Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leagueis currently down on the floor, gasping for breath, blood spraying from its teeth, so I’m not gonna kick it any further. In fact, I’m going to rack my brain for a nice thing to say about it - the characters all seemed to have well-established and authentic personalities in the cutscenes we’ve seen so far. The most important thing for me personally was thatthe game got Harley Quinn right, and it appears to have done that. So, good job. But I won’t lie, the latest trailer did not make it look good, and pretty much everyone agreed. So much so thatthe game has reportedly been delayed into late 2023(as recently as two weeks ago the PlayStation showcase emphasised the May 26 release date) andcould even be bumped to 2024. But there’s just no fixing it. Suicide Squad is what it is.
One thing to stress is that I haven’t played Kill the Justice League - no one in the media has played it. We’re basing this off the clips we’ve seen, not from personal experience. But then, we’ve all played enough video games to spot a good one from a bad one, and this sure looks like a bad one. The only question is how didRocksteadynot know this? The developers at Rocksteady have all played a ton of video games too - and unlike us, they’ve made them too. In the case of those who were around when the studio made the Arkham trilogy, they haven’t just made any old video games, they’ve already made what many hold as the pinnacle of the genre.Surely they knew as well as we did that this didn’t look good?
Related:Always Online Single-Player Games Are Anti-Player And Anti-Preservation
Okay, I said I wouldn’t kick them any more. I understand how all this has happened. Video games take too long to make these days, and as a result, it’s hard to make a game that you know the audience is going to eat up. Back when online-play heralded a more advanced, co-operative future and live-service RPG elements with13.6 percent better ballistic damage against Batman-infused enemiessounded exciting, a game like Suicide Squad made sense. Right now, in the years it has taken from roots to become fruits, it no longer does. IfAnthemheralded the beginning of the end, the quick one-two punch ofMarvel’s AvengersandGotham Knightsconfirmed the end of the end. Suicide Squad is a ghost, a spectre of their deaths to haunt our consoles.
Suicide Squad might well be the best of those three, but as the nextlive-service numbies go upsuperhero game obsessed with gradual upgrades instead of the comic book power fantasy, it is doomed to indifference after we’ve been burned before. But again, no kicking. That last punt was the end, I promise. The bigger point here is that Suicide Squad will always be Suicide Squad. Would it be cooler if it was a single player Harley Quinn game where you unlock a series of increasingly silly and violent weapons to take down your superpowered foes? Sure. But that’s not what it is. It’s a game where you give Captain Boomerang and King Shark machine guns with constant minor upgrades that give 12.5 percent faster reload speed.
That’s what the game is. No getting away from it. It took Rocksteady years to make it, and a few months' delay won’t help the studio unmake it. The time for this kind of game has passed already, but it’s finished, the schedule of releases is pretty open, and the characters seem solid. That’s your lot. Delaying it for a few months so it’s competing withSpider-Man 2is stupid, and delaying it further than that turns it into an expensive laughing stock likeSkull & Bones. No, the reception is not what you hoped for, but a delay only makes it worse, and you can’t fix that. The foundation is made of sand. At least let us make our own fun and build sandcastles. The delay is only a report at this stage, albeit a fairly solid one a few reliable sources have corroborated. I hopeWarner Bros.changes its mind, because the game will always be slightly out of time. Delaying it only makes that problem worse.
