Four hours into Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, I'm already feeling more confident about the game now than I did before playing it. Following up on the phenomenal Batman: Arkham Knight was always going to be a tall order, so Rocksteady decided to pivot away from that task in favour of making this frenetic, fast-paced looter shooter with a style of its own - a style that not always works but in my experience with the game's story so far, it's been an unexpected blast.



The story of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League starts off very strong. After getting accustomed to each of the four character's traversal and combat capabilities in a short tutorial - you can choose between King Shark, Deadshot, Harley Quinn and Captain Boomerang - you're thrown into a familiar scene. Amanda Waller forces four of society's worst wrongdoers to work together to stop an invasion by Brainiac, who has not only taken Metropolis hostage via giant mechanical ship, but also brainwashed the Justice League into doing his bidding. Thus, the Suicide Squad is formed and sent off to, well, kill the Justice League.



First and foremost, the presentation is outstanding. The visuals are industry-leading and top-notch, character models look fantastic, Metropolis is a well-designed playground with Brainiac's looming colossal ship always watching, and the cutscenes and overall quality of the cinematics are terrific. The sarcastic banter between the Suicide Squad members is also great, managing to get more than a few laughs out of me. Rocksteady understands DC characters well and it shows here in how surprisingly well-written the snappy dialogue is without becoming too annoying.

Four hours into Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, I'm already feeling more confident about the game now than I did before playing it.

The standout so far is Harley Quinn who turns her snark dial up to 11. She steals most scenes but never wrestles for the spotlight because it's perfectly balanced with the rest of the crew. King Shark is literally just Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy, complete with naive remarks that create unintentional comedy gold, giving him a certain charm. Deadshot and Captain Boomerang have yet to really impress, though. The former is straight-faced but occasionally breaks that stoicism with sharp one-liners while the latter really can't shut up, leading to some hit-or-miss dialogue.



The banter between the group is excellent in the cutscenes but during gameplay, it's a bit annoying. Characters are constantly trying to shout over each other and it's overwhelming, especially when it's mostly really cringe-inducing one-liners.

Thankfully, the moment-to-moment gameplay - the part that I was most concerned about - is actually really fun. Synergising each character's mobility with shooting while dashing around the environment is addictive and entertaining, even if it still hurts that all of them just essentially use guns to do the job instead of highlighting each member's unique combat traits.



However, after four hours, it definitely feels like repetition is starting to sink in and it's not because of the combat, but rather the mission structure. Every single main and side mission I've been on so far presents the same rinse-and-repeat objectives: kill waves of enemies, defend this position, kill these tougher enemies, etc. There's very little variety in the regular missions outside of the big staple ones where you kill the Justice League (so far, I've killed one Justice League member which I won't mention, but it was pretty cool). I hope the mission structure gets progressively better but for now, I can see players burning out from that repetitive cycle very quickly.

It definitely feels like repetition is starting to sink in and it's not because of the combat, but rather the mission structure.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been a surprising bit of fun so far. I'll have more to say about the game's gear system, traversal and endgame in my full review, but the story is gripping, the dialogue is fun, the gameplay is punchy, and the visuals are stunning. Sadly, it clearly has an identity crisis going on here. The single-player stuff is strong enough but when you factor in all the unnecessary games as a service elements, it really muddies what could've been a fantastic story-driven superhero game. We'll see how it goes.