Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Review | PlayStation 5

Gaming is still an ever-growing industry, and it doesn’t look like it’ll stop moving forward, from massive advances in hardware and multiplayer aspects to captivating stories and gameplay mechanics. All of this plays a part in how gaming has evolved, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows; an odd black sheep in the mix simply doesn’t work…Sadly, money makes the world go round, and more projects are being dragged into a vicious cycle for some form of extra monetization. The black sheep in question is turning what could be a good game into a live-service title.

 

Rocksteady Studios is a long-standing development studio with several great releases like Urban Chaos: Riot Response and the Batman: Arkham series. Throughout their entire track record from 2004 until now, this British studio has never really stopped impressing us with their work. Their latest release, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which was released on 30 January, was supposed to be another great hit, but this fell flat very quickly when it came out that it’s a live-service title. So, buckle up and prepare yourself; this might be brutal and somewhat frustrating.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League takes place in the Arkham universe, though, as the name implies, you’re not exactly playing as the usual good guys. You’ll be taking on the bad guy as a group of bad guys: Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark. Your team is originally freed from Arkham Asylum by A.R.G.U.S. and essentially forced into saving mankind from the next supervillain known as Brainiac. Now, things were already looking pretty bad, but they only become worse when the Suicide Squad reached the Hall of Justice to find a brainwashed Green Lantern; this trend only carries on with your squad fighting and freeing brainwashed heroes, at least until you can put a stop to Brainiac’s antics.

The first thing you should know is that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is technically an online multiplayer release, which is to be expected since it is four people, but it can at least be played solo, too. Choosing solo or multiplayer doesn’t make a difference to the live service aspect, and you’ll see soon enough. The game might look good from a distance, but it changes very quickly when you see how lacking certain things can be and why live service is not the answer. The worst part begins with how quests are set up and how painfully monotonous life in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League can become.

 

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has great potential, but this game's biggest drawback is the lack of interesting content to the quests, which is sad to see, considering it plays like an open-world RPG. Quests are the driving force for the story and to get loot, but when the quests all feel like the same, rinse and repeat, they take place in a different location, even if there is some minor variety with the puzzle-like quests. You get it. It becomes an endless cycle of what feels like the same routine just to get a new cutscene that will progress the story slightly more. It’s enough to make anybody notice just how bland the quests are and that they need a massive overhaul.

Now, life isn’t all gloom and boredom in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. You’ll at least get to enjoy some of the RPG aspects of the game by getting to choose one of the four villains to play as, and each of them has their own ‘class’ of sorts. It is recommended that you experiment with all of them and their unique abilities/builds to see which one suits you best, but it’s never a bad thing to have some flexibility with your playstyle if you want to play online. The biggest difference from the start with each member of the Suicide Squad is their unique movement abilities, and you’ll likely end up leveraging these quite heavily as these are also what define their positions in a fight.

With your team put together and some skulls to crack, there is one other thing to keep in mind. It’s only natural that the squad members will need better gear as you go, and it’s always a joy when a looter-shooter delivers on this, especially when loot comes in a nearly endless stream at you. You’ll get a massive assortment of weapons, armor, and utility items in several different rarities at the end of each mission that you’ll need to use to keep your squad in the best shape they can be for the next fight. Though you’ll also have the option to craft new gear if that’s your preferred method of staying on top, it becomes a matter of preference and necessity in the end.

 

On the upside, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League might lack quest content, but it delivers the story in cutscenes. Sadly, this can also become rather dry and repetitive, aside from a few decent scenes that could count as the game's highlights. To make matters worse, you can’t expect much in terms of redeeming qualities to the story, but if you’re looking for something mindless, look no further than Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. It’s sad to see what could’ve been a great game get reduced to something better suited to children who don’t care about story depth. To add insult to injury, it’s also a live-service title.

Aside from all the bad things and depressing aspects, there is some good intrigue with the characters you’ll meet. Aside from the already iconic members of the Suicide Squad and their nearly endless witty but hilarious banter, the various heroes you’ll be going up against also bring their charm to what might as well be a dull world. Now, keep in mind that this is still in the Arkham universe, and some gloom is to be expected, but that gloom was removed and never replaced with anything else.

Life in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League does take an interesting turn when it comes to the unique skill trees for each member of the Suicide Squad, as this gives you more options to work with against the enemies you can pretty much crush with minimal effort. However, a little extra firepower is always welcome and usually well worth the effort in the hopes of spicing things up a bit or if you’re just after an even bigger boom to add to the fireworks. Now, if only that same level of skill growth could have been applied to the actual characters to help them develop a bit more as the story progresses.

 

On the visual side of things, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League does a pretty good job in terms of the character design while keeping movement and combat as smooth as possible. The cityscapes also have some good detail at first, but this changes quickly when the quests become repetitive and dull, making it feel like you’re never really going anywhere. The mob designs are, in general, just sad and painfully generic, with a lot of copy/paste from the looks of it. They might be trash mobs, but they’re also what you’re fighting most of the time; a little bit more variety would’ve been great in this regard just to keep the gameplay somewhat interesting.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League takes a turn for the better with the voice acting as just about every character is fully voiced (even good ol’ Harley), and the witty banter from each member of the Suicide Squad is literally all that’s helping with keeping the game interesting. The background music doesn’t do much aside from being mostly out of place and not quite fitting the overall theme, and the effects sound like gunfire sounds more like they come from an arcade game. It’s almost as if all the effort for this release went into the voice acting, and the rest was just cobbled together.

Launch discussions are usually not high on my list of priorities, but I feel compelled to address Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League because of this launch. Launch day was a complete bust for the game, preventing thousands of users who had paid for 72 hours of early access from ever logging in. Prepaying gamers for access without ensuring they can really play is immensely inappropriate. Also, there are a lot of in-game microtransactions to unlock other outfits. To add some spice, they could have implemented a system similar to Marvel's Spider-Man, where players may earn various clothes for achieving in-game tasks.

 

Overall, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is trying its hardest, but it comes off as a messy science project dressed up to look pretty, and we all know it doesn’t really do what it needs to. Sadly, a lot more polish is needed if there’s going to be hope of this release lasting longer than a year as a live-service title because, as we all know, they’re usually driven by the fans and a constant stream of income from microtransactions… Though there’s already a scarcity of pre-teens with a ton of money to burn, only time will tell.

Jay Claassen (@R3GR3T_3NVY)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed