I'm going to start this off by saying this is completely my personal opinion. I know there are people out there who have been enjoying this game, and some people love it. I, however, do not. So take away from this what you will, but take it with a grain of salt as what you feel may not be the same as what I feel towards this game. Also, this won't be too long, as I already went off on this game in my last article.
Now, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is Rocksteady Studios latest addition to the Arkham universe. Suicide Squad is a third-person looter shooter game centered around the Suicide Squad comprised of Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, Harley Quinn, and King Shark. In the game, you play as one of the four members of the squad with the goal of taking back Metropolis from the hands of Brainiac. Who has completely taken over in hopes of making Earth into Colu (the planet where he was created, according to Superman#167), doing so by brainwashing various members of the Justice League and having them do his bidding. Although it's never directly explained how Brainiac does this, if you listen to the logs you find, I'm sure you could piece it together. However, I did not, so I can't comment on that all too much.
POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD (I will do my best not to spoil too much, but what I consider a spoiler might not be what someone else does. FYI, there is one spoiler for sure)
The story of Suicide Squad is far and above its strongest quality; in all honesty, I would recommend just watching all of the cutscenes on YouTube rather than playing the game. Since 75% of the game (the main story part, at least) is cutscenes anyway. As good as the cutscenes are, they do not make up for the rest of the game being lacklustre. This is not to say that the game is absolutely horrible, though; it's more of a massive disappointment. The story and some later combat are decently well done, enough for it to be playable. But who wants to spend $90 (CAD) or more for a game that is just playable?
The combat of the game is relatively stale; it's always the same. Just shoot as much as you can from a distance and use your traversal to get away when enemies get close. That isn't to say that I just dislike shooters; it is more that you're playing a superhero game. Right out of the gate, I was dying to fight enemies in melee combat and have it be even just a little similar to the Arkham games. But alas, the only thing you do in melee combat is knock enemies up so that you can juggle them. Which isn't even juggling cause all you do is shoot them! Oh and if you do try and do a melee combo, your second attack is a ground attack. Which is completely useless cause you just knocked the enemy into the air, and they stay up there for a few seconds. It's things like this that are just small oversights that make you wonder if they even played their own game. A few other small things that add up are the bugs and glitches, like not being able to progress a mission because you can't talk to an NPC or a whole piece of the map disappears. These are just things that would be easy to fix if you noticed them. The traversal isn't as great as people make it out to be, especially for a game where the traversal is one of the main things that differentiates it from others in the genre. There are quite a few good gameplay mechanics, but they just get outweighed by how drab and lame the rest of the game is. Like the missions.
There are quite a few missions that you can do during the story but guess what? They are all almost the same, watch a cutscene, then head to a location, kill a few enemies, watch another cutscene and then go back to the base. It is the dullest mission system ever. Not to mention that there are so many things that take you out of the game while you're playing. Like cutscenes, full-screen tutorials (even in the endgame), un-skippable screens, etc. All of it just takes away from the actual gameplay. The story is good enough to get you into it and actually play out the story, but how many times it ruins your immersion for pointless things is insane.
To make matters worse, the one thing most people would be looking forward to is the boss fights. But let me tell you, these are some of the most bland, uneventful, non-difficult, lame, underwhelming boss fights I have ever done. They are terribly easy and honestly pose zero threat. They are all just shooting the boss, shoot a thing they make, and repeating the cycle all over till it's done. To make it even worse, (SPOILER WARNING) the Batman boss fight is the worst of them all! For a company that essentially made its name off of making Batman games, you would think that it would be the best one, but nope, it is BY FAR the worst. He gets you with the fear toxin; you run around pulling levers while the fear toxin messes with you, then you fight a nightmare Batman (big shadowy torso), and all you have to do is jump over the waves he sends out and shoot him! THEN ITS OVER. What an absolute disservice to all Batman fans and, honestly, to the voice of Batman himself, the late great Kevin Conroy. However they did make it a little better by doing a memorial segment for Kevin Conroy during the end of the game. Which was a very nice touch.
Now with a live service game, generally, the campaign part is not the meat of the game, but guess what? The endgame for Suicide Squad isn't actually that terrible. Shocking hey? There are quite a few different missions, tiers, and difficulties for you to advance and gain better loot. But at the same time, it does feel a bit dry and repetitive. To top it all off, the endgame "better" loot isn't actually all that better. You basically get some of the best gear in the game at the halfway mark in the campaign. All the best of the best gear, "infamy gear," does like 1k more damage than your weapons from the campaign. So I mean, is it worth grinding to get a 1k damage increase from maybe 5k to 6k? In my opinion, not really. So what's the point of playing the endgame content? In all honesty, the campaign killed any chance of me returning to the game to do more endgame content. So without further ado, even though this technically isn't a review, I must say that this game probably isn't worth your money. It's a solid 6/10 MAX. In fact, it has been recieved so poorly that the game is already been 25% off on Steam. Personally, I would wait for it to be 50% off or more. In fact, the game might even go free to play eventually, maybe even by summer, with how it's going. So just wait it out. For those of you who are huge DC fans and just care about the story, then you will definitely enjoy this game as the story, voice acting, writing, and all that jazz are very, very good.
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