Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Review

It’s been longer than you might think: developer Rocksteady gave us the final installment of their Batman: Arkham trilogy nine years ago. Since then, they’ve been working on transforming their story-driven single-player games into a much more action-packed online co-op shooter that follows the story and feel of their original series. We can probably agree that after Redfall, we have another case where an attempt to turn great single-player games into a games-as-a-service business model has failed. On the other hand, Suicide Squad isn’t as bad a game as some people say, as evidenced by its relatively high user ratings on platforms that require ownership of the game to rate.

• Platform: PS5 (review) XSX|S, PC
• Release date: 02.02.2024
• Manufacturer: Rocksteady Studios (England)
• Genre: Online shooter with looting
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: yes, 4 players
• Data for download: 45 GB
• Play time: 15+ hours
• Price: 1765 CZK (steam)

Story campaign

Five years after the events of Batman: Arkham Knight, Metropolis has come under attack from the alien villain Brainiac, who is slowly turning the city’s inhabitants into “puppets” that he then uses to further his invasion, eventually taking over the entire planet and reshaping it in his image. Unfortunately, the puppets being controlled include the superheroes of the Justice League team. So Amanda Waller sends a quartet of Akram’s captives (Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark) into the war zone on the streets of the conquered city to help stop Brainiac – which primarily means eliminating the former Super-Dyns who now serve him.

Unfortunately, the game starts with a rather dry tutorial that forces you to try out the controls and abilities of all four playable characters. In my opinion, this is an unfortunate choice, as the tutorial takes place in a rather empty environment with no context and makes no sense. have a greater chance of drawing you into the game’s world and atmosphere. But what follows is a much better sequence of cinematic scenes and carefully crafted introductory missions, which is certainly no denial to the creators of the Arkham series – the atmosphere is great, the music is perfect and, for example, Batman’s appearance on stage. is really great. The game sometimes surprises with how impressive and bombastic its serious storylines are. Even the humorous ones are not so bad if you like the local peculiar sarcastic and dark humor.

The creators of the Arkham series will not refuse some missions.

Depending on how you set the game’s difficulty, you can play through the story campaign without having to deal with side missions or open world (city) action. As such, it’s a pretty good story-driven ride, though even here it can feel like almost every mission is some kind of killing of enemies in this location, or defending this location from enemy waves, etc. Luckily, the boss fights are relatively successful, thanks to the introduction of unique mechanics. Like most people, I’m tired of having superhero stories ruined after all these years of Hollywood attempts, and maybe that’s why I liked the story of this game, in fact, that it treats some beloved characters so harshly.

The final

So I quite liked the campaign and I found some of its passages to be really good, as well as the main characters’ statements, although they often copy templates not only from their own originals, but also from Guardians of the Galaxy (King Shark behaves like Drax). The campaign does not have time to resist, including because it is relatively short – about ten hours. However, this is not a single-player story game, but a “game as a service” to which you and your friends will regularly return to continue the story in other multiverses, with other playable characters, and so on. For this, the base game already includes an endgame, in which you can further increase the levels of your characters, as well as collect, improve and optimize your gear, similar to The Division or Destiny.

This is probably why the whole game actually feels more like a shooter than an action adventure. While the playable characters vary in the way they move (Harley swings on a rope, Boomerang teleports by throwing a boomerang, Shark jumps like the Hulk, and Deadshot flies on a jetpack), they all use firearms to fight, although some specialize in a certain type (snipers vs. machine guns, etc.). The loot itself is pretty interesting, with weapons not only having different stats, but also mostly funny abilities like “explode after three headshots” and the like. Plus, you have the ability to customize it quite a bit, as well as a gradual difficulty ramp-up in the spirit of the game. The “World Level” setting is also pretty well-decided, as we know it from Diablo, for example.

This is probably why the game feels more like a shooter than an action adventure.

The problem is that the relatively large city is filled with the aforementioned stereotypical activities, which almost always involve conquering or defending a certain area or killing a certain number of enemies within it. The modifiers are downright maddening in places where, for example, you can injure enemies simply by hitting a “critical zone,” while shooting at another part of their body not only does nothing to them, but even heals them. The game is not designed for such precision; the action is too fast and furious. But there are many more design flaws, such as when you are tasked with killing enemies only with grenades, but those enemies include snipers who teleport if you get close enough. Games as a service can change significantly, for better or worse, as developers are constantly tinkering with them in response to player feedback. However, the building blocks in this case do not look very promising.