‘Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’ Preview Rejected By Mainstream Press Over Live-Service Elements, Repetitive Gameplay
Spencer Baculi
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When a game tailor made according to ‘market research’ manages to lose the easy-to-please mainstream video game press, it’s almost a guarantee that a historic sales disaster is on the horizon.
To the surprise of no one, this is shaping up to the be the case for Rocksteady Games and their upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, as a recent preview event for the title has left the aforementioned demographic outright uninterested in spending time with the titular team for even a nanosecond longer than their employment obligations require them to.
That’s not a hyperbolic description of the gaming press’ reaction either, as the largely unwanted sequel to the developer’s Batman: Arkham series – previewed to invited parties at a recent hands-on event in Los Angeles, CA – was met with borderline disgust from nearly every gaming outlet that was invited to play its test build.
Offering his thoughts for IGN, the outlet’s Director of Video Content Strategy and self-admitted live-service gaming fan Destin Legaire lamented, “From enslaving a child form of Poison Ivy, to straight up watching your heroes murder people, there’s a lot here to make you feel a bit uncomfortable about the journey you’re being taken on. And when you pair this disconnect with game mechanics straight out of the likes of Destiny, Anthem, or Marvel’s Avengers, I’m left worried about the final product coming together in a way that works.”
Expanding on his grievances with the title’s actual gameplay, Legaire continued, “once the fun story bits end, you’re left with a much less inspired combat system, and an open world that’s filled with tedious tasks that are more about grinding through traditional tropes like point defense or collect the material and turn it in. There are shining moments with the combat, such as the powerful feeling of takedowns, and there does seem to be some depth to the build variety, but you’ll do it surrounded by teammates who won’t shut up with their quips… which quickly becomes annoying.”
“It looks like the player has a good grasp at movement, but it all comes back to similar core mechanics,” he added. “Aim gun. Shoot gun. And those core mechanics in a game like Destiny really save it. Here it just felt samey across the board, even with each character’s abilities sprinkled in.”
Writing for Gamespot, Phil Hornshaw recalled of his time with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, “I came away unsure if its mix of live-game content, loot-shooter RPG systems, and shooter combat could capture lightning in a bottle the way the Arkham games did.”
“My biggest takeaway from Suicide Squad is that I want to play it in the way it’s meant to be played,” he wrote. “When the combat and traversal systems come together, especially when you can start to customize a particular build like one that has you constantly throwing souped-up grenades and leaving them in your wake as you slide away from danger, they’re fluid and exciting. But there’s a lot to get the hang of here, and falling out of the flow or losing track of its many ins and outs killed the momentum fairly often.”
On the topic of the game’s live-service, menu-heavy, gear-score laden DNA, Hornshaw noted, “A slice of live-service missions intercut with funny narrative beats suggested a game that was attempting a little bit of both but achieving neither very well.”
“The idea of trying to take down the Justice League, knowing the kind of power they wield as you head into battle against them, is a great premise,” he concluded. “But open-world missions where characters bark at you over the radio about how enemies are attacking point A or point B over and over don’t seem to be breaking the mold, especially when plenty of live open-world games now exist with a lot of the same kinds of content.”
Likewise, though a fan of the game’s combat offerings, Eurogamer‘s Deputy News Editor Ed Nightingale was unable to ignore the fact that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League‘s was suffering from an overall lack of polish.
Opining that “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is fresh in the memory and set a high standard for superhero games (perhaps even its pinnacle) with fluid, intuitive motion and an approachable superhero fantasy,” Nightgale then argued that “Suicide Squad, by comparison, doesn’t reach that same height with its fiddly controls and characters who are likable but lack a certain thrill to embody.”
“The open world also compares unfavourably to Spider-Man 2,” he continued of his web-slinger-based criticism. “It’s a backdrop to battles that’s hard to navigate, unaided by a simplistic radar minimap for finding enemies and friends alike. With violent explosions, special effects, damage numbers, quest markers, and more on screen at once, it all feels a little too difficult to parse. By the time you’ve found enemies to shoot, your teammates probably got there first.”
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And despite the fact that he was seemingly the lone reviewer to walk away from the preview event more optimistic than when they went into it, Game Informer‘s Brian Shea still had to admit that the game was lacking in many areas.
According to him, by the time he got to the preview’s featured boss fight against The Flash, he had already begun “to feel a sense of sameness from many of the missions.”
“Sure, each of them has a distinct dressing, and the narrative reasons are varied, but many of the ones I played in Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 boil down to going to an area and defeating all the enemies or defending a location against hordes of aliens,” he admitted. “The one that felt most distinct was the aforementioned giant cannon mission, but even that carried many of the same tenets. I’m giving the benefit of the doubt to Rocksteady that the mission diversity will truly open up once the story ramps up more, but I’ll be disappointed if this is the full breadth of what we’re getting in the final game.”
All in all, with less than a month left until it’s scheduled sortie date of February 2nd, it looks as if every piece of negative speculation raised towards Task Force X’s next mission – from its drowning under live-service mechanics to its dialogue library being filled to the brim with quips – will ultimately be coming to fruition.
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