Suicide Squad: Challenging the Justice League with Ambivalence
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League: A thrilling and ambitious third-person shooter that ignites excitement with its unique gameplay mechanics Rocksteady's live-game experience offers cool ideas that occasionally clash, but still captivates with its intense battles and unexpected twists
Rocksteady Studios aims to revolutionize the live-service genre with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, much like its Batman series revolutionized melee action games. The iconic Batman: Arkham Asylum set a standard for beatdown combat upon its 2009 release, influencing many developers, while the follow-up, Batman: Arkham City, did the same for large-scale fights and open-world settings. Despite its differences, Suicide Squad, a co-op third-person shooter, is set to deliver the same speed, fluidity, and grace in its combat, capturing the captivating essence of the Arkham games.
Having recently experienced an early portion of Suicide Squad during a hands-on event in Los Angeles, I am uncertain whether its combination of live-game content, loot-shooter RPG systems, and shooter combat will replicate the success of the Arkham games. Rocksteady's ambitious attempt presents promising aspects, but a brief look at the game was insufficient to fully grasp its systems or determine if it can effectively balance the various elements that initially appear to pull Suicide Squad in different directions.
I started playing the game at the beginning of the story, where Harley Quinn, Deadshot, King Shark, and Captain Boomerang are given a difficult mission. The villain Brainiac has invaded Metropolis and taken control of DC's best superheroes using strange technology. Now, corrupted superheroes are helping Brainiac in turning the remaining Metropolis citizens into twisted soldiers. The first order of business is to neutralize the threats posed by Superman and Batman before dealing with the alien invasion.
The game creates an open-world environment in a war-torn Metropolis, offering a variety of cityscapes filled with rooftops, billboards, elevated train tracks, and other elements for players to interact with. The city is also teeming with alien soldiers to battle, making the invasion a persistent threat that players will need to confront.
Playing keepy-uppy
The essence of Suicide Squad lies in its four-player cooperative open-world design, featuring RPG progression systems for each character and an array of weapons to collect in order to enhance overall strength. What sets Suicide Squad apart is its blend of swift, aerial traversal with shooting mechanics, encouraging players to spend the majority of their time in the air, combining acrobatics with explosions and gunfire as they zip between streets and rooftops, each character offering a unique and distinct experience.
The game begins with each character looting useful items from the abandoned Hall of Justice, enhancing their movement abilities. Harley takes Batman's grapple gear, Deadshot wears a jetpack, and Captain Boomerang acquires a gauntlet that enables bursts of Flash-like speed. Each character's movement around the battlefield is determined by their unique style and gameplay feel, as well as their individual approaches and abilities. While all characters can use different weapon types, some weapons complement specific characters better.
"Noel Chamberlain, an advanced combat designer, explained in an interview with Our Website, 'When you look at the squad themselves, you kind of expect guns, explosions, chaos. So that's one aspect. And then, the other aspect is to keep that Rocksteady DNA going, of taking on challenges and making something genre-defining. We didn't want to do the same thing that we've already done before. So, we wanted a new challenge and I think marrying traversal combat and our other many systems in the game ... but taking the same philosophy of being able to enter those flow states to effortlessly go from traversing Metropolis into combat and back out, it's definitely something that I think people expect from Rocksteady.'"
For my part, traversal and combat during the preview never felt quite as effortless or flowing as I'd hoped they would. There were times when I got the hang of Harley, swinging deftly from location to location and wailing on enemies, and the longer the event went on, the better combat felt. But things were also always a little clunky. I felt like I kept swinging into walls, or losing track of my next grapple point, or forgetting one of Harley's moves and breaking the movement chain at a key moment.
Build beneficence
Once you start to get the hang of how Suicide Squad is meant to be played, combat can be frenetic and fun, especially when you take advantage of different build synergies. Each character has three skill trees you can progress down, with the ability to respec them between missions at no cost. This allows for diverse gameplay approaches to keep things interesting or fulfill a specific role on your team. For example, during my session, Rocksteady provided me with a grenade-centric build for Harley, enhancing explosive damage and equipping me with weapons, abilities, and equipment that dropped grenades when I skillfully linked parkour movements, such as transitioning from a mid-air swing into a slide upon hitting the ground.
The result was an explosion of action. By enhancing different aspects of Harley's abilities, combat felt not only unique from my previous experiences, but also incredibly effective in incorporating diverse elements of combat and traversal into my battle strategy. I was no longer focused solely on smooth swings for efficient travel; now I aimed to maximize the impact of each move for maximum carnage.
Production manager Jack Hackett stated that Rocksteady aims to create a loot system with more significant choices, rather than just comparing how a weapon might slightly enhance certain character stats. While I only caught a glimpse of how character builds will function in Suicide Squad, my initial impression was that the systems allow for a great deal of fascinating customization beyond the typical min-maxing seen in spreadsheets. Loot-driven games often have players sifting through numerous unnecessary guns, so the emphasis on ensuring items have distinct traits and uses should maintain the engaging and fascinating aspect of the looting process.
Lost in the live game
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League Will Tell DC Stories "You Probably Never Thought" Would Be In A GameOur part of the game featured an early segment of the story, revealing the squad's origin and featuring many humorous cutscenes and character interactions among a group of eccentric misfits. The preview focused on introducing players to the types of events they can experience in Metropolis and engage in repeatedly, providing a moment-to-moment sense of what to anticipate over time. These activities included objectives such as defending computer terminals from enemies for a specific duration or rescuing civilians scattered across a battlefield and escorting them to safety at an evacuation bus.
The events and battles seemed a bit generic, especially in contrast to the more familiar story moments from Suicide Squad that Arkham fans are accustomed to. While each mission had different objectives, they all involved battling waves of enemies while moving between rooftops. Rocksteady briefly showcased what Suicide Squad will entail, promising more unique, story-driven missions as players progress through the campaign. However, the repeatable open-world events during the preview session offered nothing new to experienced loot-shooter game players.
To maintain the freshness of repeatable content, Rocksteady introduced ongoing friendly competitions. While players work toward the same objective, Suicide Squad tracks each person's contribution in a given activity, and each event concludes with a splash screen highlighting the winner. This adds a Mario Party vibe to the game, and the winning player becomes the team's new squad leader, gaining control over the group's next activity.
Chamberlain articulated that the interplay between collaboration and competition is integral to the dynamic of four-player gameplay and the feeling of assuming control over a team of unconventional villains. The incorporation of both cooperative and competitive design elements motivates the entire team to achieve their objectives, notwithstanding their varied motivations.
"We refer to it as 'coopetition,'" Chamberlain elaborated. "The squad is inherently chaotic, but we want to ensure that players don't feel excluded or frustrated. Certain events in the game world are crucial--if a team member goes down, someone else must revive them, and within the narrative, Amanda Waller cannot afford to lose any squad member. So if you abandon a teammate, everyone suffers. ... We've integrated RPG elements, such as slowing down enemies, to make it easier for teammates to take them down. However, we also have the opposite--players can send taunts to rivals, essentially provoking them for surpassing their leaderboard score. We aimed to guarantee that players have an enjoyable experience while staying true to the spirit of the chaotic squad, who strive to survive together despite their interpersonal dynamics."
Killing The Flash
During our play session, we had the opportunity to take on The Flash in an epic boss battle. To combat the super-speedy hero, we had to utilize a special device obtained through the story and activate Suicide Squad's counterattack ability. This ability is reminiscent of Batman's skill to anticipate and counter enemy attacks in the Arkham games. As the comic book-style lightning bolts appeared above The Flash, we quickly pressed a specific button to thwart his impending attack and simultaneously charge the device. Once fully charged, we were able to unleash a powerful shot at The Flash, dealing damage and gaining the upper hand in the battle.
The boss battle felt clumsy, and it was unclear if the problem lay with the design or if our team simply hadn't fully developed the movement skills Suicide Squad relies on. Flash's rapid movements around the battlefield, set in a derelict theme park, made it difficult to keep track of the action, especially when he would suddenly disappear and reappear on a rooftop on the opposite side of the arena. Eventually, Flash would whip around to create massive tornadoes that the team needed to dodge, but it was challenging to anticipate the source of many of his attacks or understand when and why we were taking damage. While we eventually defeated him, it was more a result of wearing the boss down rather than a display of particular teamwork or strategy on our part.
My main takeaway from Suicide Squad is that I want to experience the game as it was intended to be played. When the combat and traversal systems come together, especially when customizing a build that involves constantly throwing souped-up grenades and leaving them in your wake as you slide away from danger, the experience is fluid and exhilarating. However, there is a lot to learn here, and losing track of its intricacies or falling out of the flow often disrupted the momentum.
The story, a mix of live-service missions and comedic narrative moments, tries to blend both elements but falls short. Despite this, I'm eager to delve deeper into the main story, which offers amusing moments and compelling interactions between the main characters. The premise of taking down the Justice League, with its immense power, is intriguing. However, the repetitive open-world missions lack innovation, reflecting similar content found in many other open-world games. Although Rocksteady aims to revolutionize the genre with Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, it remains to be seen whether it can truly achieve this ambitious goal.
Editor's P/S
As a Gen Z fan, I am excited about the upcoming release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The game's unique blend of live-game content, loot-shooter RPG systems, and shooter combat has the potential to revolutionize the live-service genre, much like Rocksteady's Batman series revolutionized melee action games. The game's open-world environment, filled with war-torn cityscapes and alien soldiers, creates a sense of urgency and immersion that is sure to keep players engaged.
However, I have some concerns about the game's ability to effectively balance its various elements. The combination of live-game content, loot-shooter RPG systems, and shooter combat is ambitious, and it remains to be seen whether Rocksteady can successfully integrate these elements into a cohesive and enjoyable experience. Additionally, the game's four-player cooperative open-world design may present challenges in terms of matchmaking and balancing the difficulty for players of different skill levels. Overall, I am cautiously optimistic about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and I look forward to seeing more of the game in the coming months.
