Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League Deserves Its Flowers
Feature
...Before inevitably becoming a Cult Classic
Chasing A Trend, or Falling Into A Lull?
One of the largest pre-release complaints was the format of the game. With no knowledge of the inner workings of SS:KTJL, players saw it as "another one of those," with the definition of "those" taking many forms. Loot-shooter, live-service, hero-based, and any-hint-of-frivolity fatigue ran rampant in the lead up to release, and carved away any hope of a large swath of players who claim the industry is over it all. It must be a mistake, then, that The First Descendant or Marvel Rivals took Steam by storm, two games that not only fit each of the forbidden descriptors, but do so while testing the limits of the term "inspiration" as they crib from popular games.
The difference, of course, was the cost of entry, then. And while the cost to start Suicide Squad was that of a full priced experience, the production showed you why. Without considering the post-release content that didn't cost a dime, Rocksteady put forth a complete experience, with a good DC story, true-to-the-source characters, and an overall production that these F2P titles just don't match. Any amount of investment into the title with an open mind shows that, and because the game gets better the deeper you get, the cost of the ticket becomes an afterthought (much like another underrated game that hides its best work in the latter half, but won't get the chance at a resurgence: Exoprimal). You can easily spend that money getting two characters you want to play in TFD, and games like Rivals simply do not progress with you. Are Gamers really that hard up for anime ladies?
"Repetitive" When You Don’t Like It, "Focused" When You Do
I feel like we've reached this point where "repetitive" has become a lazy catch-all critique when we don't like something. By nature, games cannot avoid repetition, yet repetitive experiences dominate the industry to this day. Battle royales where the only variation is which direction you ultimately get killed from. Shooters where the jump-slide-jump combo is the only form of attack. Even our fondest memories or replays of the games of yesteryear often rely on knowing exactly how World 1-1 is going to go, to where we can clear it in our sleep. If you dig down even a little into your favorite game, you'll see what I mean.
So what made Suicide Squad repetitive moreso than the groundbreakers that are just about every other game? Well, nothing, really, but I found a direction comparison to Doom. I and many others praised Doom for the rock-paper-scissors style combat that was even expanded in the sequel. It added this sense of purpose and strategy to combat encounters that were, to be frank, were "same shit different area." Suicide Squad uses a similar philosophy to reward players for attacking situations differently whether they need armor, ammo, grenades, whatever. And much like I don't hold the gameplay loop of Doom against it, nor do I with Destiny, Warframe, Fortnite, and so many others, I can't reason it as a negative here for the same reason: the play spaces matter.
Free flowing, Free Falling, and Free Balling
With a cast of characters, now expanded to eight, who all have different movement abilities, it is important for the combat spaces to feel natural for them all. Some of these skill sets prioritize horizontal movement, some vertical, and some an adequate mix of both. Make no mistake, moving around these spaces is more important than landing shots, and that it feels natural, fluid, and flashy no matter the character is a design achievement that deserves credit. Once you get it down, the options and strings at your fingertips to dodge, close the distance, or just plain style, are nearly unmatched. Here's the hottest take I have: this same game would have been a success as Sunset Overdrive 2.
Rocksteady also deserves credit for keeping the crux of the Arkham combat intact while expanding the scale tremendously. The free flowing nature, primarily, is the star, but it also has those telegraphed moments where the game breaks your flow and tells you what to do and when. Should you listen to it, you're still putting down enemies, dodging at the last second, and countering unsuspecting victims on your way to victory. It’s more active than the hand-to-hand experience, and requires a bit more skill from the player, but from a mechanical foundation desperately in need of change, this is one way to take it.
Critically, because you have four long range heroes instead of one, the enemies attack in greater numbers, and they no longer wait their turn to do so. There's a ton of them, with no visible seams like those in Space Marine 2, and they're all lethal at just about any moment, unlike a Days Gone or World War Z. It's chaos, I admit, but the good kind. Getting into the combat flow of Suicide Squad, when you're dealing with these enemy hordes with grace, improvisation, and lethal attacks feel satisfying on a large scale the same way Batman did on a small scale. And you can do it with friends.
A Bit Of Classic With The Modern
At its heart, Suicide Squad is a bit of a classic game. It is built with co-op in mind, sure, but is also a score-chasing endeavor. Leaderboards play a big role, and in its heyday you'd get pop up notifications when someone beat your score or scored a new world best. It might be an aspect of a bygone era, but the spirit of friendly competition could easily fuel a small resurgence once the price bottoms out and before the servers get the guillotine. It's also an example of one of those small things that can make a big difference. Where most games of this ilk give you the reward of simply more of the same gameplay for grinding out marginal power increases, Suicide Squad gives you this metric to tell you how you stack up against your friends and strangers. It also explains the same consistency that gets dragged as being repetitive.
Provided taking the servers offline axes the leaderboard aspect completely, the lack of a necessary grind also has a nostalgic feel to it. At no point did the game grind to halt because I was missing some crucial currency or another. This is key for the longevity of the game as a single player experience, and will mean that more of the players who give it a shot will see it through, even if they don't fully dive into the extensive endgame.
The Kevin Conroy-troversy
I had convinced myself that surely this wasn't an issue. The mumbling was there for a while, but I didn't imagine that anyone harbored the same feelings nearly a year after launch. Responses to the news of the game shutting down proved me wrong, so I'll break it down as simply as possible: there's still a contingent of the population that avoided the game and/or cheered its demise because of some perceived disrespect to Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy after the news of his untimely passing.
It's not only a disservice to his performance in the game, but a disrespect to the man who adored the character. Was he not a grown man, capable of making his own decisions? Do they think he read through the script asking "but I'm the good guy, right," to which Rocksteady responded: "Of course?" Are they under the impression they knew he would die so they only then decided to kill his character, the only mortal member of the Justice League? All of that is to say: once the unreasonable among us gets over the controversy concocted in their heads, this will remain one of his last performances, and will drive more players to check it out, eventually. They'll find a convincing performance, even if it wasn't as broad as the original plan, and actually realize that he's shown once again that he makes a convincing villainous Batman.
Next Stop: Deep Discounts and Nostalgia Glasses
I could go on for much longer. About how the infusion of the various Justice League powers offers a nice mix-up to the enemies to keep them fresh. I could gush at the various map themes that were introduced in the game's post-launch seasons. The wealth of DC lore sprinkled throughout the experience could get highlighted. How impactful the latter four anti-heroes are in the gameplay loop could be its own bullet point. All of that, though, are reasons players would stay, rather than what would draw them back in.
Yes, it's true, it's not another Arkham game, but I'll give a company some grace for not being able to find the exceptions in the "we’re tired of sequels" internet threads. And yes, it's a shooter with characters who are not necessarily gun-focused (I will once again bring up Marvel Rivals, though). Players love to shoot things, and, to be honest, the Arkham combat is getting a bit long in the tooth, isn't it? It has certainly worn out its welcome for me in several much more recent games. Still, the grass is always greener. Did it need to be this game? Couldn't it be better? Shouldn't the developers be making a game they already know how to make? The answers to those questions are obvious (of course not, literally always, and don't be silly, to be clear), just as they are with any other game. This is a prime example of extremely talented developers abiding by the whims of the suits. Fortunately, the former shines through, and I hope the developers at Rocksteady still take positive lessons from the game overall. I was apparently in the minority of "I really don't want another Arkham game," but players already proved that an expanded Arkham game (in Gotham Knights) would not hit either. Ultimately, as the saying goes, comparison is the thief of joy and comparing, in totality, Suicide Squad to Arkham is a bit like comparing Uncharted to Crash Bandicoot, isn't it?
Obviously, only time will tell if I'm right. Plenty of surprising games get the "cult classic" resurgence, but many deserving games get glossed over. It ultimately depends on what went wrong. For that, you can place blame in many areas, and maybe all of them at once, but user reviews ultimately struck me, both at launch and now, by nearly invariably mentioning the price. If the answer to Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League missing out on some deserved love is "it cost too much upon release" then, well, I rest my case.
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