Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League Still Looks Pretty Bad

Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League story screenshot

A couple days ago, we reported that WB Games is going to start showing off Suicide Squad again — the game, not the movie. The publisher, alongside developer Rocksteady, revealed it would be releasing a series of videos about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and now the first one has been release. Unfortunately, it’s still not looking great.

The first episode of Suicide Squad Insider went up last night, showing off the game’s main story, traversal mechanics, and some gameplay elements. Credit where it’s due: the story and character work does seem to be pretty good. The main cast is likable, their dialog is fun, and the story setup, while nothing particularly groundbreaking, does the job perfectly fine.

I will say that I’m a teensy bit disappointed that Captain Boomerang is using a “speed force gauntlet” for his superpowered bursts of speed, simply because there’s a version of Boomerang in the comics that has super speed mutant abilities and it feels unnecessary to introduce a new reason for that. But that’s a small nitpick at most — for the most part, the story, narrative setup, and character work seems good enough.

It’s the gameplay that’s left me a bit sad. Rocksteady says that the Metropolis map is twice as big as Arkham in Arkham Knight, and that’s… fine, I guess. Plenty to do and see. It does mean there’s a lot of traversal required, though, and that aspect of the game looks like a nightmare.

Characters seem like they’re very floaty while in the air, lacking the weight and presence that Batman had in Arkham Knight. And when you’re in a city like Metropolis, you’re going to spend a lot of time in the air, climbing up and jumping off buildings, and jetpacking or swinging around while you shoot at enemies. It’s honestly kind of nauseating to watch because of this floatiness, something about it just turns my stomach immediately.

Then there’s the combat, which seems to just be Fortnite-style third-person shooter mechanics. There are enemies with glowing spots, you shoot at those glowing spots to do more damage, and occasionally fire off a skill unique to your character. Different characters will approach combat in different ways, but at the end of the day, you’re still firing bullets at the baddies for what seems like most of your combat experience.

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I cannot stress enough how disappointing this is. You’ve got four different DC Comics characters, with a rich history of unique combat abilities to draw from, each with their own skills and drawbacks. And instead of creating a tailored combat experience for each of these characters, Rocksteady and WB Games have just slapped guns in their hands and called it a day.

None of this is particularly new information. We saw most of this stuff back in February, in the now-infamous State of Play that led to massive backlash from fans, ultimately leading to the game’s 8-month delay. That delay was never going to be enough to fundamentally change how the game played, but it’s still just disappointing to see it in action.

But hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, somehow, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League comes out on February 2, 2024 and blows us all away. Maybe it becomes one of the best games on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and people talk about it for years. Who can say, really?