This fourth iteration of DC Comics’ unlikeliest characters blends a clever plot with very cliched fighting.
In 2008, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight appeared in theatres like a terrifying creature out of nowhere. This gloomy, nihilistic beast, which pushed its 12A classification to the maximum, was a long cry from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy.
With two wins and eight nominations for the Academy Awards, Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster revolutionised a whole genre. Returning, The Bat soon brought a Gotham-themed glow-up to video games.
2009 saw the quiet ascent of the highly acclaimed Arkham Asylum, which pulled licensed games from the cheap bin and catapulted them into the public eye. Now, nine years after 2015’s Arkham Knight, Gotham’s golden lads are back with a fourth DC adaptation – Suicide Squad.
Assuming the roles of Deadshot, Boomerang, King Shark, Harley Quinn, and other bloodstained characters, it is your responsibility to protect Metropolis against an alien invasion.
You might wonder, where is Batman? Unfortunately, the once-noble Justice League has been brainwashed into carrying out the nefarious plans of extraterrestrial Brainiac, and Earth’s heroes have very much woken up on the wrong side of the bed.
It is up to our group of legendary losers to save the day—and eliminate the Justice League—while UFOs unleash lasers from the heavens and Green Lantern joyfully murders human resistance. The writers of the show employ a clever narrative structure to hilarious effect.
However, the move to an online looter shooter raises more eyebrows than the welcome shift from playable heroes to villains. Taking inspiration from both Destiny and the highly criticised Marvel’s Avengers game, Rocksteady is attempting to combine a meticulously crafted cinematic narrative with arbitrary and calculating gun drops in this live service model.
What’s Wrong With Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League?
Players in Suicide Squad take on the roles of a cast of enduringly legendary, superpowered DC villains, only to spend endless hours gripping generic assault guns. While few films imitated Christopher Nolan’s use of the cape and cowl, Rocksteady’s close-quarters fighting became the benchmark for fighting in computer games.
Thus, it’s startling that Suicide Squad’s fighting seems so banal. Using cheap guns instead of Arkham’s effective blend of cunning and physical combat, your heroes spend the entire game hopping around Metropolis’s boring sandbox, shooting forgettable humanoid zombies to death.
Rocksteady used to be a champion of originality, but these pointless side missions that reward experience points are confusingly similar to the lifeless licensed games that Suicide Squad previously opposed.
The fact that the best parts occur when it seems the most Arkhamesque is telling. The game really comes to life when the faceless waves of foes vanish from sight and the camera closes in on you as your masterfully rendered team faces off against the corrupted Justice League members in hilariously ridiculous villainous vignettes.
Whether the Justice League is pursuing MacGuffins with Lex Luther or taking on a particularly psychotic version of The Flash, it’s exciting to watch them go bad. There’s more than a hint of The Boys and Invincible to this grimy take on DC, from seeing Superman melt a hero with his laser eyes to marveling at Batman’s cold-blooded slaughter of police officers.
Suicide Squad’s gruesome gross-outs and ridiculous jokes have the uncommon distinction of being truly humorous, not merely “funny for a video game.” It’s compellingly played material, too.\
Is Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League Worth Playing?
But every time Rocksteady flirts with returning to its past Gotham glory, you’re taken back to a dull world. The gameplay becomes better as you level up your weapons, but it never seems quite as natural when taking down targets with a combination of showy finishers and bullet-sponging adversaries as it did when Batman first appeared in 2009.
In the end, gamers lose out on an incredible comic-book caper as a result of Warner Brothers’ live-service ambitions. As a result, the game is just as perplexing as the characters it is named after. Rocksteady’s storytelling ambition battles to escape its live-service confines, much as these reluctant heroes struggle to overcome their wicked natures.
The internet has branded Suicide Squad as a monstrosity and the complete opposite of the classics that Rocksteady once created, ever since it was revealed to be a looter shooter.
The truth lies in a game that is in between extraordinary and unremarkable. Rocksteady is undoubtedly taking note of the negative response Suicide Squad received from fans: you either pass away as a sanctioned video game hero or survive long enough to turn into the antagonist.
