Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has had such a rocky road to release that many are predicting that the game will be dead on arrival. It was first announced in August of 2020, at the height of the first Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. At that time, the live-service Avengers game developed by Square Enix was also yet to be released. During this era of development, the Suicide Squad game was still being planned as a live-service title.
In the time between now and then, the gaming world has seen the Avengers live-service game launch and subsequently fail. Of course it failed, because no self-respecting fan of superhero games anywhere wants to deal with a litany of microtransactions just to play as their favorite heroes. Great storytelling was what allowed the Arkham series to set the industry benchmark for what a great superhero game should be, not loot boxes and online co-op.
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become part of the live-service landfill
The failure of the Avengers was clearly a deciding factor in Rocksteady being forced by WB Games to change direction with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. This blatant attempt at last minute course correction took place for no reason other than because Rocksteady has to impress the fat cats at Warner Bros at the end of the day with pre-order numbers.
Gameplay-wise, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was reworked to be something that looked closer to Fortnite than an Arkham game, as shown at the Sony State of Play in February of 2023. The subsequent backlash to this shoddy gameplay reveal prompted the latest in a laundry list of delays and aside from anything else, when was the last time that a game with this many delays turned out to be any good?
So that’s it huh? We some kind of live-service Fortnite-like Suicide Squad?
Since the change in direction was revealed, a playable alpha has gone out which I had the chance to play. Although I was under a strict NDA at the time, this has since been lifted and thus I can reveal that the game is an unfunny, boring, unengaging slog to suffer through. So much so, that I didn’t even bother to finish playing through the allotted story section on offer, opting to spend my time playing a better game instead.
I did play enough of the alpha to see that Rocksteady has canonically resurrected Batman from the Arkhamverse, completely undoing the ambiguously sophisticated ending of Arkham Knight, for the sake of making an appearance in this bubble-gum, looter-shooter atrocity. It was always going to be tragically bittersweet hearing the late, great Kevin Conroy’s final performance as the Dark Knight; a character whom he perfectly embodied for three decades. The fact that it is tied to this garbage excuse for a game makes it more bitter than sweet.
- Nightmare blunt rotation, AKA the Suicide Squad.
Since the alpha was released, Rocksteady has suffered from a number of leaks, which claim that Poison Ivy and the Joker will also make a return, undoing their respective poignant deaths seen in the Arkham trilogy. It just seems as though Rocksteady is making every wrong decision possible in the development of this game, to the point that it has lost almost all of its own identity.
And therein lies the crux of my issue with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and with Rocksteady going forward; any sense of definitive identity is gone in favor of pleasing the corporation’s bottom line. This is why a distinct lack of creativity is present within this Suicide Squad game; Rocksteady’s talent lies in rich storytelling, not churning out live-service nonsense. The Arkham trilogy pushed Rocksteady into the public mind as a solid AAA developer, capable of faithfully adapting a world of rich, storied lore and complex characters and it is a real shame to see the once great studio become a shadow of its former self.
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