Live-service games aren’t immune to making a comeback. In fact, many of the most beloved titles in the genre began life as pale examples of what they’d eventually become.
Destinywas an unfinished mess at launch before taking on feedback and dishing out the sequel that saw it draw in millions of dedicated fans, whileSea of Thieveswas equally mid in its early days before turning things around. By listening to criticism, changing approach, and taking their time, games like this can eventually forge a path towards greatness. But in order to do this, they can’t be rotten to the core in the first place.
But I’m not sureSuicide Squad: Kill The Justice Leaguecan be saved after the debut of its underwhelming first season. It’s overpriced, heavily dependent on the grind, and recycles content that even the most hardened of players will have a hard time defending right now.
The Joker Joins The Suicide Squad
In case you missed it, this past week saw the Clown Prince of Crime join the Suicide Squad. Well, an Elseworlds version of the character given he is canonically deceased in the Arkham universe. On the surface, it’s a cool interpretation of the character with a killer design and top-notch abilities, all of which are folded into the way he moves around the world. However, you won’t be unlocking him for a while unless you plan on putting down additional pennies, on a game that you already paid $70 for that could be finished in less than ten hours…
Players are reporting that you need to play through 15-20 familiar missions to unlock Joker, most of which are recycled encounters and objectives from the main game. And once he is actually playable, there are no proper cutscenes or story missions to speak of designed to flesh him out beyond his character design and open world dialogue. Even new incursions available as part of the first proper season appear recycled in some manner, so players are being asked to commit to a grind where the only real rewards are a character with little substance and weapons which make numbers go up and look slightly different.
We Should Have Seen This Coming
Joker is sat in the middle of a 76 tier battle pass, similar to how new heroes inOverwatch 2are introduced either at a certain rank in the free battle pass, or immediately for those of us willing to fork out for the premium offering. This would be irritating in a free-to-play game. In a fully-priced product like this, it’s unforgivable.
Content is being locked behind a time investment where the only other alternative is to spend more money, and even then you will be spending time doing the same missions and objectives with no satisfactory conclusion. There is no reward for earning Joker, no incentive to buy him early. All just endless nothingness.
It seems even the boss fights of this season are reskinned versions from the campaign, so they more than likely won’t ask us to employ any manner of new strategy. Just keep on firing until their health runs low enough and they die. Rinse and repeat until the servers are turned off because nobody is playing the game anymore. Some will begrudgingly stick around for this season with the small hope that what comes next will somehow be better, but I implore you to see the writing on the wall and walk away, so publishers aren’t ignorantly committing to industry trends like this, only designed to nickel and dime us for all our worth.
This sucks because the core experience has potential, it has merely been bludgeoned into a shape that it’s no business trying to accommodate. That much has been clear from the very beginning.
Joker was never going to save Kill The Justice League, but I believe there was a glimmer of promise that his arrival would help steer the game on the right track, or at least distract from the live-service offerings that have doomed Suicide Squad since its reveal. Most of the content that defines this first seasonal update was likely locked in months ago, so it was foolish to expect a significant change, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to hope for more in the future, either. Not anymore.
When other games of this ilk have long made up for similar mistakes, it feels ridiculous that Suicide Squad has come along, carried out these sins worse than anybody else, and simply expects to be treated as the biggest game in the world. That just isn’t going to happen. We called it when the first gameplay trailer was unveiled, calling out Kill The Justice League for giving into the very worst corporate trends instead of allowing Rocksteady to create a thing it could be proud of. Instead, years of work were poured into something that, when all the hard work is put aside, was designed to make money in the worst way possible.
Marvel’s Avengers at least had a memorable campaign to hold up and bring in new people, and had new story missions for each character. Everything about Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League was rigged from
the start. It’s a sad yet necessary lesson in how corporate greed has twisted modern game design into this morbid form that is laughably transparent in how it wants to take hold and never let go, all so it can keep making money years after the fact with little to no reward or respect for players.
Joker was once considered the lifeblood of the Arkhamverse, and his death was viewed as a daring yet necessary narrative decision that pushed the trilogy to new heights. As he returns in this new form, I can’t help but wish for the past or wonder what could have been.
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League
WHERE TO PLAY
An open-world action-adventure from Arkham creators Rocksteady, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League puts you in the roles of the antihero squad. You must take on the aforementioned Justice League, either in solo play or online co-op.
