Where to even start with this one?
First of all, it's worth mentioning that the game had an embarrassing hate campaign against it for the past year. The part that bothered me the most is the whole "this game is disrespectful to Kevin Conroy" takes I kept seeing (and still do on this website even). It's gross and completely unwarranted. Batman isn't a real person. Grow up. Another portion of the hate campaign was mostly directed at the GaaS aspects of the game. Which is, to be honest, understandable. GaaS games have taken over the industry and it really felt like Suicide Squad was the outlet for the pent-up frustrations many had with that model. I get it.
So a week ago, me and a friend of mine decided to buy Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. We kind of got it to hate-play it to be honest. While I wasn't really onboard with the people irrationally upset about heroes dying, I am very tired with GaaS stuff, so I didn't expect this to be my cup of tea.
My first impression with the game was how incredible the production values are. The character models for the squad are industry best and the facial capture puts recent AAA games like Spider-Man to absolute shame. This is something that really helps the humor. There's a lot of physical humor that comes from seeing a character (usually Boomerang) making very human facial expressions when reacting. It's awesome and something I'm not used to seeing outside of Naughty Dog games. So yeah, all the production stuff, including the genuinely great voice acting really lends a legitimacy to the story campaign.
But how does it play? Again, something that surprised me. It plays really damn well. All four squad members have complimentary playstyles and feel truly completely different from one another. I mostly played as Capatain Boomerang and god was the traversal ever fun with him. Zooming past the environments with a teleporting boomerang is great. The movement is a highlight and it was always fun to get around Metropolis.
Likewise, the shooting mechanics are extremely well thought out. The shield breaking melees mixed in with maybe the best third person shooter mechanics I've used in a decade come together to make the game feel like a spiritual successor to Crackdown and Sunset overdrive. Everything feels punchy and the game throws tons of enemies at you. Especially coop, the campaign shines.
The story is nothing really special but I did appreciate the character moments sprinkled throughout. Not every joke works but it's a game that's frequently funny. Captain Boomerang is my kind of dumb degenerate.
For as great as the core mechanics are, there are parts of this game that just puzzle me. First of all, the map. Metropolis is extremely fleshed out and detailed but there's not much of value to do in it. The artists at Rockstead cooked up a great looking world but it's just there. The amount of detail feels superfluous.
The main issue I have though is the level design. It's really uninspired and almost always uninteresting. It's not to say it can't be fun. It's often very fun because the core mechanics are so great. But like, there's 3-4 mission templates that they just re-use the entire game. They're not that interesting. Sometimes it gets broken up by a cool boss fight (Green Lantern fight is awesome) but otherwise, it's really standard fare.
And then there's endgame stuff which I'm not factoring much into my rating. It's there. It's repetitive. That's what a live service game is. I played this game as a story campaign game and got damn near 40 hours out of it. For me, that's enough. And I think that on those merits, SS succeeds as a fun time.
If the level design was brought up to the standards of the core gameplay loop, I genuinely think this game would be a 4/5 or even higher. I think in today's age, too many devs are trying to strike gold with GaaS and it's hurting the quality of the game. Suicide Squad is nowhere near as bad as internet commenters will try to convince you. There's a good game here, if you approach it with an open mind.
First of all, it's worth mentioning that the game had an embarrassing hate campaign against it for the past year. The part that bothered me the most is the whole "this game is disrespectful to Kevin Conroy" takes I kept seeing (and still do on this website even). It's gross and completely unwarranted. Batman isn't a real person. Grow up. Another portion of the hate campaign was mostly directed at the GaaS aspects of the game. Which is, to be honest, understandable. GaaS games have taken over the industry and it really felt like Suicide Squad was the outlet for the pent-up frustrations many had with that model. I get it.
So a week ago, me and a friend of mine decided to buy Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. We kind of got it to hate-play it to be honest. While I wasn't really onboard with the people irrationally upset about heroes dying, I am very tired with GaaS stuff, so I didn't expect this to be my cup of tea.
My first impression with the game was how incredible the production values are. The character models for the squad are industry best and the facial capture puts recent AAA games like Spider-Man to absolute shame. This is something that really helps the humor. There's a lot of physical humor that comes from seeing a character (usually Boomerang) making very human facial expressions when reacting. It's awesome and something I'm not used to seeing outside of Naughty Dog games. So yeah, all the production stuff, including the genuinely great voice acting really lends a legitimacy to the story campaign.
But how does it play? Again, something that surprised me. It plays really damn well. All four squad members have complimentary playstyles and feel truly completely different from one another. I mostly played as Capatain Boomerang and god was the traversal ever fun with him. Zooming past the environments with a teleporting boomerang is great. The movement is a highlight and it was always fun to get around Metropolis.
Likewise, the shooting mechanics are extremely well thought out. The shield breaking melees mixed in with maybe the best third person shooter mechanics I've used in a decade come together to make the game feel like a spiritual successor to Crackdown and Sunset overdrive. Everything feels punchy and the game throws tons of enemies at you. Especially coop, the campaign shines.
The story is nothing really special but I did appreciate the character moments sprinkled throughout. Not every joke works but it's a game that's frequently funny. Captain Boomerang is my kind of dumb degenerate.
For as great as the core mechanics are, there are parts of this game that just puzzle me. First of all, the map. Metropolis is extremely fleshed out and detailed but there's not much of value to do in it. The artists at Rockstead cooked up a great looking world but it's just there. The amount of detail feels superfluous.
The main issue I have though is the level design. It's really uninspired and almost always uninteresting. It's not to say it can't be fun. It's often very fun because the core mechanics are so great. But like, there's 3-4 mission templates that they just re-use the entire game. They're not that interesting. Sometimes it gets broken up by a cool boss fight (Green Lantern fight is awesome) but otherwise, it's really standard fare.
And then there's endgame stuff which I'm not factoring much into my rating. It's there. It's repetitive. That's what a live service game is. I played this game as a story campaign game and got damn near 40 hours out of it. For me, that's enough. And I think that on those merits, SS succeeds as a fun time.
If the level design was brought up to the standards of the core gameplay loop, I genuinely think this game would be a 4/5 or even higher. I think in today's age, too many devs are trying to strike gold with GaaS and it's hurting the quality of the game. Suicide Squad is nowhere near as bad as internet commenters will try to convince you. There's a good game here, if you approach it with an open mind.
Aecease
2 months ago