Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League - Review

I really want to love Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. I love Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham series. I love open-world superhero action. I've even had short but passionate affairs with looter-shooters. But something about this particular intersection of all of those things just doesn’t sit right. Whether it be the underwhelming loot systems, bland and repetitive mission design, or hollow postgame, I just can’t see myself wanting to play much more now that I’ve burned past the campaign story. That’s a big problem for a live-service game aiming to keep our attention for months – if not years – on end. It’s also a shame as there’s a good story being told in well-made cutscenes with snappy writing and performances carrying a lot of the weight. But beyond that, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League never consistently offers enough fun to go toe to toe with the successful games in this genre.

While the comparison might seem like low-hanging fruit, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League really is of a similar construction to Marvel’s Avengers – a game I spent dozens of hours enjoying despite its glaring deficiencies. They’re both live services aiming to offer extensive postgames – of course, in Avengers’ case, that promised service was cut short when Crystal Dynamics shut down development two years after launch. For Rocksteady, another famous single-player-turned-online developer, the first step toward trying to avoid a similar fate would be to create a compelling combat system that makes me want to return to Suicide Squad week after week, but that’s something it hasn’t quite achieved at this point. The studio known for revolutionising tight melee combat with its Arkham games has instead opted to make this a third-person shooter, which is a bold choice – but one that doesn't make complete sense considering the traditional methods of violence implemented by most of Task Force X, AKA the Suicide Squad.

As far as the story itself goes, it doesn't take a brainiac to work out what's causing the Justice League to act out of sorts as they wreak city-wide destruction with wide, glowing-eyed glee. Yes, traditional Superman villain Brainiac has hatched an evil plan to take over the planet and remake it in an image of his own creation, and that involves controlling members of the Justice League’s minds. So – and you’ll never guess this – the Suicide Squad is called in to kill the Justice League by any means necessary.

What threatens to be a straightforward story fans have largely heard before branches out around the halfway point into interesting directions. Yes, what have now become recognisable comic book cliches do dampen some of the big revelations (if you know anything about the endgame, you’ll know what I mean) but there’s a level of storytelling on display here that harkens back to those Arkham glory days. That’s in no small part thanks to the phenomenal character design work and scriptwriting that brings each member of the cast to life as they successfully banter along that tightrope-thin line between charming and insufferable. 

The late, great Kevin Conroy excels in one of his final turns as The Dark Knight

Close-ups are also liberally used to show off the graphical power that Rocksteady wields, and it’s frequently impressive to watch as cutscenes come to life. That technical prowess is also reflected in the voices behind the faces. The late, great Kevin Conroy excels in one of his final turns as The Dark Knight, showing us an even darker side to the caped crusader than we’ve seen from him before. Tara Strong is once again pitch-perfect as the anarchic Harley Quinn, and Joe Seanoa (AKA Samoa Joe) dryly delivers each of King Shark’s one-liners to great effect. 

Playable team members Harley Quinn, Deadshot, King Shark, and Captain Boomerang are exciting characters with trademark weapons, from boomerangs to booming hammers and sharpshooting sniper rifles to sharp-toothed snapping. What’s especially disorienting is that while there are fun and wildly different abilities that Rocksteady could have taken advantage of to create varied vigilantes who each bring their own style of play to the table, instead they're all reduced to the same baffling blueprint as damage-output-chasing characters who seem to love nothing more than firing guns and occasionally throwing grenades. Granted, they do each have signature melee and traversal attacks, like Harley’s sweeping baseball bat hits or Boomerang’s enemy-chaining namesake, but the overwhelming focus here is on shooting and collecting an increasingly powerful arsenal of guns.

This creates an awkward dissonance between how these villains play and how they've been written. Rocksteady has clearly gone to great lengths to create a detailed world full of memorable characters who behave true to their comic book roots, which could have served as a joyous playground for DC fans. But what we got is like going to see your favourite football team only to find that, for some reason, they're being asked to play tennis instead. Sure, you recognise their famous faces, but they’re out of their element. Whether their method of destruction makes sense is a completely different question from whether it's fun, though. And the answer to this is: well, yes and no.

The New Frontier

Where the Arkham games had a much more deliberate flow as you waited for enemies to make the first move before delivering crushing counters, Suicide Squad cranks up the speed as you zoom around hurling bullets into bad guys at a relentless pace. It's undeniably impressive at times, with an emphasis still placed on combo-chasing and stylish takedowns while taking no damage. These combos can rack all the way up to 50, which provides a high skill ceiling and a real challenge to master. There are even bits that reminded me of some of my favourite action games, such as the Shield Harvest mechanic which encourages aggressive play, echoing the attitude of Doom or Control wherein the best form of defense is to attack even more. This philosophy inherently lends itself to a chaotic breed of action that I enjoyed as I zipped around arenas scrambling for shield pick-ups and ammo. The inclusion of an active reload mechanic gives you something to do other than hold down the shoot button, as it has for so many other shooters since Gears of War. 

Once you eventually get to grips with all of the kit, a tight and satisfying rhythm can be found. 

And there’s more, too – you steadily unlock new abilities and modifications as you progress. One is Affliction Strikes, which add an extra layer to combat by imbuing your melee attacks with properties such as venom, which turns your enemies against each other when struck. There are so many different ideas and mechanics, in fact, that it can all get a little overwhelming to juggle at times, and the constant stream of tutorials seemingly never ends throughout the entire campaign. But once you eventually get to grips with all of the kit, a tight and satisfying rhythm can be found. 

Just go into Metropolis expecting something a bit more hectic than the slower, puzzle-like encounters found around Gotham. Having spent some time here, I can see Rocksteady's thought process behind this shift in tempo. The speed of these combat systems does reflect their respective heroes: Batman is always one step ahead, whereas Amanda Waller's guns for hire are rash, zany, and frankly enjoy getting sucked into the violence of it all. 

As is typical for a class-based game, each character specialises in certain skills and can be tweaked to your liking thanks to extensive skill trees. For me, though, the biggest deciding factor in choosing which criminal fit my style best is in testing out each of their movement abilities, as most of them felt clunky at first. After a bit of experimentation, I settled on Aussie inmate Captain Boomerang and his teleporting Speed Force Gauntlet, which I used to flank enemy hordes to my heart's content. I just never fell in love with Harley’s swing-and-grapple Spider-Man/Batman hybrid moveset or Deadshot’s jetpack hovering, mainly due to their ungenerous cooldowns limiting the distances you can travel quickly. And Shark’s quite basic run-and-jump combo frankly never excited me at all.

I steadily constructed an effective close-up Boomerang build with traversal mods that gave me a 40% damage boost to enemies within five metres, and paired that with a freezing melee attack and a legendary shotgun that shattered all who got near. It was a satisfying playstyle, but I pretty much found all of the gear I needed to make each encounter a breeze on the normal difficulty by the story’s halfway point. This meant I felt no need to engage in any of the crafting or looting systems for the most part, and instead just focussed on tuning the talent tree as I unlocked more points to fit my up-close-and-personal approach.

Characters are packed full of charm and colour, something that just isn't reflected in the dull arsenal.

Speaking of getting up close and personal, I couldn’t help but notice how Rocksteady’s dramatic shift from a single-player story to a co-op looter-shooter diminished the other characters that inhabit Metropolis. This is perhaps best exemplified by The Penguin's role in Suicide Squad. The once-powerful Gotham crime boss who was crucial to the events of the Arkham series, including one of the trilogy's most memorable levels in Arkham City, is reduced to nothing but a weapons vendor this time around. Sure, he’ll offer you a semi-limited range of guns that can be tweaked to your heart's content as you figure out which of the city’s four “manufacturers” have attributes and perks that work best for you, so he’s at least decent at this job. Of course, with this being a looter-shooter, they come in multiple tiers of rarity ranging from standard common and rare guns to unique, high-powered Notorious and Infamous-level weapons, which are all themed around different DC villains.

Outside of that bit of costuming, though, the guns themselves are frustratingly bland. The world and characters are packed full of charm and colour, something that just isn't reflected in the dull arsenal. You'll largely be wielding a standard selection of rifles, SMGs, pistols, etc., as you circle around enemies with a routine of flank-and-fire strategy. The different weapons manufacturers offer their own quirks, be that burst-fire options or greater ammo capacity, but nothing is anywhere near as exciting as the variety of weaponry Borderlands’ similar setup can boast – the looter-shooter that popularised the genre with its ever-increasing wacky range of weaponry remains hard to compete with in that arena.

When you go to modify some life into your firearms you’re limited to fairly standard buffs like critical damage boosts or cooldown decreases, none of which really lean into capturing any of that superhero/villain magic. Instead of more damage boosts or predictable poison debuffs, I kept hoping to see something crazy – like a gun that fires exploding, chattering Joker teeth or a Clayface cannon that covers the ground and enemies in clay, immobilising them in the process. But having finished the campaign and done a fair amount of post-game grinding (admittedly I have not turned over every rock in Metropolis just yet) there's just a disappointing lack of imagination on display here, even for those rarest, top-tier options. That’s particularly a shame because I can see the bones of a truly exciting loot and combat system here – it’s just hidden in the blandness of its solid but unspectacular gunplay and weapons.

It's not the combat itself that's necessarily the issue, either, but more the rinse-and-repeat encounters you're given to use it in. Metropolis has come down with a seriously gnarly case of Brainiac-induced acne as you go around popping seemingly endless amounts of purple spots and monsters who don’t have the sharpest AI in the world – sometimes they are even totally unresponsive as you take out their friends standing right next to them. That’s not a promising start, but I was relieved to find that as you get deeper into the story a greater variety of enemies is introduced, and these new foes offer more of a challenge as they channel certain heroic abilities and make you consider your approach in a smarter way. 

You're regularly just cycling between a handful of basic objective types, all of which get tired pretty quickly.

One consistent factor, however, is that the vast majority of these enemies are found on top of buildings protecting Brainiac weaponry or causing a general nuisance, which meant most of my time felt like I was just bouncing from rooftop to rooftop whacking moles. In fact, a steady cadence of “cutscene, rooftop battle, repeat” persists throughout pretty much the whole of the campaign’s roughly 10-hour runtime. It’s just a stream of uninspired encounter designs with seemingly no ambition shown toward making any authored missions that stand out. You’re regularly just cycling between a handful of basic objective types, such as defending an area, clearing out a group of enemies, or escorting a truck through the city, all of which get tired pretty quickly.

Metropolis itself is fun to move around, with a generous amount of tall buildings to bounce up to and explore, but that’s a strength that’s never incorporated into its mission design. By comparison, Insomniac has shown us how amazing missions can be in superhero open worlds as you dart through cities in the blockbuster sequences of the Spider-Man games, and while the movement of Suicide Squad may even be reminiscent of the Spidey studio’s earlier Sunset Overdrive at times, the city feels nowhere near as tailored for such missions.

But before either of those games, Rocksteady built out its Gotham City with numerous landmarks that served as fantastic contained levels inside an open world. In Suicide Squad, however, interesting interiors are kept at a premium, with almost all of the action taking place high above the city and at great speed. Arkham City’s combat arenas were so expertly designed, like mini action levels found within a sprawling open world with environmental takedown opportunities and creative ways to move around constantly present – but here, only “blink and you’ll miss it” flashes of this philosophy can be seen. Ironically, an early Batman encounter is one of these, offering a smart inversion of the Arkham experience… but then a later confrontation with The Dark Knight, unfortunately, devolves back into a rote bullet-sponge battle.

Gods Among Us

This is a theme that sadly follows most of the headline encounters, with imagination going into only a couple of the boss battles. The first is an uninspiring fight against a massive purple cannon, which seems a bizarre choice considering we’re in a world full of heroes and villains. But when you do get to finally face off against mind-controlled members of the Justice League themselves, things do pick up a bit. It’s difficult to see glimpses of that puzzle-like nature that Arkham’s boss encounters contained shining through, though, with nothing quite as memorable as the Mr. Freeze showdown from Arkham City, and its creative elements seemingly completely put on ice.

The standout has to be a brawl against Green Lantern.

Most take place in circular arenas as you find tight windows to attack in, a prime example of this being The Flash fight as you have to quickly time counter shots before dealing damage. The standout among them, though, has to be a brawl against Green Lantern and his arsenal of glowing constructs in a battle that delivers greatly on both spectacle and excitement by smartly implementing a large custom arena full of high vantage points that can also be used as cover. All of the heroes are a welcome challenge that crucially never feel unfair, with each generously signposting attacks to avoid frustration, even if ultimately you are asked to just gun them down in similar fashions. Yes, you’re fighting superhumans here and logically the Suicide Squad should be brushed aside, but the way you take them out is supported by reasonably believable story context that allows you to go toe-to-toe with Earth’s mightiest (even if most of those solutions boil down to inventing new types of bullets). 

Of course, there are many other familiar DC faces thrown into the mix that I won’t spoil here. There are surprise arrivals and departures scattered throughout that are sure to delight comic book fans, even if it does just make the story ultimately seem like a collection of cool-looking scenes stitched together with over-familiar combat scenarios at times. There are impactful moments, though, which are often full of wonder but go by in a flash. Clocking in about 10 or 11 hours, Suicide Squad's main campaign isn’t an especially short one (it’s roughly the same as Avengers), but it is perhaps an underwhelming runtime when you consider we’ve waited almost nine years for a new Rocksteady story, especially as it’s “ending” only really serves to set up future seasonal drops. That said, there are enough surprises and turns within it for it to stay consistently engaging, even if what you’ll be doing on either side of the rewarding cutscenes isn’t up to the same standard.

Metropolis itself is a sun-soaked city where superheroes are treated like gods and monuments to them bookend its streets. It's regularly gorgeous and, if it wasn't for the small issue of a gigantic brain hovering above it causing widespread mayhem, would probably be a lovely place to spend a weekend. The art direction is superb, with a rich mix of architectural influences combining to create a uniquely inviting skyline – that skyline, though, is often filled with gunfire and smoke thanks to the warzone bubbling beneath it. Yet, it all just feels oddly lifeless at the same time, like a beautifully constructed diorama collecting dust. Like the Arkham games, there’s an eerie lack of civilian activity to make it feel like a place where people actually live that needs protecting. 

Additionally, there's no iconic score sweeping alongside you as you move through its streets, or anything of note happening at all really, apart from enemies patrolling them waiting for your ambush. It's a shame once again, as it's undeniably an artistic achievement, but this world just doesn't have anywhere near enough variety in it to warrant the level of exploration I’d hoped for when I first stepped into it like an eager tourist.

Crystal Dynamics' unsatisfactory efforts offered better variety and more endgame goals to aim for. 

Then there’s the UI. They say the fewer items on a restaurant's menu the more confident you should be in its food. Well, the same, I think, can be applied to a HUD and how much it clutters a screen. The sheer amount of words, numbers, cooldown meters, health bars, and button prompts on display in Suicide Squad is simply unpalatable. At times it resembles icon vomit as your eyes wade through chunks of text just to take a glance at the mini map or check how close to death you are. Certain aspects can be turned off – and believe me, I removed those flying damage numbers as soon as I could – but in truth, you kind of need most of it there to try and keep track of what’s going on.

Crisis on Infinite Earths

After the story is finished, you'll enter the post-game where the live-service nature of Kill the Justice League shows its hand fully - despite the studio going to great lengths to call it anything but a game-as-a-service. Immediately my worst fears were realised as I was handed copies of missions I had played previously in the campaign with the same tired assortment of tasks. In truth, it caused Marvel’s Avengers flashbacks to flicker into my mind as I told myself “I just can’t do this with my life again. I just can’t,” but truthfully, even Crystal Dynamics’ unsatisfactory efforts offered better variety and more endgame goals to aim for. 

The headline activities upon entering the post-credits world are called Incursions. These are short rinse-and-repeat missions that take place in the Elseworld featured in the story of the main campaign – a, stop me if you've heard this one before, superhero multiverse. Unsurprisingly, these are all the same “defend the objective” and “kill as many enemies in a time limit” scenarios that I had already grown tired of. The lack of imagination is staggering and the respect for your time is kept at a minimum. Even worse, these supposedly important missions do nothing to affect the ongoing conflict around you (other than seemingly irritate Brainiac a bit) and can only be accessed using a new currency called Promethium. The only way to gain this is by completing even more tedious tasks around Metropolis, such as destroying yet another giant cannon with pulsing purple spots. It creates a cycle of tedium devoid of anything nutritious in either a narrative or gameplay sense.

The only real incentive is to beat other players’ time and send them an admittedly enjoyable taunt, or to grind and grind the same handful of encounters at higher difficulties over and over again to unlock guns with bigger damage numbers, which I guess I’ll use to do something more useful when it arrives in a future update? And once you max a character out at level 30 and have filled out their unique talent tree, all future XP points are placed into Squad Skills – but no, these aren’t fun new abilities that inspire some much-needed cooperative play, they are more mind-numbingly dull stat bonuses such as 0.1% damage reduction or a 0.5% assault rifle damage boost. It’s a bland, uninteresting, and repetitive post-game, and the antithesis of what has made Rocksteady’s games so engaging in the past. 

Thankfully there is one saving grace outside of the main story that Rocksteady has borrowed from their Arkham series. Now, riddle me this: what award is given for the fun challenges that punctuate otherwise tedious open-world activities? That's right, Riddler Trophies have made their way to Metropolis. These puzzles and challenges dotted around the map offer sweet relief from the mundane missions, and although never overly challenging, do at least encourage you to look a little closer at the city you often spend so much time zooming past at speed.

It is disappointing, however, that there are no side storylines or villain arcs to speak of, and little to no spontaneity in its open world that fans of Manbat’s appearance in Arkham Knight might expect. Support squad missions unlock things like contract slots and new crafting options, but don't expect any more story out of these as you do basic missions for the likes of Poison Ivy and Toyman. They do add interesting wrinkles to combat encounters, such as only letting you deal damage with grenades, which can relieve the monotony of these fights ever so slightly. There are also contracts to complete, but yet again there is nothing to write home about due to their simple nature, such as killing a certain amount of grunts with a sniper rifle or using a traversal attack a certain number of times. These offer XP, credits, and a regular slew of crafting materials that you can use back at your home base at the retrofitted Hall of Justice.

Building out your character and sifting through the many menu screens to gain incremental stat boosts can be a chore, but nothing like keeping track of the five (yes, five) different crafting currencies that Suicide Squad uses to make you feel like you're working part-time at the Metropolis Bureau de Change. They are all used to craft different mods, weapons, and augmentations, and are completely separate from a premium currency that unlocks cosmetics such as outfits and emotes. The store itself is relatively barren at the moment, with just one or two new looks available for each character. At £7.99/$9.99 a pop they aren’t especially cheap, either, but by this is made exponentially worse when you realise this only unlocks the basic look for each outfit, with up to $40 needing to be spent to unlock every variety and colour way within each skin.

Cosmetics might be costly, but to Suicide Squad's credit, all new seasonal gameplay content is set to come completely free of charge.

Cosmetics might be costly, but to Suicide Squad’s credit, all new seasonal gameplay content is set to come completely free of charge. Of course, I can only review what's in front of me, but Rocksteady has given us a look at the roadmap ahead with new playable characters and environments promised, thanks to Elseworlds. This allows for settings such as Arkham Asylum to make their way into this game, acting as an uncomfortable reminder of the great story that the studio once told there. It also allows Rocksteady to give in to the seemingly irresistible urge to bring the Joker back, albeit one from a different reality. He'll be playable from March when season one kicks off (if all goes according to plan, that is, as it’s worth remembering Marvel’s Avengers’ roadmap didn’t quite pan out as expected after launch).

Familiar locations from Rocksteady’s past outings may be exciting, but it's what we'll be doing in them that will make or break Suicide Squad's longevity as an ongoing game. It's unclear how much the upcoming episodic missions will truly move the story along, but plenty of remixed activities, enemy variants, and cosmetic drops are a certainty. It's hard to say for sure, but it looks like we'll be doing a lot of what's already available in Metropolis over and over again, which could become even more tired than it already is, again hinting toward potentially another unfavourable Marvel’s Avengers comparison.

While I do find the combat to be enjoyable, I'm not sure it ever offers the variety or dynamic edge needed to carry Suicide Squad on its back without the promise of more story propping it up. Score-chasing can be fun - whether you're trying to outdo your squadmates or globally - and fits in with the squabbling nature of the ragtag mercenaries, but isn't enough of an incentive to keep me playing. I hope that future seasons will come with new stories to tell because a battle pass full of emotes and character skins isn’t what I’m looking for here at all. The unsatisfying cliffhanger ending of the campaign does firmly hint at what we’ll be doing in each of the seasons, and I truly hope it does move the story along considerably each time, but I have my doubts. I think it’s far more likely that I’ll wait months down the line to see just how much has been added before revisiting the story, rather than checking in monthly to be fed the next scrap.

It all prompts the biggest question surrounding Kill the Justice League: why is this a live-service game with seasonal content drops? So far I’m not convinced it's because Rocksteady desperately has more story it wants to tell in its DC universe, but more likely because Warner Bros. thinks it will make more money by steadily drip-feeding cosmetics to its store. It’s not a beneficial model for players, who feel shortchanged at launch by a not-quite finished story, and I assume can only be frustrating for a studio with such a strong history of creating single-player stories to operate in this way. In the end, just like a world with no heroes left to defend it, we all end up losing.