Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League gameplay looks more theme park ride than open-world spectacle – but returning Arkham tricks are cool
Nov. 16, 2023Opinion | Rocksteady has kicked off a new video series, but what Kill the Justice League actually is remains unclear
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Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League revealed at DC FanDome
The big question, however, is: in the time that’s passed, does Kill the Justice League look any less like the always-online, loot-driven, live-service game that cautiously poked its head above the parapet last year?
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“All of which isn’t to say: I’m not put off by Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. In fact, I’m still as intrigued as ever.”
The cinematics, for example, look stunning. The facial animations and idiosyncratic movements of this Suicide Squad’s quartet of Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark are among the best I’ve seen – even compared to likes of Peter Parker and Miles Morales inMarvel’s Spider-Man 2. This won’t be the last time I’ll draw comparisons betweenInsomniac’s best-in-class superhero game, but I’ll do everything I can to be fair in placing them side-by-side.
In combat, Kill the Justice League looks fast and furious, with some tweaked Arkham-inspired features returning, such as a reimagined take on the Arkham counter system. Combat definitely looks more floaty than what we became used to in the Batman Arkham games, granted – but I’m willing to put some of that down to the fact that high-stakes, parkour-fueled and gravity-defying traversal plays such a key role in movement here. What I’m less ready to overlook, on the other hand, is howemptythe city of Metropolis seems. It looks huge, sure, with plenty of peaks and troughs clearly designed to encourage vertical offense, but from what we’ve seen so far it looks pretty devoid of life and character.
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Not only does this seem at odds with the charismatic bad guys and momentarily evil good guys whose journeys we’re following here, but it also flies in the face of the Arkham series' settings, and, indeed, the Marvel’s Spider-Man games. From Arkham Asylum to the wider Arkham City, as well as NYC as it appears in Spidey’s first and second ventures, lively locations have always been a central tenet of the best superhero games. It’s said to the point of cliche, but, for me, rightly so: a good video game setting can become as much a central character as any game’s protagonist themselves.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is getting a prequel comic series
Again, I don’t want to makeunfaircomparisons between the likes of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Kill the Justice League – especially given the latter is still some months away from launch – and it is, arguably, similarly unjust to compare Rocksteady’s latest against its back catalog. But the reality is, this is exactly what paying players will do. If it’s a live-service shooter, Kill the Justice League will be held up against its genre counterparts. If it can indeed be played as a single-player game throughout, as per the devs' messaging to this point, then it will be judged against the competition; the latest of which is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Narrative, combat mechanics, traversal, mission structure – all of these things can stand alone and be judged independently to a degree, but a spiritless setting probably cannot.
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