Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a good time, but maybe not for a long time

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SHOULD I PLAY SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE?

Don’t play this if you’re looking for a continuation of Rocksteady’s iconic Batman: Arkham games, but Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has its own thing going for it that’s worth checking out, especially if you have fond memories of games like Infamous or the Crackdown series. This is an open-world game about running around and clearing combat encounters as stylishly and bombastically as possible, racking up huge combos, and filling the screen with neon explosions. I’ve had a good time with it, but I expect it’ll be a divisive game.

TIME PLAYED

I played just over six hours of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League during the early access period for players who purchased the digital deluxe edition. I spent some time with each member of the squad—Harley Quinn, Deadshot, King Shark, and Captain Boomerang—and I’ve completed a dozen or so missions and activities around Metropolis. I’ve earned and crafted new gear for each antihero, and I’ve recruited the two other notable DC villains (no spoilers!) as support staff. Story-wise, my current goal is to level up to the point that the team is ready to take on the Green Lantern, who’s been corrupted by Brainiac, but I have a ways to go before I’ll be able to do that.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE?

• The combat rocks. I don’t know if this will be everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved the approach Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League takes to combat. The switch from the melee combat of the Arkham games to firearms has not made for a less interesting fighting experience by any means. Instead, each combat encounter required me to use multiple tools and approaches, as well as keep track of threats at multiple ranges.

As Deadshot, I could bound around nearby rooftops and make sure the area was free from enemy snipers, or I could switch to King Shark to lay down devastating minigun fire. As Harley, I liked swooping straight into the middle of everything and lighting off a grenade or two before smashing the survivors with a giant hammer or modded baseball bat.

Enemies presented different threats that I had to be monitoring at all times: I could always use a special counterfire move to respond to snipers, but only when I was looking at them, which could be difficult when I was busy trying to melee-bash shielded grunts swarming my position. Meanwhile, I could be coming under fire from helicopters in the sky, tanks in the streets, or armored artillery monsters hurling fireballs from a block away. Fights all required constant motion, and I always had a sense that with practice, I could make them look even cooler than they already did.

• Each character feels the right amount of different. Let me explain what I mean: Harley, Shark, Deadshot, and Boomerang share a lot of their combat fundamentals. They all get to carry two firearms, a melee weapon, and a grenade. The input for their traversal mechanic is always the same (RB on an Xbox controller). While actually fighting or moving around the city, however, they all feel unique. Captain Boomerang phase shifts to the location of his boomerang, so getting around with him was about aiming, holding RB, and releasing when the boomerang was at just the right location. King Shark moves around in giant bounding leaps, so I’d charge that up with RB and then press A to slingshot him forward. Deadshot’s jetpack only has a limited amount of boost, but when it ran out, I could “kick-start” it with LB to get another dose of propulsion out of it.

On a related point, I could switch between characters whenever I wanted, which made it easy to try out new moves, gear, or tactics. When playing solo, the other characters were controlled by bots, but Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League also works (and is designed) as a four-player co-op experience.

• Snappy, funny writing. I enjoyed the fact that Suicide Squad’s chosen setting allows it to be irreverent and even a bit iconoclastic toward established lore and beloved characters. There was a hilarious moment in the early hours of the story when the Squad breaks into the abandoned Hall of Justice, only to be confronted by Wonder Woman, who thrashes them all before snaring Boomerang in her lasso. “Where is the Flash?” she growls at Boomerang, who is pinned under her bootheel. From off camera, Harley excitedly pipes in, “Step on me next!” As someone who is generally sick of superhero stuff and could do without it, I enjoyed the flippant tone that Suicide Squad took with its source material.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE?

• The combat is great, but that’s all there really is. Story missions in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League usually involved a mix of cutscenes and travel, followed by a fight, usually with a special rule applied—for example, enemies might only be vulnerable to damage-boosted attacks or explosions, and so I’d have to adapt my approach accordingly. There just wasn’t much in the way of big set-piece battles that were all that much different from activities I found on my own exploring the city. I like the combat, but I’m not sure that it being the only real activity (apart from hunting for Riddler trophies) is going to work long-term.

• Some (but not a lot!) of the usual live-service junk. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League isn’t a big open space filled with players, and I never saw any social spaces where I could even interact with anyone who wasn’t on my squad. It is, however, a drip-feed gear grind with a cash shop to buy new costumes, banners, emotes, and shaders. As far as these things go, I’d say this is pretty run-of-the-mill, but it’s always a drag to see this stuff in a full-priced triple-A game. The good news is that the live-service elements can all be easily ignored.

• Shaky performance. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has generally run at a stable frame rate for me, but I’ve had a couple instances of things slowing down to a painful chug as a new cutscene loads, and once when this resulted in a crash to desktop. Performance was also iffy a few times when the explosion effects on screen got particularly heavy, but this was probably exacerbated by the fact that I was recording video at the time. Still, best to double-check the system requirements if you plan to play this on PC.

PLATFORM TESTED:

PC via Steam.