‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’ game review

From Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Marvel’s Avengers, which came out in 2020 had great potential, marred by one fact — it was a live service game that nobody cared about until it shut down services not long ago. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has gone down the same path.

A game built by Rocksteady, responsible for the excellent Arkham series, had great first trailers, but then things gradually devolved as it was slowly revealed to be a looter shooter featuring superheroes. Despite early outcries, we got a game that is trying to be a superhero game, a looter shooter, a live service game that serves as a distraction from a great story and a superb set of characters.

Set in the same Arkhamverse a few years after Arkham Knight, the Suicide Squad is sent to Metropolis to kill the Justice League. Their minds controlled by Brainiac, Superman, Batman, Flash and Green Lantern have become supervillains, with an army of invading aliens at their backs. It is up to the supervillains Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot and King Shark to set things right by taking the Justice League out, which is no mean feat. Thankfully, there are a whole host of villains and heroes from the DC universe to either help or hinder our team of misfits as they bungle through their quest. 

From Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

The strongest part of Kill the Justice League is the story, mostly upheld by excellent voice acting of all the Suicide Squad members, and their dynamic with each other. The affected Justice League members make for memorable super villains that conjure up Amazon Prime’s The Boys series, as the underpowered underdogs take on the most powerful beings this side of the galaxy. It is worth calling out that the legendary voice of Batman (Kevin Conroy’s last performance as a villain) is excellent, adding a whole lot more menace to a beloved character. 

Metropolis is a ravaged open world that is much more colourful than Arkham’s Gotham City, yet it can pass for any generic city out there. In between taking down the Justice League, the game is a bland concoction of several other games.

The gunplay feels like Fortnite, and it is perplexing why there are guns in the first place, when Rocksteady’s own Arkham series hallmark rhythmic combat action system was genre defining, setting the stage for Spider-Man. Instead of building upon that, using the Suicide Squad’s own powers, guns take the centre stage with the powers as backup moves. 

As a third person looter shooter, this game is all about the quality of loot, and that is where Borderlands, Destiny get it right with interesting weapons that you want to grind for. Suicide Squad’s weapons are just boring facsimiles of standard weaponry with insipid perks.

While you can create interesting builds, especially with Captain Boomerang, using weapon elemental attacks and his boomerang skill tree, there is really not enough reason to waste your time creating builds to engage in activities beyond the story. 

From Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

This is a shame because there is so much good here — an excellent story and great performances with memorable encounters with the Justice League that is worthy of praise. Traversal across the city is fun with fluid movement and controls. All of this is held back by so many terrible live-service decisions, and it is not as though Rocksteady did not see this coming and took a chance.

Gamers and fans have been against making it live service and have been very vocal about it. Yet, the Suicide Squad we got was leagues behind Arkham Knight and nowhere near any of its inspirations, feeling like a complete waste of time for all parties involved. 

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League does tell a great story of villains gone good taking on the good ones gone evil. If it is live service loot-based games you are here for, then there are plenty of better games out there. If it is superhero games you like, you are better off picking up the Arkham series once more or diving into Spider-Man.