If you’ve followed coverage about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, you’ve already decided about whether you’re going to buy it. Suffering from a bad premise, dated live service elements, and some of the most cluttered combat I’ve ever seen, Kill the Justice League may be the biggest disappointment of the year.
Let’s start with the much-maligned premise. If you’re a fan of the Arkham games, this being a continuation is a tad insulting. From the start you can tell the developers are trying to immerse gamers in their beloved Gotham, bringing us back to Arkham as well as offering a really cool retelling of the previous games’ stories. But after that you find out Brainiac has put some of Earth’s greatest heroes under mind control and it’s up to the Suicide Squad to step up and kill the former heroes and defeat Brainiac.
From the perspective of a comic book nerd, I have always loved the goofy off-shoot comics where a villain kills off the heroes. The Punisher did something like this in the 90’s and that one-shot is great. But it’s a one-shot. And not cannon. And not connected to a beloved universe. Not the finale to one of the best, if not the best, superhero game series.
And the truth is…Batman, Superman, The Flash, and Green Lantern have no agency in this story. They are brainwashed. Meaning killing them feels a little insulting and gross. Especially Batman, who you once played as and invested in. And the way the game’s writing plays off the deaths with jokes and goofiness makes the whole experience dour. It’s a miserable game, predicated on a plot that could have worked in better hands that should never have been connected to Arkham.
The gameplay doesn’t help. With four members of the Suicide Squad to choose from (Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Boomerang, and King Shark) you would hope for some variety. Traversing a slowly crumbling Metropolis with King Shark is so much fun and Harley manages to be a lot like Batman in the Arkham games. But past traversal, there’s no real difference between everyone. They have the same basic skill structures and pretty much the only customization is when you decide what guns to take into a mission. Which you can’t switch mid-mission by the way.
All of which leads to the combat. It’s fun. It plays well, it never dips frames. But it’s a cluster of numbers and flashes. The screen is always so busy that you occasionally can’t even tell what’s happening.
After you put in ten hours, you’ll get teased with a finale that is atrocious and opens up to the post-game. Here, the game focuses on dull side quests and busy work as it prepares for your battle with a series of Brainiacs across universes.
The game is short for single-player. Even then, co-op players likely won’t spend much time in this game as the grinding becomes horribly monotonous and lazy early, leaving nothing worth your time if you can make it through the story.
This isn’t a train-wreck, unplayable game. It’s occasionally fun and has some story moments that I liked…but ultimately this is a game that feels half a decade too late and can’t shake feeling like a half-baked cash grab.
Rating: 5/10
Publisher provided PS5 code in exchange for honest review
