Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League unfortunately does not exist in a bubble.

The daunting weight behind Rocksteady’s newest major release since 2015’s Batman: Arkham Knight is immeasurable. Kill the Justice League and Rocksteady have been pushing the boulder up the steep incline of gaming opinion since a formal reveal in 2020. Nearly any vantage point one might take in a review for a game of this magnitude has already been co-opted, dissected by any number of fervent voices online.

Why has the game taken so long to release?

Why was Rocksteady taken off a Superman game to bring us this?

Why couldn’t we have received another Batman: Arkham game?

Where’s that Damian Wayne game I heard a rumor about?

Who in their right mind wants another Games as a Service title these days?

Context Clues

Since the days of Destiny I have unequivocally anticipated numerous “Live Service” games that yearn to ensnare players’ attention and wallet for months and years to come post-release. Subsequently, I’ve watched the rise and fall of trends, observed games that stumble right out the gate or merely limp along for months until being shuttered. Something about this genre ropes me in entry after entry. Maybe it’s a dash of FOMO, the fear of missing out on timed loot and cosmetics that disappears for no other reason than to encourage players to panic-spend real money or devote exhausting time to a single game. But I think the appeal lies in the idea of enmeshing myself into a game with a stringent set of rules, one where time equals success.

Destiny in its early days was a form of social lubricant. Months after my life was plunged into a long bout of depression, I used Bungie’s risky 10-year shooter as a balm for my misery. Rather than chip away at my back log or devote more time to growing as a games reviewer, full portions of my day were consumed by Destiny and the interactions I had with a group of friends in our clan. I remember when The Taken King launched and I spent dozens of hours that week playing with friends like it was my job, partially because I was not employed at the time, partially because I yearned for connection.

While it may signal a red flag in my gaming habits, I can’t deny the appeal of diving into a loop of familiar scenarios and immaculate gunplay to grind out incrementally improving gear. In the annals of gaming, Diablo 2 seems to be as pungent as ever, yet not so derided for its ability to trap players in a never-ending feedback loop of loot grinding. I guess the difference was that there was no system in place for microtransactions in 2000.

The Division was next in line for me and while similarly engaging, hadn’t learned the lessons of the failures of Destiny‘s first year: the content drought. Both Bungie and Massive Entertainment seemed to have not accounted for the voracity of players to endlessly grind in as straight a line as possible to achieve maximum damage output to outpace content before there was something new to experience. On the sidelines, I watched entire communities and careers created in service of live service. Streamers fighting for World’s First in raids. YouTubers breaking down the math of builds. Weekly community posts were analyzed for the few nuggets of promising information on reasons to keep playing.

Destiny 2 came and was a blast for the first few weeks until familiar problems crept in. Meanwhile, Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds burst onto the scene, planting the seeds and success for Battle Royales and Battle Passes that are still chased after today. The Division 2 launched and improved on the formula in virtually every single way, making it easy to fall down a hole of engagement in ruined Washington, D.C.

All of these games–this particular genre–have failings. Regardless of their quality or their capacity for fun, most of them require a piece of you in one way or another. In one particular point in my life I was attempting to juggle Fortnite, Warframe, Orcs Must Die 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, game reviews, and god knows what else. Soon enough, I had to stop. There is a point where you’re simply logging into a game to collect your daily reward and do nothing else just so you don’t break a login streak. In the past few months, I’ve put almost 150 hours into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III; partially because I really enjoyed the incredible multiplayer but more so because I really wanted to grind out a Battle Pass and camos.

And it a way, it’s almost pointless. Can I say I hated those 150 hours with a Call of Duty game? No. Would I have hated not working overtime to complete challenges and run Shipment over and over to maximize progress? Kind of. If it wasn’t my passion to review games, I could find myself sticking to a handful of big-budget, single-player games a year and focusing the rest of my time on these perpetual titles. Decades ago when I was a kid and relied on birthdays and Christmas to cycle in new games, I would play and replay my library constantly. Those games had a beginning and an end. Many games today do as well. Some don’t. All those other things surrounding a Live Service game? The new character skins, the calling cards, the limited time events… they are merely bonuses to a core that can be ignored if one chooses to do so, or embraced.

But there is a simple reality.

As humans, we have limits. As players, we likely have more. Work, sleep, life. They are tasks that interfere with games that simply require the kind of devotion one might save for a child or building a home. Of course, people can walk away at any time. But I truly believe that a great game can be enhanced by a Live Service model by offering those bouts of incentive to come back. “Enjoy us again and get rewarded!” It can work. Yet mind-share is limited and regardless of how enjoyable a game is, what happens when a shiny new one comes along or that critically lauded one sits gathering dust?

Anthem, for all its flaws, is potentially the most succinct metaphor for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Five years ago, storied single-player developer BioWare dipped its toes into the Live Service market. It was seen as a betrayal spurned by publisher EA. Why would the developer behind Dragon Age and Mass Effect want to create a game that relied on an endless drip of content? Players were promised that narrative would not take a backseat, that the BioWare DNA was flowing through Anthem‘s veins.

Ultimately, Anthem‘s potential was squandered by choices made behind BioWare and EA. Whether it be the fault of Frostbite and a near-reboot of the game’s development. Whether it was an unquestionably bland narrative that showed little of the depth of a storied studio. Whether it was gameplay that looked mechanically engaging but was ultimately hollow. Whatever the reason, Anthem hobbled along, missing out on promised updates and roadmaps right out of the gate. A gestating gameplay update never made it out of internal development and the game is, for all purposes, dead.

Yet Anthem‘s incredible flying mechanic hinted at a promising, fun game underneath all the shortcomings. But, like many things with BioWare’s stumble, came with a caveat. Horrid cooldowns meant that flight was limited and players never spent much time soaring through the world of Bastion with true purpose. A quickly concluded main narrative did not lead into satisfying endgame activities. A beautiful world and beautiful premise gone to waste.

A year later, Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix released Marvel’s Avengers, the third innermost circle in this Live Service Venn diagram. Still in the midst of the MCU’s dominance, Marvel’s Avengers pulled together a fun narrative bolstered by recognizable heroes who would eventually team up to take on a long-tail endgame. But despite the mechanical differences in its playable heroes, Crystal Dynamics could not support an admirable cadence of content that enticed players to keep returning. And, eventually, the weight of the entire package caused it to crumble, recently becoming delisted from digital storefronts.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League contains a piece of all these games, among many others. Like countless titles before it and countless yet to see the light of day, inspiration and influence is not easy to shake. But when stripped of expectations about what it should be and what it isn’t, Rocksteady’s newest foray into the DC pantheon is a fascinating product. One that is flawed but worthy of attention. One that will receive unjust rage and praise. One that does not exist in a bubble.

A League of its Own

While the downfall of the Warner Bros. DC Extended Universe films could have been spotted at multiple junctures, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, much like the Arkham trilogy, is immune from a reliance on a hodgepodge of aimless films. However, the tonal connection with James Gunn’s recent The Suicide Squad can be seen in Kill the Justice League. Rocksteady’s game also positions itself somewhat whimsically next to anti-hero romps like The Boys but less inclined towards gore and societal horror.

The most prominent declaration that can be made is that Kill the Justice League is not a Batman: Arkham game.

It’s a sentiment contentiously coloring Kill the Justice League for large swaths of players. Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and Arkham Knight are truly monumental gaming experiences. Asylum and City are arguably revolutionary in both how they helped define superhero games and how to make an impactful sequel.

One might argue that Rocksteady’s meteoric success was a fluke. But those three games were phenomenal in spite of any noticeable flaws, placing Batman on such a pedestal that he seemed untouchable. But after Arkham Knight it’s hard to imagine where the developer could have gone with the character outside a different iteration of the Dark Knight or one of his progeny. Gotham Knights, developed by WB Games Montreal, was a notable attempt at recreating the formula they had a prior shot at with Arkham Origins. But it was notably invoking familiarity while teasing Live Service underpinnings.

But what would Rocksteady do next?

Personally, I’m thrilled that a new Batman was not the answer and I hope that Rocksteady won’t make a game featuring the Caped Crusader ever again. A game using any number of characters attached to the ragtag Suicide Squad makes sense, even in light of the pathetic movie that was released around the same time Kill the Justice League was probably fully greenlit. I don’t want to dwell on whether or not Montreal was supposed to make this game and Rocksteady picked up the pieces or any hypothetical situation that may be reality.

The reality is this: Braniac has invaded Earth, set up shop in Metropolis, and is controlling the minds of the Justice League. As the Suicide Squad, players are meant to find a way to make things not so terrible.

At its core, the premise boils down to bad guy has done a bad thing, location has gone to hell, someone has to make it right. This dance was played out with Batman and it’s been played out with countless other games not related to comic book properties. This time its not Bowser or Ganondorf or the Joker or Scarecrow, it’s an inter-dimensional alien.

Did Kill the Justice League need to be set in the Arkhamverse? Well… no. But I couldn’t really care less. On a snowy January evening in 2010 I booted up Arkham Asylum for the first time on my PlayStation 3 having got the game for Christmas and became entranced. It was addictive. More importantly, it was bursting at the seams with love and reverence for the DC universe. Few developers have layered their world-building with as much detail as Rocksteady.

To make the Superman and the Green Lantern and the Wonder Woman and the Harley Quinn that exist in Kill the Justice League the same ones that were around after the near destruction of Gotham isn’t entirely brave or stupid. Comic books have made themselves fundamentally malleable to the point where big events can be manipulated and retconned at the whim of any writer. And if the narrative is fully fleshed out and justified, who am I to argue?

Players who are intimately familiar with the Arkham games are going to find references and callbacks in Kill the Justice League, almost to a delightful point.

I wonder… if Joker had somehow hoodwinked Metropolis and the Justice League and let his goons run amok and we players as Batman had to undo the madness, would it be so derided?

But I am not trying to be reductive of other opinions on the narrative of Kill the Justice League. But it is important to not dilute it into what it isn’t or what it could have been.

Players take on the role of either Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, Harley Quinn, or King Shark. As usually happens with the Suicide Squad, the group of criminals is tasked by ARGUS head Amanda Waller to complete near-impossible “suicide” missions in hopes to reduce their hefty sentences. The narrative rapidly goes from trying to rescue the Justice League to gathering up the resources to take them out.

Kill the Justice League is paced vastly different from the Arkham games, which often moved methodically where Batman speaking and interacting with other characters was punctuated by action. Narrative here stems from numerous and lengthy cutscenes that are often packed with banter and action. The first few hours are loaded with exposition or pure spectacle. With the main narrative in my rear-view window, it’s easy to see that its structure is heavily reliant on watching the Suicide Squad, Justice League, and supporting cast interact in directed cutscenes.

Tonally, Kill the Justice League doesn’t want players to linger on one particular beat for too long. Much of the comedy is dispersed through visual gags and delivered lines by the exceptional voice cast across the board. Frequently I laughed at King Shark’s “stranger in a strange land” commentary on the surface world that he’s only caught glimpses of. The crass humor of Harley and Boomerang may be grating to many but I found solace in its unabashed absurdity. Honestly, when humor plays it safe, I find myself excessively bored. There’s few things that cripple a joke more than going for the obvious laugh. But the writers at Rocksteady often went for the approach to throw everything at the wall. Despite humor being so objective, I imagine small pockets of people finding even the most low-hanging of fruit to be worth a chuckle.

A steady flow of well-timed jokes and dark humor allow for Kill the Justice League to be its own beast. This is not the place for self-serious antics where deaths weigh on the soul. The goalposts don’t really get moved around in this game as its stakes are firmly in place quite early on.

In the first hour, there’s a brash alliance being formed between the four Squad members and Amanda Waller. Deadshot primarily acts as the straight man who learns to be less serious. Boomerang is the crude asshole who seems the most “evil” out out of the group. And Harley brings the genuine sincerity and levity despite her baggage. An honest attempt is made throughout Kill the Justice League to not only give these characters personality but to evolve them past the assholes that they truly are. These aren’t anti-heroes in the traditional sense. These are criminals who have killed people and made the lives of others generally worse. Debra Wilson’s performance as Waller is appropriately terse, acting as the necessary ball and chain to reign in these criminals from leaving Metropolis out of self-preservation. Each time a member of the Squad goes out of line, asks for praise, or teases Waller, they are met with stone-faced annoyance. Waller isn’t a party pooper but is definitely calculated and ruthless in her own way, yet situationally gets her own moments to draw in the humor.

As Kill the Justice league progresses, I was impressed by how Rocksteady threaded the needle of redemption for this group. Forgiveness does not come easily and the group constantly fights for recognition they rarely receive. Many players may be tired of the narrative where the bad guys slowly morph into the good ones but considering the monumental task ahead of them, it is difficult to not learn to appreciate the thematic approach and how it works within the narrative.

But the serious nature inherent in the title of the game is not to be forgotten. Kill the Justice League initially treats the Suicide Squad as a group of outlaws bordering on cowboys, with Metropolis a kind of Wild West where everything has gone to hell. The game’s objective is initially to find a way to get the neck bombs out of the heads of the Squad so they aren’t under the control of Waller. Cue jokes. Cue action. Cue the subversive fear of having a gargantuan skull ship constantly hovering in the sky, its tentacles reaching out across the city.

Death Becomes Us

The facade of Metropolis becoming a playground for the Suicide Squad to relish in the chaos drops the moment they first encounter Batman. This event occurs at an exhibit portraying the events of the Arkham series where cardboard cutouts of Batman and his rogues gallery shuffle around on strings and tracks. The Squad watches Batman kill innocent people and then silently stalk each member in a tense setpiece. Jump scares are manipulated by the cardboard Batmans silhouetted against deep red lights, exposing the gravity of the moment and allowing players to experience what a normal goon went through in the previous games. At the conclusion, we watch Batman aggressively punch The Flash into a bloody pulp.

A shocking shadow is cast over Kill the Justice League. These heroes who are beacons of comic book culture are dangerous and deadly. It emphasizes the stakes of the game’s narrative and that players may have to face the uncomfortable reality that these icons cannot be saved.

Despite the brutality of the scene, I will admit that Rocksteady could have taken its narrative farther. After the encounter with Batman, a few hours become devoted to rounding out a support squad that will aid in taking down the Justice League and eventually Braniac. Kill the Justice League trudges through a few dire beats in this chunk of the game but primarily works to have Harley and crew being taunted by a few DC mainstays that are introduced partially as mechanical expressions of gameplay. Penguin works on gun crafting, Poison Ivy adds elemental effects, etc.

There is a noted strength to the first few chapters of Kill the Justice League as players are introduced to Metropolis and its current state of affairs. Pitch perfect voice acting and impeccable facial and character animations bring the delivery to life and attract players to the cast. But that buoyancy starts to wither when the first few members of the Justice League are dispatched.

Admittedly, it should come as no surprise that a game with such a title tasks players with killing the Justice League. The methodology in which this act is conducted is undoubtedly going to deflate the enthusiasm of a number of players. As understandable as that is, I personally was excited by the possibility of committing such an act, even if said deaths weren’t entirely written in stone.

Upon the first kill, a confluence of events occurs.

Over the corpse of a hero, a joke about penis size is made. Then, a moment of tension gives way to the reveal of a devastated Earth-2, exposing Kill the Justice League‘s use of DC’s multiversal Elseworlds. And I’m sure many an eyebrow was raised.

Quickly there becomes a lot to process in the entangled baggage of Rocksteady’s game. I would rhetorically ask if this is the humor we should be going for. But, if I’m being honest, the shock of urinating on the corpse of a dead hero and then a group of people commenting about dick length didn’t rattle me. Let’s be real, I’m an adult with a somewhat adolescent taste in humor. I grew up at a time when Beavis & Butthead was actual true, high-brow humor. In the grand scheme of things, nothing in Kill the Justice League really phased me but the surprise that these events were happening in a game made me laugh.

When Kill the Justice League goes to the extreme, it is usually for the better. Juvenile humor can work, even when done in dishonor. In a way, Rocksteady seems to mock the notion of hero idolization. The idea of world-saving, costumed people is fantastical but the Suicide Squad are villains and they would treat these heroes with anything but reverence. In fact, as the Squad matures as characters, their treatment of the dead becomes more noble. Such character growth is invaluable in storytelling because it provides players with a sense of progression. One-note villains and heroes can work but in Kill the Justice League, even the notion of a bad guy mocking the downfall of Earth’s mightiest in light of a world-ending scenario is bafflingly tone-deaf. And I was constantly thankful that serious moments were given the room to breathe with both humor and drama in a way that felt mostly appropriate for where the characters were at in their journeys.

The reveal of a fallen Earth-2 provides further implications for the severity of the events in Metropolis, especially with the knowledge that a different Justice League and a different Suicide Squad have already fallen. Plus, it opens the door for these characters to not truly die which one would think could possibly satisfy those displeased with specific outcomes.

A large annoyance for me with the outcry regarding Kill the Justice League has been the use of Kevin Conroy’s passing and the events surrounding the “Arkham Batman” and his purported death. The fact that anyone can in good faith argue that Conroy’s Batman was wasted in this game puts a foul taste in my mouth. Here, Batman is an omnipresent threat. Soon into the game, the Squad is able to hack into Brainiac’s communications. Batman is constantly speaking throughout, providing chatter much like the various gangs in prior games. There’s a sick fascination listening to Conroy’s almost heartless delivery derisively speaking to the player’s actions. Hell, he can even be observed stalking the Squad from a distance, providing a chilling, thoughtful touch to Rocksteady’s attention to detail.

If The Last of Us Part 2 can teach us anything, it’s that characters–beloved or not–can be malleable to a point. As players, we may not be happy with the choices made but a good narrative can justify almost anything.

Weaving Kryptonite

Where Kill the Justice League falters is not always consistent but the vacillating quality of Rocksteady’s progression of events is questionable.

I think this comes to light after the fall of the Green Lantern in which a mind-blowing cutscene occurs and the game continues towards a familiar trajectory. To be cruelly succinct, Kill the Justice League‘s quest to fulfill its thesis statement involves the Suicide Squad acquiring an item or thing that leads them to an eventual boss fight with a Justice League member.

Between the witty and funny banter with the Squad, League, and ARGUS, players engage in a familiar loop of missions to earn a thing that will aid them in tackling a specific member of the League. I don’t think that Rocksteady needed to allow players time to get to know the League, though it would have been nice to interact with them in more missions that weren’t specific boss fights or cutscenes.

Frankly, the Justice League doesn’t feel like a threat unless they are being portrayed as such in their culminating fights or a cutscene in which they are directly acting in a way they traditionally wouldn’t. There are blips of character development with the League, however. Flash’s playfulness is corrupted into cockiness. Superman’s benevolence turns into condescension for the human race. But these evil heroes are goals to overcome and are rarely allowed to exist anywhere but in the periphery of the story as future threats that will eventually be dealt with.

Strangely, the punchline after the death of a Justice League member is usually that they are entirely forgotten as the new one crops up. These deaths exist almost as an anti-event with the joke being that their health bar is depleted and a single bullet when they are hunched over and weakened cues a death animation that makes way for a cutscene.

Mind if I spoil the game for you? Okay, cool.

Superman’s death was almost absurdly uneventful. The guy flails around in the air shooting his heat vision everywhere and then drops to the ground without a word. The Squad go to high-five in mid air after a few seconds of commenting on his death. It probably didn’t help that my game was somewhat bugged and a large boulder blocked out half the scene as characters walked in and out of it.

I don’t know. Maybe I expected more out of these fights and deaths. I know a lot of people on the internet did. But I felt that way because it created an almost claustrophobic rush to the biggest events of the game. For the Suicide Squad, it makes sense that they aren’t openly weeping over Superman’s death, rather proud and in awe that they were able to do it. I’m conflicted about this lack of pomp and circumstance because I would have been interested to see how Rocksteady’s expert direction would have dictated the flow of these events.

What was more openly interesting about the key events of Kill the Justice League is the concept of Elseworlds and how they will play into the evolving narrative of the game. There is a definitive credit roll to the game but it likely won’t satisfy those not wanting to make a return journey for future content. Rocksteady is obviously leaving the events of the game open for interpretation and not as clear cut as it seems, making the vitriol seem a bit much.

Really, the largest issue with the game’s narrative is how these key events outside of cutscenes and in-game dialog are allowed to evolve. And that is truly a complex matter.

Two Sides to a Coin

Rocksteady has unfortunately designed an innately repetitive game.

That fact simply cannot be ignored. And while the scores of looter shooters and Live Service games wave their hands from the rafters for recognition, Kill the Justice League never finds harmony in its balancing act.

As I’ve brought up, the game’s cutscenes serve as the narrative foundation, holding up the dialog that hopes to provide further exposition during the gameplay. Again, these are quality cutscenes that often help players navigate the tonal shifts that occur. The death of a Justice League member, a new story twist, or a hilarious moment are played out in these moments, rarely during gameplay and missions.

The fabric weaving together Kill the Justice League is a series of gameplay-focused missions that set up the flow of endgame missions players will grind through after the credits roll. But I can’t understand why Rocksteady decided that the structure of most of their game would rely on variations of point control, escort missions, and killing waves of enemies.

For me, this is the fundamental flaw of Kill the Justice League as an engaging game that wishes to differentiate itself outside the trappings of its genre.

During my 50 hours with Kill the Justice League and in the weeks leading up to release, it was obvious the game was suffering a kind of identity crisis due in part to terrible marketing. I truly believe it is more akin to Diablo and Borderlands rather than Anthem or Marvel’s Avengers. I say this not because I believe Diablo‘s campaigns are poor or one-note but that they are dictated by specific limitations and design intentions.

Despite playing Diablo 3 for hundreds of hours and Diablo 4 for review, I would be hard-pressed to remember finer details of those narratives outside the largest bullet points. However, I remember mindlessly plunging the depths of various Hells and dungeons to collect loot, soaking up the atmosphere, listening to lore bits, and enjoying becoming involved in the world. From Act 1 to the final moments, the gameplay in Diablo changes very little, the velocity of its activities plateauing quite early. You’re activating skills and trying to melt down groups of increasingly harmful minions. In Borderlands, jokes and irreverent comedy bombard the players as much as its powerful guns. The story is rinsed through and repeated with stronger foes to soak up those stronger bullets.

But Kill the Justice League isn’t Diablo or Borderlands… but it also is. And that splinter itched at my mind throughout the game’s campaign. This is not an Arkham game, nor is Rocksteady trying to make it one. It is a dungeon crawler with a coat of DC paint. Its rudimentary mission objectives are rooftop dungeons with bits of story intermixed in between the cool moments of the cutscenes. And while I do think that comparison works in Kill the Justice League‘s favor, it doesn’t necessarily make the game better.

Reviewing this game has been difficult because I don’t think its problems are easily explained, nor do I think its successes can be lifted up with simple praise.

Honestly, saying that I was truly displeased with Kill the Justice League‘s story would be false. Often the missions and gameplay would fly by so fast with its frantic stylings that I found myself beating the campaign after about 20 hours rather than the reported 10-ish. Not only did I tackle every side mission (despite their repetitive nature), I would stand in place listening to the Squad banter, shudder at a Batman transmission to Brainiac, or seek out a gigantic screen to watch Lois Lane deliver a PSA.

2021’s Guardians of the Galaxy was my game of the year when it released. It was immaculately written, managing to build a gorgeous dynamic between its central cast. And boy, was that game a talker. Never before had I heard so much dialog. Kill the Justice League comes close. In fact, I was pissed when characters would talk over each other or chatter would get interrupted when my team cheered me on for taking out an encampment. But outside those annoyances, it’s impossible to ignore the degree of wonderful world-building Rocksteady has again performed.

Metropolis is a veritable playground. Its varying rooftops allow players to careen across the map, scaling up skyscrapers or plummet to ground level. Packed in the sprawling city are DC references galore and plenty of details for players to appreciate. It’s almost too good, honestly. Named street signs, highly detailed buildings, and open ground level areas are things most won’t even pick up on because players are encouraged to stay on rooftops.

Why, then, did Rocksteady not think to incorporate more bespoke missions and setpieces into Kill the Justice League? Most who play this game will identify that Batman exhibit as a standout moment. And it’s truly one of the few unique times Rocksteady designed a mission that isn’t centered around the ultimate endgame structure.

Most of the time the Squad goes inside a building, they will be walking around, not using their rapid movement capabilities or tackling unfamiliar enemies. It pains me to see that missions in Kill the Justice League were not designed around fueling all aspects of the narrative and its gameplay. What I thought would be an initial tussle with Green Lantern ended up having him fly off to leave a few Brute enemies for the Squad to fight with newly acquired grenades. The static nature of everything structured around the story means that it requires cutscenes to develop any kind of narrative momentum.

I understand that The Flash is the fastest man alive and the Squad ultimately would stand no chance against him. But why not find a way to have the Squad chased after or be chased by The Flash across Metropolis? Such a mission would develop tension and stakes, requiring the player to have a modicum of mastery over the Squad’s movement flow. Hell, I would take a mission where players have to stalk Batman and keep their distance from him so as not to be detected. Or why not a spectacular moment where the Squad fights alongside Wonder Woman and guards her while she scraps with a League member?

Narratively, the Squad gets closer to besting each member of the League by going to a rooftop and charging up some mulligan or hacking into Brainiac’s network to obtain crucial information. It’s just not great and certainly not a proper glue to hold together the rest of the story’s framework.

And I think that’s the most disappointing aspect of Kill the Justice League. Not its boss fights. Not that it isn’t an Arkham game. Not that it has seasonal content. It’s that the main campaign lacks mechanically standout moments.

Building Momentum

It truly is a shame because there are unquestionably smart design decisions Rocksteady has made throughout the course of Kill the Justice League.

Thinking back to my time with Destiny or The Division, or any number of similar games I’ve gorged upon, the stories blur together and even some of the more spectacular missions too closely resemble other shooting galleries they took place in. I couldn’t tell you a thing about Borderlands 3—a game I reviewed over four years ago–outside its groan-inducing ending and the glut of guns I was constantly fed. But I can tell you I had a good time.

But a certain familiarity always rears its head whether it be a snowy New York City or one of the many worlds Guardians fought over. Interestingly, Metropolis morphs and changes over the course of Kill the Justice League. At one moment late in the game, the entire city becomes blanketed with ash; that grey snow filling the sky and actually covering every surface. Braniac’s attempts to terraform the city result in buildings being destroyed or new footholds created. The existence of Earth-2 exposes varying ways in which Rocksteady literally destroyed their map and created new sandboxes out of it.

Part of me always yearned for these kinds of permanent and temporary changes to a game world’s map, making it feel more malleable and dangerous than something that would only change on a temporary basis with the comings and goings of DLC or seasonal content. Rocksteady seems primed to further manipulate Metropolis over the course of Kill the Justice League‘s life.

Despite a handful of framerate and server hiccups and the occasional bug, few problems ever lurched forward. The draw distance here allows players to always be able to spot a landmark from an extreme distance and never be affected by draw distance. While Kill the Justice League might not seem as remarkable as Arkham Knight based on a YouTube comparison video, there’s a vast amount of tech going on under the hood. A day/night cycle, weather effects, fast framerates, and screen-filling particles and explosions never cause the game to chug and all models and buildings simply look striking.

This is a gorgeous game meant to draw players into the unique flavor that is a besieged Metropolis. At no point was the looming image of Brainiac’s skull ship and its robotic tentacles stretching across the map not partially awe-inspiring. Rocksteady’s passion for its worlds and translating DC properties to the fullest comes across constantly through Kill the Justice League‘s gameplay.

Qualms with the narrative structure, its glaring absences, and what could have been melt away not only when Kill the Justice League is framed properly but also when playing it.

I don’t say this lightly: Kill the Justice League has one of the most enjoyable gameplay loops in the various genres it dips its toes into. Looter shooter, third-person action, Live Service. Rocksteady has provided one of the most resonant entries ever.

The studio known for Arkham‘s free-flow combat translated a system based around stringing together gadgets and lengthy combos into an intricate third-person shooter dance.

Rocksteady satisfactorily tutorializes players into the gameplay by providing the basics behind movement and shooting, with more complex parameters being introduced over the course of the campaign. All of it is done in service of hopefully transforming the player into a master of loot by the time endgame rolls around.

Each member of the Squad specializes in three out of the six weapon categories: pistols, SMGs, assault rifles, snipers, shotguns, and heavy weapons. Being a looter shooter, each gun has a rarity attached to it, where lower rarity guns have less modifiers and the higher rarities usually come with a unique perk. Gun families like GCPD or LexCorp dictate aspects like firing patterns and power. The same logic applies to grenades, shield modifiers, and other pieces of equipment.

Gunplay in Kill the Justice League is refreshing in its initial simplicity. Rocksteady opted not to overly diversify the feel of guns, as rate of fire and bullet falloff never struck me as obtuse. Shooting in the game is moderately light to account for the unique movement abilities of the Squad. The tradeoff is that players may have to adjust to the game’s “floaty” shooting where bullets and the character flow like a river. This is one of the few shooters that has a reload mechanic akin to Gears of War where pressing reload at the correct time triggers a faster reload and, depending on any modifiers, a special perk.

The biggest compliment I can give to Rocksteady’s shooting mechanics is that it feels natural and doesn’t work to impede the player, much like Batman’s ability to chain punches and kicks from goon to goon. Guns and shooting in Kill the Justice League are so effortless that it borders on overly simplistic. However, the point and click nature of shooting is reminiscent of various iterations of Doom and a number of arcade shooters that emphasize speed and timing over heft and accuracy

While heavily derided, Kill the Justice League‘s one-note melee attacks are merely another tool in players’ belt to dole out damage. Melee weapons act like guns in terms of rarity and modifiers. Otherwise, players are able to bash an enemy with any of the Squad’s melee weapons to juggle most normal enemies. A melee smack sends the enemy straight up in the air and instantly aiming a gun to that airborne foe will snap the sights to them to guarantee a critical hit with the gun.

Regardless of which Squad member chosen, they come naturally equipped with a small pool of health. The primary method of soaking up damage are a series of shield mods–also with rarities and modifiers–and the ability to Shield Harvest the bad guys. In the logic of Kill the Justice League‘s narrative, Amanda Waller does not want the Squad hiding behind cover, so to keep their shields active they must stay in the thick of things. It is an interesting proposition to force the player to constantly be moving and engage with enemies to earn the sustenance required to stay alive. There are multiple ways an enemy can have its shields harvested. Shooting it in the legs is the best method and striking a harvestable enemy with a melee attack will have them drop shield pickups.

Supplementing the gunplay is the unique traversal mechanic each Squad member has. Captain Boomerang possesses a Speed Force gauntlet, allowing him to long-range teleport over great distances, with a secondary movement mechanic allowing him to dart a short distance in any direction up to three times. Deadshot uses a jetpack to propel forward, burning up fuel to gain a burst of speed; his jetpack also allows him to hover in the air while shooting, eerily reminiscent of Anthem. Harley Quinn uses a Batclaw and Bat Drone to grapple to a point in mid-air and swing forward and dart up buildings with a Grapnel Boost, borrowing from Batman’s kit. King Shark, being a demi-god, can charge up a massive vertical leap or a more diagonal pounce, then burst through the air up to three times like he was swimming in Atlantean waters.

Conceptually it may sound convoluted… and it kind of is. But in practice, the traversal mechanics of Kill the Justice League are absolutely invigorating when used in conjunction with shooting and merely getting from one place in Metropolis to the other. Undoubtedly, players are going to find at least one favorite but I think all four offer numerous advantages based on the flavor of combat one is looking for.

To keep movement from being completely broken, Rocksteady implements a cooldown for each Squad member that instantly resets when touching a flat surface, even if that flat surface is the side of a building. Harley, who has the most complex movement, can shave off that cooldown by diving into the sky or overshooting on a grapple. With Deadshot, players can tap L2 to reset the jetpack one time before needing to land. Boomerang and Shark are skilled at traversing long distances but lack mid-air resets.

Kill the Justice League encourages players to always be moving, especially because the game’s action primarily takes place on the rooftops of Metropolis. As players level up a Squad member, they will unlock skill points in three varying skill trees that grant a number of passive bonuses. Players will see that Rocksteady has found a fascinating way to incorporate a combo system into a shooting framework, as a number of skills trigger while players maintain and increase their combo.

Those who give a cursory glance at the skill tree will merely regard it as a simple list of buffs that are meant to do more damage or increase survivability. And while that is partially true, the skill tree becomes progressively deeper the more players attempt to synergize those buffs with their playstyle and equipment. Each of the four Squad members has three playstyles the game dictates a skill may apply to and leaning into these becomes easier the stronger players become.

With Harley as my primary character, I was constantly in the air, swinging back and forth while taking critical potshots with a pistol or flooding heaps of enemies with bullets from an SMG, knowing that I leaned into maximizing damage while airborne. With Deadshot, there is a focus on snipers because he is capable of hovering around buildings to pull off the perfect shot. But Deadshot and Boomerang don’t have melee functionality similar to Harley and King Shark. Where Harley and Shark need to close the distance to pull off a melee hit, Deadshot uses a wrist cannon while Boomerang can hover momentarily and launch his boomerangs from a distance. Players may think that each member of the Squad plays similarly outside of movement tech early in the game but their skill trees and the way equipment can supplement those skills allows players to truly lean into four unique methods of play, with each character having those three other playstyles.

It would be disingenuous to say that Kill the Justice League doesn’t have gameplay depth or variety, at least in terms of its gunplay and how players engage with combat scenarios. But I can understand the pain points some may have with Rocksteady’s approach.

Infinite(ly) Content

Certainly there is a lack of enemy variety at the onset of Kill the Justice League‘s campaign and early into its endgame. Brainiac’s horde of purple aliens die quickly and their glowing purple weakpoints are the stuff of ridicule. But akin to its Diablo comparisons, enemy variety in terms of makeup and modifiers begins to expand once players have trudged through the campaign which, in all honestly, acts as a tutorial into the meatier endgame.

Basic grunts pose no threat. Enemies grow shells that have to be stripped with a melee attack. Snipers pester from great distances and will teleport away when trying to get close. Brutes will come with pools of health and deadly area-of-effect stomps, while artillery beasts can lunge exploding balls over buildings. When vulnerable, players can trigger a counter shot that will stun those snipers from teleporting, cause the brutes to have their shields harvestable, or simply trigger an explosion when hit, just look out for the same lightning bolts you saw in the Arkham games.

What about afflictions? After meeting Poison Ivy, players begin to unlock elemental effects that add yet another layer to combat. Melee weapons, grenades, and eventually guns can freeze enemies, electrify them, craze them, or set them on fire. And each of those status effects comes with pros and cons. Frozen enemies take massive damage from falling and bullets but virtually no damage from melee attacks. That meme you saw of the melee weapon that could freeze an enemy but did less damage to frozen enemies? That’s an intentional mechanic. Try running up to a group, freeze them, and unload a gun. You’ll feel great watching the bodies shatter. Enemies caught on fire can’t be used for shields and electrified enemies only take critical damage but also hit harder.

Once players begin to sink their teeth into the real meat of what Kill the Justice League‘s guns have to offer, they will be spoiled for choice on ways to approach increasingly difficult combat encounters. Simply put, the modifiers and effects some of these pieces of equipment have are astoundingly stupid and fun.

Take a grenade that you can carry only one of–it slowly depletes your shield but does 1000% more damage. Or an SMG that will cause grenades to shoot out of an enemy with critical hits every 30 seconds. Or the melee weapon that sends an enemy flying with a comic sound effect. There’s a set of Notorious weapons–one of the highest rarities–that mark enemies and when three are marked, it creates a fiery explosion. Gear sets are featured in the endgame and players can juggle a number of set bonuses that only serve to amplify particular playstyles.

Honestly, I could speak to the quality of this loot and the desire to chase it exhaustively. I would love to have a list of some of the best items in front of me and simply list out how I incorporated them into my gameplay at various points in Kill the Justice League. But to go into such granular detail is an exhausting proposition for an already exhaustingly thorough deep-dive into the complexities of this game.

To deem the loot chase of Kill the Justice League as unimportant completely invalidates the portions of the game that chase was designed for. Pardon me while I break past the fourth wall. But I’m honestly shocked that fully-scored reviews for Kill the Justice League were released within a day or two of the early access period. I’m sorry but that is simply not enough time to meaningfully engage with a Live Service game that has a long tail already existing in a pre-season state.

My criticism of Rocksteady’s repetitive mission structure remains. I am also disappointed in the variety and complexity of their boss fights, with one fight being partially recycled to a disappointing degree.

But Rocksteady has also delivered one of the most content-complete games in the genre at launch. When I first fell down this rabbit hole, I spoke to my experience with games like Destiny and The Division and their paltry launches, plus the games released years later that never learned the lessons of their forbears. Rocksteady seems to have known such reception would be devastating for their game and sought to right past wrongs committed by other developers.

Whether or not you agree with the quality of the content within Kill the Justice League, the mission design and structures behind its endgame are the kind of features you would expect from similar games in their second year or after a significant DLC expansion. Repetitive structures like raids, dungeons, and strikes are meant to have a simple flow that can be mastered as players shave seconds off with increasingly better gear. Similar logic applies here as disappointing as it may feel.

With its equipment, Rocksteady implemented a painless way to craft and modify equipment to tailor that piece to a player’s needs. By working through the Support Squad’s missions, new and more useful ways to modify and expand guns become available so that a perfect build doesn’t feel like something up to complete chance. Personally, I feel that those who felt the guns didn’t really matter were either not playing the campaign on its hardest difficulty or didn’t understand the decisions Rocksteady made.

Though I can’t speak for a specific thought process, Kill the Justice League doesn’t want to place harsh barriers in the path of players wishing to experience the story. The removal of gear score indicates Rocksteady’s desire to let the equipment speak for itself and not have progression propped up by an arbitrary number. All equipment outside of Notorious ones and Gear Sets can be leveled up to increase stats like damage, reload speed, and accuracy. Those same guns can have all their modifiers individually adjusted. This is the type of control one would expect after a flood of player complaints and its the kind of feature some games took years to incorporate.

Regardless, Kill the Justice League has a campaign that can be completed with minimal friction and engagement waiting until after credits roll to use the more complex crafting systems. And I think it provides players unfamiliar with the genre the perfect entry point to learning the ropes of games of its type. Once the endgame content is approached, there is a similar introductory process to give players the appropriate feel before working to intertwine all of Kill the Justice League‘s mechanics.

Repetition is quite often the true nature of Live Service endgame content. And while I have referred to Kill the Justice League as a Live Service game frequently throughout this review, it is very much a looter shooter at its core that will introduce hopefully meaningful content to the game every few months. Rocksteady uses a system of “Mastery” levels to define the progressively difficult content that is its endgame Incursions. These Incursions come in a handful of flavors consisting of eliminating enemy control zones, defending Poison Ivy’s affliction-emitting plants, and killing baddies in waves.

The higher players climb in their Mastery levels, more difficulty modifiers become active, hindering progress by providing enemies with more health and better damage and throwing wrinkles in the process. Of course, higher Mastery levels reward with rarer loot and materials. Thankfully, none of these Incursions seem to be as exacting as side missions from the campaign that require players to dispatch enemies with specific rule sets where kills can only come from a singular source like critical hits or grenades. Best yet, an unending wave-based mode acts as another piece of endgame content where players only receive rewards if they extract. Kills add more time to the clock but deaths shave off precious seconds. My first go-round, I made it to Mastery 11 in the horde mode before becoming obviously overwhelmed and I had a blast.

Those who don’t want to leave the confines of Metropolis are still treated to a series of rewards. A special set of refreshing objectives can be completed in the “Raising Hell” playlist that cause an ambush of enemies to rush the player anywhere on the map. This and repeatable contracts provide rewards in the form of experience, currency, equipment, and crafting items. The goal is to fuel players’ ability to perfect guns and also earn points to spend on Kill the Justice League‘s version of a Paragon system that provides permanent boosts to a multitude of stats.

Future Crisis

Most of my time spent with Kill the Justice League was playing solo. Shockingly, my AI teammates never faltered in their ability to activate their own sets of skills, revive me, and kill enemies. Because I didn’t want to involve the conversation of friends or strangers online while trying to enjoy the campaign, this was a wonderful alternative.

Yet Rocksteady has smartly involved friendly competition throughout Kill the Justice League, despite there not being any kind of PvP. Global leaderboards exist to challenge players across the world. Control of the next mission will shift over to the player that performed the best. Beat a friend’s time or score and they will boot up the game and see a taunt from you. Friend not online? You can load up their profile into your Squad and play with their current loadout and even give them some rewards from that session.

Kill the Justice League is flooded with player-friendly decisions that transform it from being another by-the-numbers entry in a tired genre. It may not be the best of its type in terms of story but it absolutely nails player engagement.

As it stands, Rocksteady has given players an admirable dose of content to enjoy in the first month of Kill the Justice League‘s existence. However, it’s quite obvious that an injection of content can’t come soon enough. Not enough praise can be given to Rocksteady’s choice to make all this content free. Yes, the cosmetics are a little on the expensive side. But the Battle Pass will never expire when it comes out! It would be truly awful if Rocksteady backpedals on these decisions, obviously.

What Kill the Justice League needs isn’t necessarily new playable characters weeks after launch. The core four members are incredible as it stands. But the Joker looks like a blast and it feels insane such a significant piece of content is already arriving. What the game really needs, though, is a handful of more modes that transform its endgame past that same handful of activities. An unfortunate truth of Live Service games is that a hardcore group of players will shred through content at an unexpected rate and we are already seeing the results of that. At the time of writing, Rocksteady has already addressed that a burn build is far too viable and a few bugs have allowed players to soar through Mastery levels.

These kinds of issues should be expected and aren’t really a surprise. But I admire the work Rocksteady has put into making Kill the Justice League an exciting proposition for months to come. Whether their goals pan out or not is up to the community and the value of new content in further expanding the high quality of the gameplay. I personally hope that despite my busy gaming schedule, I am able to frequently return to engage with the core loop in enjoyable bursts.

The launch of Kill the Justice League has absolutely been problematic. Not because of the early access launch issues. Not because there’s an obvious ongoing story Rocksteady has yet to tell. Not because players have broken open the game. What seems to have harmed the game the most is an issue of unavoidable perception. Again, this is not a Batman: Arkham game and it never will be. This is a looter shooter, Live Service behemoth anchored with the weight of early story leaks, misuse of events out of Rocksteady’s control, and the idea that Kill the Justice League should be a specific something.

One may ask, “Who is this game for?” And I would merely respond, “For players who enjoy engaging video games.” Throughout my time agonizing over Kill the Justice League and attempting to write a scored review, I’ve only wished to go back and spend a bit more time in Metropolis. I have played numerous games that are structured similarly but none that play the same. Infused with Sunset Overdrive, Crackdown, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Outriders, Batman: Arkham City, Diablo, and more, Kill the Justice League manages to overcome any kind of identity crisis and become a truly unique video game. In no way should its existence spell doom for a developer or a genre. Absolutely there are lessons that can be learned from this game and ways it can be improved.

But more importantly, countless other games strive for this kind of mechanical depth and approachable absurdity. Bad UI? Hell, I gleefully zoomed around skyscrapers watching combo bursts flood my screen and felt a hit of dopamine knowing the kind of chaos I could constantly trigger. The flow state Kill the Justice League provides players who absorb its complexity is second to none. And for that, I must recommend it to anyone who may listen. Ask yourself, do you really want another game where Batman punches and broods his way out of a bad day? Or do you want something different? And yeah, maybe one day we will get that Superman game.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League owes nothing to anyone. It may feel like sandpaper for those expecting something completely different but it contains an expertly designed combat and movement system made by a team that knows how to make super heroes and now, super villains, play. An arguably inconsistent narrative and repetitive mission structure bog down an otherwise exciting, stylish, and humorous campaign. Thankfully, a wealth of player-friendly decisions spell hope for an engaging endgame that will maintain a community somewhere along the Elseworlds.