Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League – Review

It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without superheroes. From their early beginnings in comic books, the colorful heroes have dominated every form of media from movies to TV. While there is a definite fatigue in the movie world, video game representation has been at an all-time high with multiple releases a year. After taking on the role of everyone’s favorite web-slinger just a few months ago in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, it is again DC Comics’s turn to give us control of some super-powered individuals in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Will we relive the glory days of The Arkham Series or will the live-service approach make the game crash and burn like Marvel’s Avengers?

Story

After two recent big-screen appearances, with varying degrees of reception, most people will be familiar with the titular Suicide Squad. This ragtag group of villains officially labeled Task Force X, is put together to take on dangerous missions by Amanda Waller, an officer you don’t want to mess with. How does she control these unhinged killers? With nano bombs in their skull of course. This time around, the team consists of four members: poster girl Harley Quinn, the assassin who never misses Deathshot, Australian one-line deliverer Captain Boomerang, and the half-god King Shark. Now they will face their hardest tasks yet, taking down some of the strongest heroes Earth has to offer.

The world is invaded by an extraterrestrial super-bad brainiac, and worst of all, he has taken control of the Justice League to do his evil bidding. All of this completes the revival of his home planet and the complete domination of the human race. Now only Task Force X can take down these corrupted heroes, or are at least expandable enough to try it. This starts a quest throughout Metropolis to find ways to find the Justice League’s weakness and recruit evil allies along the way, both familiar and lesser-known characters. Since the game has been presented as a live-service game, many fans already wrote of the chance of there not being a good story. But to our surprise, this is one of the stand-out features of the game. While the gameplay of story missions can be a bit repetitive, the context around it makes up for it, delivering some entertaining story beats and surprises that fully take advantage of the unique concepts the game presents.

At the heart of this are the titular Suicide Squad members, each of them bursting with personality and delivering great chemistry. The characters are witty and boast a ton of one-liners, which most of them manage to land. The same can be said for the supporting cast. The rogue’s gallery that Task Force X puts together to help them consists of a bunch of memorable characters, especially the ever-threatening Amanda Waller. Lastly are the corrupted Justice League members who are presented as the main antagonists of the game. Luckily, these aren’t some brooding bad guys that stay in their evil castle until it is time to fight them, but frequent interactions make them a vital part of the story. Each encounter explores how a corrupted superhero with these powers would act and shows how big the power gap is between them and the Suicide Squad. Fans who have watched The Boys will definitely recognize this behavior. Being hunted by Batman instead of being the hunter like in the Arkham Series is a joy to experience. The game also has a connection to this series, taking place in the same universe. While there are some references to prior events, this connection feels more forced in to better advertise the game.

While the narrative of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is an enjoyable one, there is a big problem with the ending: there is none. The credits appear pretty abruptly after the story introduces a whole new part, ending the game on some sort of cliffhanger. Where is the rest of the narrative you ask? In future updates and seasonal events, which is due to the game’s live-service format. How this will be delivered and how long it will be supported isn’t that obvious yet, but we do know the game will continue in March with the introduction of the first season and the Joker as a new playable character.

Graphics

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a brand new triple-A game so there are some expectations with the graphical side, and this is where the game delivers. The destroyed world of Metropolis is greatly presented and all the characters look crisp. The animations, both in cutscenes and free-roaming are stellar and bring the world to life. We do hope that future updates introduce some more variety for the post-game missions because these can become somewhat repetitive to look at. There is however one current problem during combat, namely the fact that all the particle effects and enemies can be a bit much during busy encounters.

Sound

Superhero games are not often known for their stellar soundtracks, aside from the rare banger every now and then. This is exactly the same case for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, not delivering a too memorable sound experience. The songs do fit the atmosphere and tone of the game, but you won’t be humming them on your way to work.

This is however compensated by the amazing performances in the voice acting department. There are a bunch of returning actors from the Arkham series, like Tara Strong as Harley Quinn, but all the new characters are delivered strongly as well. The biggest standout is of course Kevin Conroy as Batman, who sadly passed away last year. He has been the voice of Batman in dozens of projects over the past 30 years, becoming the caped crusader for many generations of fans. The game also pays homage to Kevin with an in-game tribute.

Gameplay

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is an online 3^rd person action game that lets up to four players take control of the titular team of villains, having a big focus on loot and upgrading yourself to take on tougher missions. In contrary to the more stealth-orientated Arkham games that Rocksteady developed, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a gun-blazing fast-paced action game.

The main focus of the game lies on Task Force X, each of them promoting a unique playstyle and having tons of gear to upgrade them. Each character can use three of five weapon types, making this part of the game less unique since almost all guns can be used by everyone. Each character does have their own stats that allow for a different playstyle with these guns. For example, King Shark’s beefy build promotes the use of miniguns while Captain Boomerang’s speed fits perfectly with shotguns. The uniqueness of each member of Task Force X lies in their traversal moves. To travel across the open world, each villain has access to a special way of transportation, from Deathshot’s jetpack to a speed force-infused boomerang for, you guessed it, Captain Boomerang. These make zipping across the map a ton of fun and put you into high-speed combat encounters. Things become even more interesting when the game introduces special moves to take out groups of enemies or special melee shield break attacks that boost your defenses. These can be unlocked and upgraded by leveling up characters, which nets you points to distribute in skill trees. All of this works together to create a chaotic yet fun combat experience that will have you trying out different characters.

While the characters themselves are fun to use and feel distinct from each other, the same can’t be said about the encounters you face in the game. It becomes clear pretty early on that most of the missions come down to the same objectives, protecting something or destroying a specific weak spot on a machine. Most of these missions are presented as side quests for team members to unlock new weapons or bonuses in the game. Each of them often has a special requirement, like enemies only taking damage from critical hits or grenades, but the objectives stay the same. There aren’t that many of these, which is odd since this is one of the only forms of side content aside from random encounters in the overworld. These are your best ways to unlock gear and resources, which can be used to buy new weapons or adjust them with stats or elemental damage. While there is a ton of depth to these weapon upgrade systems, we rarely crafted ones that were better than the ones we got from missions, so this is more of a post-game mechanic where the focus is on grinding out gear. There is of course also the return of the Arkham games’ worst collectible, the Riddler trophies, but these only net you some codex entries. The Riddler also has some obstacle courses now that reward cosmetics. Don’t get us wrong, there is a ton to do in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and a lot of fun to be had with it, but it is mostly curated towards players that enjoy a more grindy experience.

Now it’s time to address the elephant in the room: the live service approach, and what it means for a full-priced game. Firstly, there are microtransactions, which ask you to pay some more money for cosmetics. While it is good that this only locks cosmetics behind a paywall, it’s still sad to see the greed with this approach, especially since the base game features almost no mention-worthy extra costumes. This is almost the only way the live service model infects the main story, aside from some daily missions to get extra rewards. Most of it comes into play when the credits roll and you enter the post-game. Here is a focus on doing repeatable missions to get new gear and take on bigger challenges. In March, a month after the release of the game, the first season of extra content will be released, including more of these missions as well as the continuation of the story. At this moment, there isn’t much known yet about what is to come, aside from a new free character and a paid battle pass.

Conclusion

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is far from the trainwreck people were expecting. The game presents a fun story with great characters, that unfortunately keeps fans guessing with an open ending for future updates. The same can be said about the gameplay, boasting a fun and fast-paced action spectacle that gets bogged down by repetitive missions and the promise of more to come. As of now, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is already a recommendation for superhero fans, especially if it can deliver what it wants to do in the future.

Wirotaboto

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