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My Journey Through Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League

Much has already been written about Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. Anybody interested in the game has probably consumed enough content around it to know its broad strokes. I’ve spent a bit of time with it lately and have my own point of view to offer. What kind of a reviewer would I be if I didn’t?

Starting Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League

The game starts curiously. Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang and King Shark are approaching Brainiac’s ship in a flash forward. Each character is introduced, teaching the player basic movement mechanics.

The members of the titular Suicide Squad each have different ways they move. Deadshot has a jetpack with limited flight time. Harley has a flying drone and grapple. Boomerang has a sort of teleporting boomerang that taps into the Speed Force. And Shark, well he’s just an anthropomorphic shark that can jump really, really far.

Players get some alone time with each character to test them out. I personally liked Deadshot’s jet pack the best but Boomerang’s Speed Force boomerangs and Harley’s grapple are fun to play with as well. The only play style I didn’t gel with was Shark’s. It makes sense for how big he is, but I couldn’t get comfortable with the lumbering way he played, at least in the early game.

The game introduces concepts like countering, regenerating shields by attacking enemies a certain way, and how to swap between characters (for the single player mode).

Players approach Brainiac’s ship and the Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League title card flashes.

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League Group Shot

Why Start This Way?

I’m not a fan of the “start the game near the end then flashback” motif. If done well it can build anticipation of what’s to come, but in this game, it doesn’t really do much other than establish that the world is under attack from a grave threat. As an opening It feels out of place, especially when the very next section shows how the Squad got their movement tech.

It doesn’t take long for Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League to open out into the city of Metropolis. This feels like the perfect place for the tutorial, as players learn about the Metropolis map and what’s going on here.

It’s here that players see Brainiac’s giant skull ship floating menacingly above the city and discover that the Justice League is under the thrall of the villain. The city is overrun with the mindless, transformed citizens of Metropolis doing Brainiac’s bidding.

Moving through Metropolis, the Squad will recruit other rogues to aid them. The first to “join” the team is The Penguin, who can craft and improve weapons. Later, a child-like version of Poison Ivy will join you. Using her plant-based powers she crafts afflictions. These are elemental based attacks with various status effects. There are several others whose purpose is to provide players with augments, vehicles, and a way to earn one of the many in game currencies.

Suicide Squad Harley Foreground Superman Background

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’s Story

For those unfamiliar with the Suicide Squad, it’s a group of imprisoned villains offered a reduction in their sentences if they carry out dangerous missions. Usually under the control of ARGUS head Amanda Waller and with Rick Flagg somewhere nearby, these missions have a high mortality rate. Waller controls them by putting bombs in their heads, so they don’t get any funny ideas, like maybe escaping. But these are villains so who cares, right?

That origin is still present in Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. Waller puts bombs in their heads (as well as the rogues that aid the Squad) to make sure they do as they’re told. Given that what she’s telling them to do is to kill the Justice League, still having a head is a great incentive to comply.

I learnt after starting the game that developers Rocksteady have said that it takes place in the same universe as their highly successful Arkham series of Batman games. That shows with the attention to detail given in areas like the Hall of Justice and the Batman Experience. The backstory in those areas alone make the world feel lived in.

One of the alures of any Suicide Squad media is that these are bad guys. They’ve done (and do) terrible things. There’s something to be said for a sympathetic villain but sometimes I just want bad guys doing bad things. This game delivers on that. With the exception of Shark, the Squad is rude, mean and violent (especially Boomerang). There are certainly moments in the game that make me squirm in response to the character’s actions, but I appreciate that they are actions that suit the characters. I’m happy to see bad guys being bad guys.

Suicide Squad Captain Boomerang

Anyway, On With The Game

My first steps into the world of Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League were fun. Combat felt fluid and the different mechanics of the Squad’s members were fun to play with. Things quickly started to feel strange and off though.

The various members all have their own ‘melee’ weapon that fits with their character. Boomerangs for Boomerang, bat/hammer for Harley, etc. But this is a live service looter shooter, which means guns, guns and more guns. For someone like Deadshot this feels natural but when Shark is not immediately biting the head off whatever irks him, that feels like a wasted opportunity.

The missions quickly become very cookie-cutter. There’s very little variation in them. Even the missions for different supporting characters have the same basic mechanics. The most common one is rescuing various NPCs. Fine for missions for Flagg. He’s military and rescuing civilians/soldiers is his thing. But Penguin missions had me doing the same thing, just for his henchmen. There are no less than three other mission givers where I had to defend an area until I’d killed enough for something big to wipe out the rest.

This spills over into the main missions. They all pull from that limited pool of mission types that blur into one another.

The boss fights are not fun. Starting out reasonably simple, they generally require countering the Justice League’s attacks to build a metre of some sort, then finding an opening to attack. Inevitably the screen fills up with a lot of noise, the only purpose of which seems to be is distraction. The main thing it accomplishes is annoyance.

Suicide Squad King Shark

Road To The End Game

But of course, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League is a live service, so finishing the ‘story’ isn’t the end right? Right?

It may as well be. After dealing with the Justice League there’s just Brainiac left. But why stop at one? There’s thirteen Brainiacs to deal with. It’s obvious this is going to be the on-going content for the game but if the first Brainiac is any indication, it’s going to be a pretty bland fight.

That’s getting a bit ahead of myself though. Before I could face off against the first Brainiac, I needed to harvest a currency that would let me travel to where he is. For this once off, that involves three different missions on in Metropolis, two of which are escort missions. Then I was able to confront the villain on Earth-2.

Once through a mini-gauntlet of missions types I’d experienced way too many times already, it was time to face off with Brainiac. Or should I say the Flash Part 2, because that’s what this fight is. It’s a recycled Flash boss fight with pauses every now and then to release waves of purple minions into the world.

Live Service Means Endgame Content Right?

I was hoping that we’d get to kill a couple more Brainiacs after that. It would make the end game content appealing to me. Alas that was not to be realised. The only end game content currently available is three Incursion missions. Loading into these missions requires more of the currency I earnt to fight Brainiac.

Incursions took me back into Earth-2 to farm the highest tier weapons. But I had no idea what I was farming these weapons for. The only thing left to do is the incursions and a few reoccurring missions in Metropolis. I could already do that though, so why would I want to do Incursions that were basically the same as what I’d been doing for the last however many hours?

Hitting the level cap for a character doesn’t end the levelling experience. Maxxing out one character unlocks another skill tree, this one for all the characters. The tiny incremental increases to weapons and other stats felt more like a little light going off every now and then rather than a reward for ‘levelling up’.

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League Harley foreground, Skull Ship background

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League

While I think Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League isn’t as bad as some of the talk out there, it definitely needs work. The lack of variety in missions and virtually non-existent end game content make it very hard to recommend the game.

The story is by far the best part of the game. The characters feel real and true to themselves (except for Waller, who seems like a stereotypical megalomaniac). But even that makes me sad for what could have been. Rocksteady’s pedigree was proven in the Arkham games and there’s places in Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League where I can see the love and care that went into those games.

But this game feels like Warner Brothers decided they wanted a live service game and turned Rocksteady’s vision into this. This could very easily been a Guardians Of The Galaxy style game, or a multiplayer co-op game instead of a live service title and been all the better for it.

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League is out now on PC (AU$104.95), Xbox (AU$114.95) and Playstation (AU$114.95).

@Str8JaktJim

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