Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Review

A lot has been written about Rocksteady Studios, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League with some sites as well influencers condemning how bad the game was. Rocksteady Studios have given us some wonderful game experiences from the Batman Arkham series and we all hoped this too would be a smash hit.

In my review, I will try to break down the gameplay, the story and overall enjoyment from what I have played.

The Story – Brainiac has taken over Metropolis and has managed to use his powers to take over the Justice League, with the “superheroes” at his beck and call and submitting to his will. Amanda Waller brings Task Force X’s (a.k.a. the Suicide Squad) Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang and King Shark to help Kill the Justice League. You will meet other characters along the way, but I don’t want to spoil too much of that. As the story progresses you find out that the Arkham games are cannon to this narrative.

I also wanted to quickly mention that the characters have some great witty banter and are always taking the micky out of each other.

Gameplay – Kill the Justice League is an open-world game, meaning you can do whatever missions you like in whatever order you wish to. There is a small caveat to this in that some of the story missions are locked as you will need a specific upgrade to your weapon arsenal before attempting it, but this doesn’t feel like it’s an issue. Each of the playable characters feel different, this includes their movement across Metropolis and even which weapon they can use. As an example, Harley Quinn can not use a sniper rifle nor can she use Captain Boomerangs’ boomerang. This keeps each character as an individual and gives you the need to try each person out. On trying each character out, you can “on the fly” switch between each character and this process allows you to level up the Suicide Squad helping you complete missions “easier”.

I found a few sticking points with the gameplay loop, including that you transfer between only about 3 different types of missions throughout my playthrough. One was capturing points or defending or a limited variation of that. I found myself getting very bored when I had to move from one area and then another to “save” my villain friends. Another mission mode was to break the crystals, again moving from one place to another and destroying the enemies around a hub for me to break.

With the above being said gunplay and movement are really good and even with the few criticisms about the variation of missions, I’ve found myself wanting to play more and more. I’ve found that if you think you are going to play the next Batman game from Rocksteady you will be sorely disappointed. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is its own game, quirks and all, and feels like a comic book-cum-game (it’s very brightly coloured and some pop-ups have that comic/cartoon feel and look).

Conclusion

There is so much negativity surrounding this title, but I don’t care. I have had a good time with it. Does it have faults? Yes it does. But this hasn’t ruined the experience for me. I’ve had fun playing Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The first boss fight was bluntly rubbish however the second boss fight makes up for it in my opinion. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League feels like it was meant to be DC’s version of Marvel’s Avengers. I feel Rocksteady did a better job in keeping my attention and making missions easier to follow, even if they do have a repetitive nature to them.