SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE
THEY’RE BAD GUYS. IT’S WHAT THEY DO. (UNFORTUNATELY)
★★ PC, PS5, XBOX SERIES X/S
THE IDEA OF the Suicide Squad, DC’S cadre of scrappy supervillains — which include among their number a clown, a fish, a gun fetishist, and a loudmouth Aussie with trick boomerangs — stepping up when the real heroes are taken off the board could make for a great game. Unfortunately, Kill The Justice League is not it. Coming from the prestigious Rocksteady Studios, developer of the much-loved Batman: Arkham games, and building on the continuity of that series — interplanetary conqueror Brainiac taking over Superman’s home turf of Metropolis and brainwashing the Justice League — it very much should be. But in shifting from story-driven singleplayer adventures to a loot-chasing, multiplayerfocused model, it drowns in mediocrity.
Suicide Squad struggles on two main fronts: shooting and movement through levels. Unfortunately, it also wants to be built on these. The core concept is appealing: speeding through the city, pouncing on Brainiac’s forces, and blasting them into oblivion. Yet in practice, distinct movement styles for each of the four reluctant protagonists — Harley Quinn, King Shark, Deadshot and Captain Boomerang — end up feeling muddled and inconsistent. For instance, Harley’s stolen Bat-grapple, allowing her to swing from a Bat-drone overhead, lacks any sense of momentum, while Deadshot’s jetpack struggles with range and precision. Nothing clicks.
Gunplay, meanwhile, feels overly similar between the four, despite a vast assortment of firearms. But the arsenal itself is another problem — countless variations with head-spinning statistics are meant to incentivise repeated play, but no matter what you equip, combat feels formulaic; generic shootouts that could be taking place in Destiny as easily as the DC Universe.
That’s the core problem — the pursuit of an ongoing multiplayer experience, where players can drop into missions and control other Squad members, necessitates a degree of repetition across the team. Would Hulk-like King Shark even be lugging a minigun around if the game didn’t need each character to fit into a multiplayer shooter mould? Probably not.
What’s especially frustrating with Suicide Squad is that glimmers of potential are still apparent. Rocksteady’s visual polish is undeniable, and the voice cast — including Tara Strong as Harley Quinn and Jason Isaacs as Brainiac — all impress with strong performances. The writing as a whole is better than the game deserves, balancing dark humour with high stakes and plenty of pathos. A compilation of the game’s cutscenes might even make for a compelling DC Elseworlds movie — but having to shear off the actual game to find what’s good here is damning.
VERDICT A strong concept centred on dirtbag anti-heroes should make this a delight, but banal mechanics and repetitive loot-grinding rob it of anything approaching greatness.