The modern gaming landscape is how it is today because of a couple of hits from the seventh console gen: Dark Souls and Batman: Arkham Asylum. While Dark Souls would have highs (Sekiro) and lows (Dark Souls II), it branched off and inspired many games. Arkham Asylum reinvented 3D brawling with its combo and rhythm-based action and it didn’t take long for every Western developer to notice.
With Batman, it seemed like every Western 3D action game borrowed its template. Even unrelated established franchises like Assassin’s Creed cribbed its mechanics and it got so bad after a while it became obnoxious. To add insult to injury, it seemed like every Arkham Asylum sequel got worse and lost focus on what made the first game enjoyable.
Arkham City was an unbearably bloated mess of tedious collectibles and disjointed missions. Arkham Knight emphasized questionable tank combat above everything else. There were a couple of spin-offs that nobody asked for and now the Batman games have culminated into the final insult. Finally, a game that nobody wanted that further abandons what made Arkham Asylum wonderful: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
Developer: Rocksteady Studios
Publisher: Warner Bros. Games
Platforms: Windows PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S (reviewed)
Release Date: January 30, 2024
Price: $69.99
Batman as a concept is sincere. He may be edgy and brooding, but there is purity in the character that resonates with fans. Above all else, Batman is virtuous and heroic despite his darkness. In modern times, nothing can be sincere; everything has to be cynical, and there is nothing more exemplary of this zeitgeist than the current interpretation of The Suicide Squad.
After Arkham Knight was released, there was the rise of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe and a particular and obnoxious writing style that emphasized quips and sarcasm. Kill The Justice League was made during this era and by the time it finally came out, the public had grown sick and tired of this writing style. Blatant and heavy-handed pandering to lefty causes and belittlement of white characters are rife throughout.
Kill The Justice League isn’t made by the same Rocksteady that produced the Arkham games. It may have the same level of visual flair, but the misguided priorities in the narrative, gameplay, and vulgar monetization couldn’t make it more obvious that the studio is in the absolute worst hands. There will be major spoilers in this review because nobody cares to play it.
The story begins with gaming’s favorite bug-eyed black lady authority figure shipping our rag-tag team of super criminals to a ravaged Metropolis. Brainiac has brainwashed the Justice League into becoming his enforcers in his plan to terraform Earth, except for Wonder Woman who is too independent to be told what to do by a male.
The protagonists are Deadshot, a jet-powered assassin and sniper. Harley Quinn, the DC Deadpool knock-off Joke fan-girl and regular person. The shark-man demi-god whose entire personality is ripped from Marvel’s Drax the Destroyer from the Disney Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Captain Boomerang rounds out the cast as the sole white man and token punching bag for the game’s writers.
After the squad is inserted in Metropolis, they steal their gear from the abandoned Hall of Justice. Somehow none of the gadgets were looted prior, but never mind that – with the new gizmos, the team is endowed with powers. Not that it matters since it seems like everything acquired makes every character interchangeable.
Every character, more or less, has the same abilities. They’re just dressed up differently with altered inputs, cheapening every playable character. This was a concession the developers probably had to make to keep all characters balanced for the dead multiplayer.
The only character who didn’t need any gear was the shark guy. He is supposed to be a magical fish god and in theory, could do the job by himself since his bite allegedly, is mighty enough to crush Superman. The rest of the cast are regular humans and Harley especially sticks out because she is basically a crazy person with a bat and without any training. The other two guys are a trained killer and a captain.
All characters have absurd mobility to get around, can run up walls, and can clear insane gaps. Even the hulking 500-pound shark monster defies gravity and can launch himself forward in mid-air. The playability for all characters is fluid and tight, but the combat itself isn’t technical and is designed to look impressive rather than demand skill from players. It doesn’t matter how good you are, the game is centered around loot.
The shooting may be serviceable, but the looting guarantees that no matter what you get, it will always be trash and be replaced by something else. The boys at Rocksteady believed this game was going to have legs and that players would gladly waste their time chasing garbage for eternity. This was a problem in Marvel’s Avengers, a game that came out years before Suicide Squad and everyone hated it so badly that it got delisted.
To get the most out of Kill the Justice League, you have to play it with other players and invest an unbearable amount of time into the grind. After the main story, you’re expected to participate in a fruitless pursuit of fighting Brainiac’s forces. The problem is that there is no end to it even with the added seasons centering on new characters like Joker and butchdyke Freeze.
The story is obnoxiously written and makes no sense. In the latest update, it’s revealed that all of the Justice League is not dead and that the Squad killed clones. If Brainiac can clone Superman, then why have only one? It also suggests that the real heroes are sitting back and letting all the chaos happen.
There are about a hundred more holes in this hastily made backtrack, but it says that the writers don’t respect the player’s intelligence. All emotional scenes between the squad and the League are undermined. Wonder Woman’s sacrifice is made redundant because there are no consequences for death.
The writing is rotten with lefty activism and annoying quips where characters have to always be talking. The narrative also goes out of its way to depict the Boomerang man as an incompetent moron, despite this clashing with the gameplay which makes him every bit as capable as the shark-monster God. I chose to play as Boomerang to spite the game’s writers and had to carry my dumb AI partners.
If you do commit to the grind, expect to do it by yourself since nobody is playing this game. I bought this for five dollars when it was on sale for 90 percent off and the experience was utterly desolate. The combat is not varied enough to be interesting and the environment looks like it could be anywhere. Metropolis is a generic mess of debris and big areas to foster shootouts, mobility, and melee.
There is not enough to do in Kill the Justice League. As if the mind-numbing game loop wasn’t bad enough, the egregious monetization for cosmetic outfits in a full-priced game robs players of personal expression. At least when the devs and the publisher give up on this game, they will probably give it all away like Avengers did a few weeks before it was delisted.
It is insidious when a full-priced game tries to turn its players into the product. This type of model is typically reserved for free-to-play games, but thankfully the market saw through Kill the Justice League and voted with their wallets and punished it.
Suicide Squad is an utterly dour and painful experience. Hearing Tara Strong’s Harley voice is like nails on a chalkboard and never stopped making my skin crawl and I hoped somebody would throw acid in her face. The game is so far removed from what made Arkham Asylum wonderful that you could mistake it for being unrelated.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was reviewed on an Xbox Series X using a copy purchased by Niche Gamer. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is now available for PC (via Steam), Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.
