Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

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Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
Rocksteady, blink once if you're being held hostage against your will into making this game.
Protagonist(s): Harley Quinn Deadshot King Shark Boomerang Genre(s): Action Adventure Shooter Platform(s): Microsoft Windows PlayStation 5 Xbox Series X/S Release: February 2, 2024 Developer(s): Rocksteady Games Publisher(s): Warner Bros Games Country: North America

"Either you die as Rocksteady or live long enough to see yourself become Rockbottom."

— Viral on Steam

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a 2024 action-adventure shooter game developed by Rocksteady Studios and published by Warner Bros. Games. Based on the DC Comics team Suicide Squad, it is a spin-off of the Batman: Arkham series, and a follow-up to Batman: Arkham Knight (2015). Set five years after the events of Arkham Knight, the game's storyline follows four supervillains—Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, Harley Quinn, and King Shark—who are assembled by Amanda Waller. They are sent to Metropolis to stop the alien invader Brainiac and kill the members of the Justice League who became homicidal after being brainwashed by him.

Plot

The Justice League is brainwashed by Brainiac. Can a ragtag group of misfits consisting of Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and a shark demi-god kill them?

Why It Should Be Killed By the Justice League

1. It's yet another live-service game akin to Overwatch 2, Marvel's Avengers, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six complete with microtransactions. While these games including this one can be fun to a certain extent, it suffers many problems discussed below.
   • To add salt to an open wound, premium currency bought with real money can only be used for cosmetics. Everything else like more playable characters, content, and weapons is being added for free so there’s no reason to buy premium currency unless you want King Shark cosplaying as Superman.
   • Heck, another live-service game, Helldivers II, was released almost a week after this game and proved that live-service games can work!
2. The graphics are completely downgraded. While the graphics are nice and incredibly detailed, they look a generation behind.
3. After about an hour or two, the gameplay becomes extremely repetitive as it's one of those live-service games with "marvelous" objectives such as getting from Point A to Point B killing enemies along the way, protecting an object from enemies, surviving until the fixed time, or collecting a set amount of objects.
   • The worst part about this game? After you've finished this game, the endgame is just a rehash of previous missions only harder.
4. All the guns feel the same ones you've played in other shooters, there are no special weapons like in Borderlands.
5. All of the Suicide Squad play almost similar to each other that the only ways to tell them apart are by their special abilities, methods of traversal, and when combined with the action shooter which takes up 80% of the gameplay with no combos or unlockable moves, that's not a good sign. Sure, there's a combo meter, but it just revolves around the basic combo meter you've seen in other games like Spider-Man and its sequel or even the Arkham games. Marvel's Avengers, despite also being repetitive, had heroes that played differently from one another.
6. The UI is all over the place where it feels like a bunch of Post-It stamps on a computer screen. It makes Marvel's Avengers UI look generous by comparison. The visual clarity during the combat with tons of explosions, shield breaks, and damage numbers makes it even worse.
7. You also cannot play offline as an internet connection is a requirement, which can become bothersome. It doesn't help that the game has server issues.
8. The AI of this game is brain-dead, including them not helping with your objectives when you need them to, or getting stuck in walls.
9. The game is disastrous at launch, with performance issues such as Lagging and Crashing when playing online.
10. The story is no better. Marvel's Avengers may have had a cliche story that feels like your typical MCU film, but it was way better than this.
    • The plot revolves around the Justice League being brainwashed by Brainiac which revolves around another "evil Superman" story we've seen in games such as Injustice and non-DC media such as Invincible, The Boys, and Brightburn, all of which were done way better than this.
    • It's another multiverse story popularized with Spider-Verse films or used poorly like The Flash.
    • The reason why the Justice League gets brainwashed almost feels like a joke. Superman is overconfident in Brainiac turning a new leaf despite the fact Brainiac is an obvious villain. It makes Superman look like an idiot.
    • The Justice League also dies in anti-climatic ways, including Batman. Batman's death was so controversial that many players find it an insulting sendoff to the character Kevin Conroy played for over 30 years. Thankfully, this isn't his final role as Batman, but it is his last videogame role as that character.
    • The Suicide Squad is except for King Shark and Deadshot is no better. They try way too hard to be funny and their comedy falls flat each time. Considering that the Justice League are brainwashed against their will makes them look more sympathetic in comparison.
      • One infamous scene to show how they're unlikable is when Captain Boomerang suggests urinating on The Flash's corpse before being stopped by Deadshot and then the scene makes a joke about Boomerang's penis. We're not making this up.
      • Probably the most infamous case is when Harley Quinn, before shooting Batman, gives Batman a harsh tirade on how he manipulates his victims both physically and mentally. While it's undeniable that he was brainwashed to evil, keep in mind that this is the same Harley Quinn and Batman from the Arkhamverse. Batman in the Arkhamverse cared about saving lives and would never resort to violence unless he needed to. Likewise, this is the same Harley Quinn who was a devoted servant of the Joker, and after his death was argued by some of his men to be even worse than the Joker. She also killed thousands of innocent civilians along with children, convinced a grieving man to commit suicide, and willingly took part in Jason Todd's torture, turning him into the Arkham Knight. So much for Harley Quinn is a "hero".
11. The game doesn’t give you time to develop with the Justice League, which many saw as a red flag since this is the first appearance of them in an Arkham game and it makes their deaths even more underwhelming.
12. The final boss fight with Brainiac is just a rehash of the Flash boss fight but with more goons. For a villain who has successfully manipulated the Suicide Squad into killing the Justice League only for him to become another mundane boss fight, this is just embarrassing.
    • Even worse, for season 1, the boss fight against Brainiac is a rehash of the Green Lantern boss fight.
13. For season 1, the game is finally adding the Joker into this game. But for some asinine reason, they decided to adding character for free by GRINDING A LOT to your battle pass and you need grind this game, over and over in order to unlock the Joker. Or, If you want to unlock the Joker faster, you need pay with in-game currency for over $40 just want this character.
    • What worse is the developers promising to adding a new enemies and new stronghold, but it doesn't appear until to the mid-season update.
14. This game damaged Rocksteady's already amazing reputation ever since their Arkham games, and it's sad to see Warner Bros. Discovery use them as a puppet for more games like these in the future.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The combat is frantic and can be fun at times.
   • Shield breaking feels nice to use and is beneficial to your health similar to Doom (2016)/Eternal's glory kills.
2. The titular group has different traversal systems such as swinging for Harley Quinn, a jetpack for Deadshot, teleportation for Captain Boomerang, and incredible leaping for King Shark that is fun to use and decreases repetitiveness by a bit.
3. The voice acting is good, with Kevin Conroy returning as Batman.
4. The scene where the Squad torments Penguin for trying to kill them is pretty funny.
5. The cover art looks admittedly cool.
6. Harley killing Batman is a genuinely sad scene, if only because of Harley's remorseful reaction, combined with the sombre reprise of Batman's Arkhamverse theme.
7. An offline mode for the game has been assured by Rocksteady to be released sometime in 2024 as stated on the game’s official website.
8. Out of the entire Suicide Squad, King Shark and to a slightly lesser extent, Deadshot, are probably the only likable Squad members.

Reception

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League received "mixed or average" reviews, according to critics but negative to players. This resulted in some players flocking to Batman: Arkham Knight and Gotham Knights for a better send-off to the character even though the latter is not part of the Arkhamverse. The game currently has a 4.4/10 on IMDb.

Angry Joe gave this game a 3/10, while Penguinz0's Moist Meter gave a rate of 45%, calling insulting mid, absolutely insulting mid.

It also failed to meet sales expectations for Warner Bros Discovery. If that wasn't bad enough, another live service game, Helldivers 2 came out almost a week later and crushed that game in player count as well. Within less than a month, the player count has reached less than a thousand compared to Helldivers 2 current player count of over four hundred thousand.

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