Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League is a tough game to judge
Plus: Sony shows off, and 2K cuts a WWE wrestler
The long-awaited Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, out today on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles and PC, is solid, even terrific at times.
But it isn’t the game I wanted its development team at Rocksteady to make, and so it’s hard to play it without feeling disappointed. That might be on me.
Suicide Squad is Rocksteady Studios’ sixth release, and its first since 2016’s Batman: Arkham VR (it’s first full premium game since 2015’s Batman: Arkham Knight).
Reviews (and reviews-in-progress) so far have been a collective sigh: “It’s not perfect.” “... left me with wildly mixed thoughts,” “doesn't seem like the disaster some were waiting for…”
Like the latter games in the company’s acclaimed Batman Arkham trilogy, it’s a third-person super-hero action game set in a big, open city. We’re in Metropolis this time, not Gotham. We control any of a quartet of villains—Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, King Shark—in an adventure that can be played solo or in up to four-player co-op.
Superman, Batman and other members of the Justice League have been brainwashed by the evil Brainiac, whose purple soldiers wreak havoc across the city. The c-list Suicide Squad are convicts, all leashed to their U.S. government commanders by the threat of tiny bombs blowing up in their necks. They’re given a very tough mission: kill the League.
It’s a good set-up, and Rocksteady tells a fun, if dark story full of entertainingly written characters. There’s also a surprising amount of follow-up with the rogues and allies from Rocksteady’s Batman games.
Kill The Justice League feels good to play, too, once you get the hang of the characters’ jetpacks, grappling hooks and odd ability to counter-shoot their guns at enemies. There’s a lot of shooting in this game, maybe a reaction from a dev team that spent a decade on games featuring a super-hero who famously doesn’t use guns. My favorite character to control is King Shark, who can bound across Metropolis like Super Mario.
The sharpest deviation from the Arkham games seemed like it was going to be Rocksteady’s transition into making a loot-based game, a super-villain take on Bungie’s Destiny, Blizzard’s Diablo and Ubisoft’s The Division.
Missions in Suicide Squad reward randomized, color-coded loot, and players are driven to play more to get more—and to eventually reach an infinitely replayable end-game to collect even more.
I’ve played the game for about eight hours, and I don’t mind the loot. I also don’t mind the plans to offer the game as a perpetually updated live service, even if I’ve run out of room in my life for live service games (wait, Ubisoft’s live service pirate game is launching this month, too?).
The issue I’m having—and hadn’t expected to have—is the Squad.
It’s the fact that Kill the Justice League was designed to always have all four of them around. It makes the game feel crowded and seems to limit what its missions can be.
Whether you play Suicide Squad solo or in co-op, the same four characters are always around. That’s fine when you’re on a mission to clear aliens from LexCorp tower or you’re hunting The Flash. But Rocksteady’s design choice means there are no solo missions that spotlight a single character, no missions that let us just hang out with two members of the Squad and see how they relate to one another. Worse, by having to anticipate that the player could be in control of any of the four characters, there can’t be any missions that call for gameplay tailored to the traits of one Squad villain. There’s no chance to have a sniping mission for Deadshot or an underwater mission for King Shark, etc.
In 2015, Arkham Knight offered hints at what Rocksteady could do with a game that was packed with a playable ensemble cast. That single-player adventure mixed and matched its protagonists, which benefited its gameplay and its story. It had missions you played solo as Batman but others that Batman explored alongside Catwoman, Nightwing and others. Then, through that game’s expansions, Rocksteady even offered a brief adventure for Robin and Batgirl, spotlighting their status as newlyweds. Suicide Squad, as it’s designed, can’t do this.
It might be unfair to ding Rocksteady for what the game isn’t. What’s there is pretty good for the goals the studio appeared to have.
The developers were also no doubt happy to take a break from Batman and their Arkham game designs.
“The studio wanted this game,” one developer who worked on Kill The Justice League told me today, emphasizing that Rocksteady had had their fill of making Batman adventures and voted to make a Suicide Squad game when Rocksteady owner Warner Bros. offered. (Making it live service was more something its publisher encouraged, they noted).
The former dev thinks some people have unfairly written the game off. “It's the first part of a live service story,” they said. “They haven't seen how the story plays out from here.”
It’s tough to see a studio pivot, and with a live service game that’s inherently unfinished when it launches, it’s even harder to assess whether the new direction was an altogether good one.
To be continued…
Item 2: Sony shows off
Sony’s 43-minute State of Play showcase on Friday helped flesh out the year ahead, and beyond.
There was the Hideo Kojima news: Death Stranding 2’s new trailer and 2025 release window, plus the reveal that his team will follow DS2 with PHYSINT, a new action/espionage game made with Sony’s backing—basically, the successor to Kojima’s work on Metal Gear.
Sony promised Stellar Blade, an action game from South Korean developer Shift Up will release in late April.
MiHoYo, makers of Genshin Impact, said that yet another of its big mobile games, the upcoming Zenless Zone Zero, will come to PlayStation (the only line of consoles its games have released on so far).
Konami surprise-launched Silent Hill: The Short Message and teased more of its upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake.
Sega revealed Sonic X Shadow Generations, a new sidescroller set for a fall release on PC, PlayStation, Switch and Xbox.
Ghost Story Games, the studio led by BioShock chief creator Ken Levine, showed a new trailer for the still-undated game Judas (PC, PlayStation, Xbox). It looks a bit BioShocky.
Item 3: In brief
🎮 2K Games has removed WWE wrestler Brock Lesnar from the company’s mobile game, WWE Supercard, as reported by WWESCNews (via VGC).
On Monday, a rep for the publisher side-stepped addressing a question from Game File about whether the company’s upcoming WWE 2K24 game would exclude Lesnar or Vince McMahon, who were both in last year’s edition. McMahon was sued by a former employee last week for sex trafficking (he’s denied it) and Lesnar was all but named as one of the wrestlers McMahon offered the employee to.
Lesnar is featured on the recently-revealed deluxe edition cover for WWE 2K24, which was prepared prior to the lawsuit. A source familiar with the matter tells Game File to expect 2K to follow WWE’s lead in its handling of things. WWE has reportedly dropped plans for Lesnar from its shows, per Fightful.
👀 Sega of America is laying off 61 employees in March, but union intervention spared another 18, Polygon’s Nicole Carpenter reports.
🎬 Actor Jim Carrey will return as Dr. Robotnik in Sega’s third “Sonic” movie, which is slated for a Dec. 20 premiere, Variety reports.
🤔 Streamer Imane "Pokimane" Anys says she left Twitch in part because the platform has "regressed a lot" due to "the rise of so much manosphere, red pill bullshit - I feel like that stuff has flourished within the male-dominated livestreaming sphere,” Eurogamer reports.
🎮 Devolver Digital CEO Douglas Morin is stepping down, following layoffs at one of its studios, Eurogamer reports.
🥽 Apple’s Vision Pro launches today with a smattering of games set to run in “spatial” mode. Titles include board game compilation Patterned, Game Room, Cut the Rope 3, Wylde Flowers and Synth Riders.
The games made for Vision Pro render graphics that appear to hover in real space, a visual style that I praised recently on Game File.
Item 4: The week ahead
Friday, Feb. 2
Persona 3 Reload (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) and Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) are released.
Apple’s Vision Pro AR/VR headset is released.
Monday, Feb. 5
Steam Next Fest returns, offering hundreds of free PC game demos throughout the week (Note: This is one of my favorite things in gaming; there’s great stuff every time.)
Tuesday, Feb. 6
Nintendo announces quarterly earnings.
Sony’s next State of Play online showcase, focusing on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, is held.
Wednesday, Feb. 7
Roblox announces quarterly earnings.
Thursday, Feb. 8
Ubisoft and Take Two announce quarterly earnings.
The Whitethorn Winter Showcase is held at 1pm ET.
Helldivers 2 (PC, PS5) is released.
The “Halo” TV show’s second season premieres on Paramount+.
Hi, Always enjoy reading your stuff.
You misspelled Hideo Kojima.
So, no issues with Suicide Squad auto-complete?