Some have almost forgotten it, but Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League, the new game from Rocksteady studios, will be released on February 2, which marks its big return after 9 years of absence. Almost a decade where the studio has not released a new game. Officially announced in 2020, this Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League has experienced many development difficulties and has even had a series of postponements, undoubtedly necessary, but which will visibly not be not enough to save a game whose destiny already seems sealed. It must be said that since last year’s State of Play, in February 2023, players have taken a cold shower and the hype around the game has completely disappeared. Recently, certain media and videographers were invited to Rocksteady in London, just before the Christmas holidays to play the almost final version of the title and a few days ago, the previews were published. Feedback on the game is mixed, even worrying for certain journalists who fear the worst for a game that is taking a direction that is little appreciated by players. Besides, the last time that all the press agreed on the announced failure of a game, it was Forspoken and it didn’t fail. Is Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League taking the same trajectory? The question needs to be asked. But how did we get there? How did a studio of Rocksteady fame end up with such a shaky project? According to some loosened tongues, there is only one person responsible, namely Warner Bros Games, who would have pushed Rocksteady to rekindle interest around the Suicide Squad license. Still it was rumored that all the studio wanted to do after the Batman Arkham trilogy was a Superman game. A game that was refused and canceled by Warner.
VISUALLY MESSY
Recent previews have revealed new images from Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League, the final version that the press and guest videographers were able to capture themselves. Very quickly, these images began to circulate on social networks, revealing a real visual mess. It’s true that it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a user interface so loaded with static and contextual elements. At the very point where the game becomes unreadable, borderline messy. Already basic, the game without HUD which had been presented during online events was already packed with visual elements. Between the special effects, the explosions, the density of the map and the buildings and these explosions of colors in all directions, it was already quite eye-catching, but with this interface which has been added, we might as well tell you that the overload is total! It’s hard to say that at Rocksteady, no voice has stood up against such an unwelcome interface, capable of ruining the player’s immersion, not to mention in the heat of the action, with the added bonus of these characters jumping into everything the senses, difficult for the player to focus on the textual elements. Coming from a studio that produced the Batman Arkham games, it’s quite disappointing and even incomprehensible when we know that these games focused on sobriety.
THE SERVICE GAME NOBODY WANTS
But where Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League worries the press and especially the players more, it is in its format, confirmed during recent previews. We already knew it more or less and it is now confirmed, it will indeed be a service game, a bit like Marvel’s Avengers, another game which has radically failed elsewhere. So of course, there are Game As a Service games that have managed to establish themselves in the video game landscape like Fortnite, GTA Online, Rainbow Six Siege, APEX Legends, Destiny 2, etc. But if these games are real global and long-term successes, how many others have failed? Even Destiny 2 is in decline, and the various layoffs within Bungie are proof that the format has its limits. For the moment, we do not know if the general public will respond to Suicide Squad, but for the moment, the lights are red. Already because superhero fatigue does not only affect cinema, and it has also spread to video games; to a lesser extent certainly, because we saw how the last Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was a huge success, but also because the latter corresponds perfectly to the target it is aimed at. This is a purely single-player game on one console, the PS5, whose specialty is delivering narrative single-player experiences.
FROM SUPERMAN TO SUICIDE SQUAD
For Suicide Squad, it’s more complex than that, and it’s even a big problem in 2024 for several reasons. The first is that the general public was not expecting the Rocksteady studio in this regard. Author and creator of the formidable Batman Arkham trilogy, which quite simply revolutionized licensed superhero gaming, these games also introduced the free-flow combat system, used in numerous games such as Sleeping Dogs, Shadow of Mordor or more recently the Spider-Man games. And quite frankly, how long have people been asking for the return of a Batman game with this quality of storytelling, gameplay but also in terms of graphics? Quite simply for almost 10 years, since 2015, the year of release of the last Batman Arkham Knight. So yes, there was Gotham Knights released at the end of 2022, but not only did the game hardly shine in its gameplay, but in addition, it was developed by the Warner Bros Montreal studio, the B team of Rocksteady, so to speak. . And then, let’s face it, who wanted to play with Robin, Batgirl, Nightwing and Red Hood, knowing that Batman was announced as dead in the main story? And it’s generally the same feeling for Suicide Squad. Is the general public really hyped by a game that allows us to play secondary characters such as Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, King Shark and Harley Quinn?
This lack of interest in these characters among the general public has already been reflected in the cinema, notably after the failure of David Ayer’s Suicide Squad in 2016. So of course, commercially, the film exploded at the box office , but artistically, the first Suicide Squad was a total blast, to the point that friction between Warner and the director still remains today, in 2024. And from what is said in well-informed circles, the culprit is none other that Warner who pushed hard to try to save the license, and consequently the DCU which needed new characters to exist. To do this, the company did not hesitate to take out the checkbook to try to make this Suicide Squad interesting to the general public. In the cinema, Warner went to look for director James Gunn who was coming off a drama with Disney, he who had been ejected from the MCU following 10-year-old tweets which had been unearthed, while in the video game, he was asked Rocksteady to work on a title that would feature this famous Suicide Squad. Unfortunately, by then, Rocksteady had already started work on their new project, a single-player narrative Superman game with big ambitions. It must be said that to date, no one has succeeded in making a real Superman game with today’s technical means. Rocksteady had its ambitions, but the studio was stopped dead in its tracks. Artworks dated 2015 appeared on the internet in 2018, but fairly quickly, Rocksteady silenced these rumors.
MASS HAS BEEN SAID ?
Totally founded rumors, we can tell you today, and which we had already mentioned in 2020 during one of our shows “5 News & Rumors per day” following comments that a former developer had made to us entrusted. According to this person close to the development, Rocksteady did not want this Suicide Squad and yes, the studio had already started working on a Superman game. It is also no coincidence that the character of Superman makes characters to be defeated in the game, and why the latter offers such vertical gameplay. Because yes, basically, the point of view was aerial, if we played Superman. So yes, in this Suicide Squad, there are still bits of the Superman game that Rocksteady wanted to make.
To date, we have not had the opportunity to play the game, so it is impossible to give you our feelings, but the general opinion of the people who were able to do a half-day hands-on on Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League is not very convincing. There are certainly good ideas, but the game seems to offer a structure that is still quite vague, with missions that are not very interesting, quite redundant, characters whose writing is a little too “Marvelized”, with unwelcome jokes and this universe so colorful that it hurts the eyes. In short, people are crossing their fingers for a nice surprise within a month. See you on February 2 to find out for sure…