I gave Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League the benefit of the doubt in my review-in-progress. Initial impressions after four hours promised a good story with snappy writing, endearing characters and fun gameplay. However, my tune has changed a bit after beating the game and doing a handful of endgame grinding. Rocksteady's latest superhero outing is not only a far cry from the Arkham games - its best qualities are constantly at odds with the live service elements that quickly dismantle any potential it has.



Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League takes place in Metropolis which has come under control of Brainiac. With the Justice League now brainwashed under Brainiac, Amanda Waller assembles an unlikely bunch of misfits consisting of Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, King Shark and Deadshot to stop the invasion and put an end to the Justice League who are too far gone at this point.



That premise alone is very compelling and it had me hooked since the game's announcement. We've always played as our favourite superheroes in these games but we've never actually played from the perspective of the bad guys, especially if the heroes we once idolized have now ultimately become the bad guys we have to defeat. For the first few hours, Kill the Justice League shows tremendous promise. The opening is strong and immediately hooks you with the absurdity of the story to unfold. For the most part, the story kept me thoroughly engaged for 10 hours, even though it fumbles its execution.

For the first few hours, Kill the Justice League shows tremendous promise.

The problem with a premise about killing the Justice League is you have to perform a fine moral balancing act for it to work. Sure, the Justice League are being mind-controlled and not acting on their own, but the game never really explores the inner conflict of these heroes. There's one great scene where The Flash has a moment of clarity and snaps out of his mind-control to give Wonder Woman a tragic final message, though that's about it.



It's a bit of a missed opportunity to not at least show the Justice League members wrestling with guilt that's out of their control - Batman and Superman are going around mercilessly slaughtering innocents, but we never get a chance to see it from their true perspectives. Instead, they're treated as one-dimensional "villains" that must be stopped, and the story barrels forward from one super-execution to the next without exploring the Justice League's conflicted mindset. It would've added some much-needed emotional weight to the story and even fleshed out the Suicide Squad's actions. Unfortunately the story doesn't go that far and just stops at the bare premise of "kill the Justice League", which I didn't hate but it felt like the narrative didn't reach its full potential either.

The gameplay tries to do a lot of the heavy-lifting in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League but it's also a mixed bag. You control one of the four squad members who each have their own methods of traversal. Harley uses a grappling hook to zip up rooftops like in Arkham Knight, Deadshot dashes in the air with a jetpack, Captain Boomerang can teleport by throwing his boomerang long distances, and King Shark leaps like the Hulk to cover massive ground. Simply going around and traversing Metropolis is incredibly fun. Despite having a weird "fast travel" mechanic, I never used it once because of how entertaining it was to get around the open-world.



The squad's unique qualities, tragically, stop there as every member uses an assortment of guns and melee weapons in combat. Every member practically plays the same with the exception of small buffs and skills that don't make much of a difference. Say what you will about Marvel's Avengers or Gotham Knights but in those games, at least every character played differently. There's no distinction between Harley Quinn or King Shark once they have a sub-machine gun in their hands, making combat a rather one-note affair.

Say what you will about Marvel's Avengers or Gotham Knights but in those games, at least every character played differently.

Every single mission in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a copy-paste of 3-5 types of missions with similar objectives: defend this point, clear waves of enemies, escort this vehicle, destroy crystals, kill more waves of enemies, etc. The worst part is, this bland mission design somehow sneaks its way into the fabric of the main campaign. Apart from the missions where you kill the Justice League, every mission in the story plays out like this - I'm not joking. It's baffling that this even passed the testing phase. The fun moment-to-moment gameplay might make you forget about it for a while but eventually, you're going to get tired of doing the same objectives over and over again and just beg for something different - even in the short 10-hour campaign.



The bottom line of combat is shooting and to some degree, it does feel great. Weapons are snappy, responsive and satisfying to use, especially those that provide elemental buffs like ice or fire bullets. Because of the lack of variety between the character's playstyles, though, it becomes repetitive and dull rather quickly. It isn't helped by the fact that there's a shocking lack of enemy variety too. Throughout the entire game, you fight only a small handful of purple enemy types. Some are bigger, some are smaller, but you're only ever shooting at them. The game tries to introduce new "types" with tanks or helicopters but all it ever boils down to is "shoot the purple thing." It's not fun after a while.

The looter-shooter aspects of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League aren't satisfying either. Most looted weapons offer only minor modifiers or buffs, some with incrementally better damage output, but again, there's simply no variety here. Guns tend to feel the same, only categorized by the overused "rare/legendary" labels to make you think you're getting something different when in actuality, you're just doing a marginal amount of extra damage with the same weapon types.



The gear system appears to be quite in-depth at first glance, considering how much numbers are constantly being thrown at you on stat sheets. Upon closer inspection, there's nothing really substantial here either. This might sound like standard fare for fans of looter-shooters but even by those standards, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's loot just isn't rewarding enough to justify grinding hours for them.

The end of the story is literally a segue into the live service portion of the endgame and it's an extremely sour note to end on, leaving the narrative feeling empty and unresolved.

Every bit of storytelling potential that the campaign has is squandered by out-of-place live service elements. Like I mentioned before, the mission objectives are all very similar and repeated all the way into the endgame. The end of the story is literally a segue into the live service portion of the endgame and it's an extremely sour note to end on, leaving the narrative feeling empty and unresolved. All of this would be somewhat acceptable if the endgame was well-constructed, but disappointingly, it is not.



Once you complete the campaign, you're thrown into the endgame grind that's more of a chore than fun. Yet again, it's the exact same missions you did in the campaign, just stretched thin across Elseworlds variants of Metropolis. Each timeline is occupied by one of several Brainiac's that you have to kill, but to access these segments of the endgame, you need to constantly build up currency by completing tedious world events back in Earth-1 Metropolis that are - you guessed it - the exact same missions over and over again. If I sound like a broken record, please stop me, but I just want you to get a sense of how tiresome it all really is. It's clear that very little thought went into keeping players invested in post-game activities and I worry that it's simply not enough to sustain its long-lasting live service ambitions.

The visuals are world-class and truly industry-leading by AAA standards. The motion capture work, especially in facial animations, is outstanding.

Where I can give Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League endless amounts of praise is in its presentation. The visuals are world-class and truly industry-leading by AAA standards. The motion capture work, especially in facial animations, is outstanding. Couple that with highly detailed textures and a well-designed Metropolis playground, and you've got one of the best-looking games on current-gen consoles.



The voice acting work is also stellar across the board. Tara Strong is the standout as Harley Quinn but plenty of other performances, including Samoa Joe as King Shark and the late great Kevin Conroy in one of his final performances as Batman, really shine. On a technical level, it runs at a pretty steady framerate which is commendable considering how much visual noise and explosive particle effects are constantly (and I do mean constantly) being thrown on-screen.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a game that's constantly at odds with itself. On one hand, there's actually a decent story to be told here that's sadly not fleshed out enough to be memorable. Had Rocksteady stuck to their guns and went all-in on a stronger single-player story-driven game in the vein of the Arkham games then this could've been something special. However, it's also held back by trying to be a glamorous live service game where it has no place, feeling rather forced and unwelcomed. It's one of the best-looking games I've ever played but even that can't save it from being anything more than a game I only recommend picking up when it's heavily discounted.

*PS5 Review code provided by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment