Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a repetitive and bland looter-shooter that, despite an engaging story, never stays fun for long enough.

Rocksteady's first game in nearly a decade can't shake the superhero-as-a-service genre's ubiquitous feeling that it exists to keep players mindlessly engaged.

Rocksteady's talent is so evident in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, it almost overcomes the terrible decision to try and make it.

I'm optimistic about what Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League can become, but let down by what it is now.

"All told, Rocksteady has delivered a dependable, if unspectacular third-person shooter"

Suicide Squad is technically sound, and the action can be fast, frantic, and occasionally fun. The game could be considered a deconstruction and satirizing of the superhero concept. But for me, the whole thing feels mean-spirited, pessimistic, and glib. In other media, I’ve generally liked the irreverence of the Suicide Squad tales, but everything in this game feels less about laughs and more just joyless. I suppose it can be fun to piss all over any sense of genuine heroism in a comic book-inspired tale, but it can’t come as a great shock when some fans like myself just aren’t interested in the bloody and smug results.

This fourth adaptation of DC's least-likely heroes combines an inspired storyline with some very pedestrian combat

Rocksteady's latest is a giddy little action-shooter bogged down by conventional loot-chasing guff

As I approach the end game portion of the game, where we’re supposed to spend many more hours, and tinker with the online experience, which takes away the cool option to switch from one character to another on the go, I fear that the bland and uninspired will eventually overtake the awesome part of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. It’s an extremely funny, well-made, and once-traditional co-op game stuck in a live service cage that makes it sadder and more tiring as time goes on. Will the most demanding content in the game convince players to stick around and actually engage with the ‘numbers go up’ systems? I don’t think so, but I’m not writing it off just yet.

Kill the Justice League is the epitome of, “it gets good X hours in.” It’ll suck at first, then it’ll show you it’s capable of at least some moments of awesomeness. Fans of the DC universe may find a little more value in it, especially if you value narrative over gameplay, but Rocksteady’s latest is simply okay – nothing more or less.