Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League Is Haunted By The Past
Everything you need to know about the biggest comic book shooter of the year and a quick catch-up on other news
You might not remember just how fawning the original reception was to Rocksteady Studio's trilogy-capping Batman: Arkham Knight when it arrived in 2015. There was a breathless quality to the high-praise (parodied here) as if the cinematic metroidvania brawler wasn't just a great comic book game, but possibly the apex of what any game, or at least a very popular type of action sandbox game, might ever hope to accomplish.
If making you feel like a superhero is what big-budget games are best at, then Arkham Knight was surely the best one of those, its genre mashup elevated by incredible voice acting, clever design, and an immersive, brooding atmosphere. Even if Arkham Knight didn't transform those who played it, it certainly transformed what felt possible, and what fans expected, from the blockbuster gaming space. Suicide Squad, based on my first four hours with it, doesn't do that. It's not a bad game. In many ways it's quite a fun one. And Rocksteady's top-tier writing, art, and cinematic presentation are all still present in the storytelling, most of the time. But it's hard not to play it and be slowly overwhelmed by the sinking feeling that it's just another one of those.
You spend much of your time in Sucide Squad dashing down streets and bouncing across rooftops in the ruins of a Metropolis occupied by the Kryptonian artificial intelligence Brainiac. He's mutated much of the populace to serve as a vague army of gray, blue, and purple space golems to be mercilessly hacked through by the titular squad of villains conscripted by a shadowy branch of Homeland Security to kill a brainwashed Justice League. The banter is funny, the city looks spectacular, and the action takes bold chances with a mix of city block-bonding traversal techniques and gun fu shooting. In many ways it feels like playing a Saturday morning Justice League cartoon.
At least for now though, I'm not sure any of it quite comes together as seamlessly as the Arkahm trilogy's blend of rhythm-based combat, environmental puzzles, and gadget-fueled sandbox exploration. Most of my time playing Suicidie Squad so far has revolved around looking for a rooftop of Braniac's zombies, and juggling guns, melee attacks, and special abilities to quickly dispatch them, and then zooming off to the next objective. It's a flow instantly familiar to me as a longtime Destiny 2 player, and one I don't find unpleasant as a smooth-brain gamer content to grind through repetitive mission objectives in the service of upgrading my arsenal.
But it doesn't feel new, or revelatory, or substantively rewarding outside the confines of the specific story Suicide Squad is telling, which is to say that I'm not sure I have any interest in doing it once I've finished the main campaign. And if I don't have any interest in grinding through more mobs in more missions in the post-game, then what was the point of potentially watering down the base-game's mission design and enemy encounters into an infinitely remixable and repeatable mush so that I eventually spending tons of money on buying in-game costumes with real world money to impress all of my other equally fanatical Suicide Squad-playing friends?
The game takes an over-the-shoulder perspective that feels very zoomed out to accommodate all of the skyscraper leaping, which often makes it hard to feel the impact of your actions or feel intimately engaged with the mobs of enemies you’re stomping. Suicide Squad can also feel a bit floaty, with no real sense of momentum the second your traversal abilities cooldown. The gear and skill trees are a lot like Borderlands, which is to say more geared around numbers-based build-crafting than unlocking abilities or playstyles that will actually look or feel different from what you were doing previously. There are shades of the complimentary teamwork from a class-based hero shooter, though nothing outside of the boss battles seems to necessarily encourage tight coordination.
I have no real insight into the game's internal development at Rocksteady Studios or why it took so long. All I can do is speculate that, in addition to the ballooning budgets, straining economics, and traditional trend-chasing that plagues every other big-budget game production, Suicide Squad may have also had the extra misfortune of being born to a parent company notoriously obsessed with and uniquely bad at manufacturing new franchises (Warner Bros.).
In the seven years it took to make Suicide Squad we've had two wildly different Suicide Squad movies, two wildley different cuts of a Justice League movie, and the complete implosion and reboot of a $2 billion extended DC cinematic universe. We've also jumped to a new console generation and seen the rise and fall of the live service gaming model. Playing Suicide Squad in 2024, it's hard to believe it's the same game Rocksteady would have made again if it could start over from scratch (which is certainly not how it felt playing Arkham Knight). I hope the rest of the game proves that wrong.
Everything else going on in and around Suicide Squad this week
Rocksteady is giving players who purchased the $100 Deluxe Edition to get early access to the game an additional $20 of in-game cosmetics for servers being down on the very first day (via VGC), because why partially refund players when you can give them virtual t-shirts for Captain Boomerang instead?
Also, while the Deluxe Edition gives players lots of added in-game goodies, it still costs a lot more to unlock some of the other stuff in the microtransaction shop at the moment. For example, buying the $100 version of the game gets you Harley Quinn's retro costume, but it will still cost you an additional $40 to complete her classic bundle.
Major story spoilers for Suicide Squad are everywhere. The most controversial one has to do with Batman, voiced by Kevin Conroy, beloved actor from the '90s Batman: The Animated Series, who died in 2022 from cancer. A certain contingent of Rocksteady/Arkham/DC fan is very angry about the tone, delivery, and context surrounding a scene in which the Suicide Squad confronts the Caped Crusader. I haven't gotten there in the game myself yet, but the backlash seems pretty clearly to be a stand-in for fans' larger disappointment that Rocksteady released this game (which takes place in the Arkham universe) and not another one starring Batman. "We gotta stop using Kevin’s grave as a soap box to bash or blow this fucking game," wrote on player on the subreddit.
Suicide Squad was thought to be Conroy's last performance, but there's actually one final DC animated movie that will include lines voiced by him, IGN reports. Weirdly, it looks like IGN may have used an AI-generated Batman image for the story.
But it's not just Conroy, a certain type of DC fan is really pissed about how all of the Justice League heroes are irreverently treated in Suicide Squad, including, ah, one of them literally pissing on the Flash.
Cyberpunk 2077 and a bunch of other games just received updates
Cyberpunk 2077 patch 2.11 fixes a bunch of bugs, including nerfing car chases within car chases. "Adjusted car chases so that they're not too frequent and don't overlap," CD Projekt writes, and "Tire track marks will now match the actual contact patch of the tire."
Alan Wake 2 patch 1.15 adds a chapter select option to replay any mission any time. Also bug fixes. My favorite: "Fixed the vegetation not always reacting to explosions in a cool way."
Halo Infinite Content Update 29 brings Operation: Spirit of Fire rewards including the classic Mark IV Armor Core, a new map called Illusion, swappable shoulder pads, and new Forge features. The game jumped to number nine on the Steam top sellers list yesterday.
Fallout 76 update version 1.7.9.7 seems to have really messed up PC performance for some players and increased the frequency of crashes on PS5. But it did fix a bunch of other things. Slot machines won't give players "Perfectly Preserved Pies more often than intended," eating birthday cake now counts as eating cake for the daily challenge, and players will finally instantly die if they jump into the Toxic Vat in The Pitt.
EA Sports FC (FIFA 24) Title Update 8 will stop managers from wandering outside their technical area during matches. It does not fix the game's myriad other issues, which are tracked in a very not fun Trello board. Nevertheless, EA reported the game brought in 7% more revenue than this time last year.
Eastward's Octopia DLC is out now and it transforms the gorgeous retro RPG into a chill life sim for only $6. Here's the trailer.
Destiny 2 loses its game director
Bungie's Joe Blackburn, who's been helming the popular sci-fi loot shooter since 2020, is a veteran of the studio from the Halo multiplayer days. He led design on many of Destiny's most storied raids, and was beloved by players for his frank, direct conversations with the community about the game's successes and failures. He announced yesterday that he's leaving the studio again after wrapping up work on The Final Shape. Bungie veteran Tyson Green will take his spot. Destiny fans are taking the news as well as you'd expect.
Blackburn's departure comes at a pivotal moment for the 10-year live service game after a badly received expansion last year, a brutal round of layoffs, reports of missing revenue, and the threat of a complete takeover by Sony, which bought Bungie in 2022, at the management level. The studio hasn't said whether the game will still get yearly expansions, or what's next after the current decade-long story arc wraps up.
On the same day, Bungie revealed a Mass Effect crossover bringing N7 armor to Destiny's Guardians. It looks cool but it continues the dilution of the game's own lore and universe, with some players worrying Destiny will continue spiraling into a heavily branded Ready Player One experience a la Fortnite. I recently revisited the first game to get the platinum trophy on PlayStation and it really does hit different. Whether I miss that version of the game more, or just my life while playing it, well that's another question. I suspect it's both. "It's just sad that like, this is the end state of all live games now," tweeted game designer Nat Clayton. "People just want everything crammed into everything."
Spec Ops: The Line disappears
If you were following games in the early 2010s, Spec Ops made huge ripples with its subversive take on the Call of Duty shooter campaign, shifting perspectives and implicating the player in its geopolitical carnage. Now it's gone from storefronts. The game was recently removed from Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and other digital retailers. Players who already owned it can still download Spec Ops but it's no longer for sale, with a 2K rep blaming "several [expired] partnership licenses." The game included Jimi Hendrix music, for example.
"Devastating personally, but also for those who poured their souls into its creation alongside me as developers, and for the gaming community at large. This is not the end for Spec Ops: The Line," tweeted Cory Davis, the game's director. "As the international community have recently decided that it’s fine to use white phosphorous on civilians this game no longer makes sense and it has been delisted as a result I guess," tweeted Skull Girls design lead Mathew Kumar.
Persona 3 Reload reviews I enjoyed:
Revisiting this story in 2024 through the lens of Persona 3 Reload put a lot of things into perspective. In too brief a period of time, I experienced what it’s like to lose the people you hold dearest and see those loved ones pass with dreams unfulfilled. I’ve also faced my own mortality with health conditions brought on by simply drawing the short straw when I was born. Persona 3 has taken on an entirely new meaning for me, even as the story remains the same. When I see these characters express their pain after loss, I don’t necessarily feel an intense sadness, but rather a certain empathy and understanding I just didn’t have before. When they question their purpose in life and search for meaning in the face of impending doom, I’m no longer shocked, but instead confident they can work through it and make the most of the hand they’re dealt.
Diego Nicolás Argüello, Polygon
In recent years, Atlus seems determined to remove a large part of the character from the series in its obsessive pursuit to capitalize on Persona 5. The success of the fifth entry is well regarded, but its popularity has resulted in a tidal wave, retroactively rippling through its lineage with mixed results. Regardless of how many refinements are made, the fatigue of Persona 5-likes is starting to set in. It’s unfortunate that Persona 3 is being brought to the spotlight under these new standardized criteria — after all these years, it’s becoming just another sheep in the herd.
It’s a strange choice, as re-releases and remakes often strive to be the definitive version of the experience. Persona 3 was already a game where you could argue for hours about exactly which version one should play; with Reload, a third contender has been added to the mix. It’s neither a disaster nor definitive - but it is the slickest, coolest, and most modern-feeling way to play this great game, which is most welcome. In a sense, it’s perhaps best to think of Persona 3 Reload as one of the best and most lavish ‘HD Remasters’ of all time. By its very nature this game isn’t as slick or as showy as Persona 5 (one of the best RPGs of all time), and it features the old randomly generated corridor-like dungeons and slightly more stilted turn-based battles that were fine back in 2006 but were refined hugely by subsequent Persona titles.
One good post:
