes a critical part about how navigate through combat arenas. You’ll have your arsenal of guns to swap between, but you’ll be lobbing grenades, dodging, and countering attacks. What’s unique here is that the game doesn’t let you regenerate shields on your own. You must harvest them from enemies by shooting them in the legs, then pulling the right trigger to refill your armor. I wasn’t too bothered by the system, and grew to like it the more I played it, as it was a nice risk/reward mechanic.
While there are the story-based main missions, there’s lots of side content that doesn’t feel like complete fluff, though they are repetitive in design. Side missions usually have good rewards or unlock a new feature or ability that enhances your combat prowess, or bolsters you for an upcoming boss fight. Though most encounters were already a cakewalk on the default difficulty. The game was at its most challenging when encounters had a limitation where you could only do damage to enemies if it was a critical hit. This changed up how I approached combat, and kept me from using only basic attacks.
There are six chapters to the game across 60 missions. It’s not until the third chapter where you’ll unlock fast travel to the main hub area. All-in-all, this’ll take about eight to ten hours to complete the main story, unlocking the final chapter and endgame content.
I was surprised that there’s some vehicle sequences in the game, but they are short-lived as the vehicles are unstable and self-destruct rather quickly. Yet, it was great to clear large swaths of enemies off rooftops in order to help accomplish a given mission. The boss fights are meant to be a highlight but aren’t very memorable except for the culmination of them. The process of weakening a Justice League member with a MacGuffin of some kind just doesn’t offer a thrill or component that built-up to the boss fight itself. Which, was pretty ho-hum in its execution (even literally). The whole premise of the game feels disrespectful to where we ended with Arkham Knight .
With everything you do, you’ll earn experience points that will give you skill points that can be spent on abilities. However, the talent tree is more akin to Borderlands 3 than anything else. You’ll be given the choice of selecting one ability, or one out of three abilities. This is probably to ensure builds aren’t outright broken, but it feels like you have little choice in how your characters grow. Each character currently has a level cap of 30, and once this tree is maxed, then further skill points are relegated to upgrades for the whole squad that offer less than a percent improvement on one particular statistic.
I have to admit, I grinned from ear to ear when I discovered that The Riddler has moved into Metropolis, and placed Riddler Challenges all over the map. Unlike Batman: Arkham Knight , these challenges are a refreshing break from the monotony of the combat and missions in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had co-op in mind when it was made, but it feels a bit more fitting as a solo game. You can freely swap between characters at any time (so long as you’re not in a mission), and even certain missions offer a boost towards certain characters. It’s a bit more “work”, but playing solo seems to offer a better experience. Finishing the story doesn’t mean you’re done with it. I prefer this game to that of the live service to that of Gotham Knights, but I just can’t get behind a game that doesn’t feel like I’ve beaten it, after I’ve beaten it.
Metropolis is a great backdrop for this game, with the massive art deco pieces adorning the city of its now fallen heroes being a highlight. It’s also refreshing that this game has a day/night cycle, allowing you to experience the city any time of day with all kinds of weather. Lastly, the facial animations are some of the best in the business, as each person in the Suicide Squad is able to express exactly what they intend without uttering a word. It’s something that goes a long way in this game.
Upon starting of the game, you’ll be treated to a rather quick “Optimizing Shaders” screen. I thought this would happen only once, but occurs each time you start the game up. I found the performance to be adequate, achieving over 60fp with everything maxed. I did mess with supersampling modes like FSR, DLSS, and DLAA. Though I found their improvements to framerate negligible, and their degrading of the visual crispness to be too much. I fell back on TAA and dealt with the shortcomings of that. While the game does support DLAA, it does not have Frame Generation. It does have Ray Tracing, which applies to reflections and feels like a necessary component to have on, if your system can support it.
My PC Specs:
– Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
– Intel Core i9 13900K @ 5.8GHz
– ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360 ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
– G.SKILL TRIDENT Z5 6000MHZ 64GB (32×2) DDR5 RAM
– ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X
– WD_BLACK SN850X M.2 (4 TB)
– LG UltraGear 34GP950B-G (21:9 Ultrawide @ 3440×1440)
I certainly like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League more than I did Gotham Knights, but only just. There’s a good game here, but it’s best moments are in the opening hours, and what follows is live service tedium that takes its own life. There are some laugh out loud moments via the cutscenes and quips said throughout the game, but it doesn’t save it from itself. This game feels forced, more so than WB’s desire to make “Suicide Squad” a household name, and cheer for the anti-hero. No amount of endgame content is gonna change my mind on what should have been finite, self-contained story. Instead, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is an infinite crisis of mundane content.
A Steam code was provided by the publisher for review purposes
