Summary

• Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League is a visually stunning game with great character designs and voice acting.
• The gameplay falls short, with repetitive combat and disappointing boss battles against mind-controlled Justice League .
• The city of Metropolis lacks the depth and interactive elements of Rocksteady's previous games and the AI-controlled squad can be ineffective.

WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS REGUARDING SS: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE'S BOSSESSuicide Squad: Kill The Justice League may be a stylish co-op action game with great characters, but too many missed opportunities with its gameplay make it another installment in the oversaturated class-based multiplayer shooter genre. Great games based on DC properties have been surprisingly lacking since Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham Knight was released in 2015. While Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League's attempt to adapt Rocksteady's brand of exciting comic action to the co-op shooter genre has fun moments, its combat fails to hit as hard.

Five years after the ending of Batman: Arkham Knight, the world is devastated by an alien invasion led by Brainiac. Much of the population is lost while Batman, Superman, and other of the Justice League have been corrupted. However, Amanda Waller and her newly assembled Suicide Squad have arrived in Metropolis to save the day. Players will take control of DC villains Harley Quinn, Deadshot, King Shark, and Captain Boomerang in a story that isn't afraid to kill off beloved characters in underwhelming ways.

Rocksteady's Artists Are The Real Heroes

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League is a beautiful game filled with exquisite art and designs for a lot of DC characters who've never looked better. The game's playable cast and the voices that portray them effectively add charm and humor that hits more often than not. Debra Wilson's Amanda Waller is a standout in a story that sees the character's greatest fears and paranoia fully realized.

Kevin Conroy's final performance as the brainwashed Batman is another major highlight of SS: KTJL's cast. Throughout much of the game, Batman can be heard talking trash about the squad and the generic hordes of enemies that fail to defeat the player's characters. A few Batman-centric missions will delight fans of the Arkham games with creative references like finding bat-shaped plastic explosives. However, the game's portrayal of DC's beloved heroes, even if they are mind-controlled, is also one of the game's most disappointing aspects.

There is an incredibly touching tribute to Kevin Connroy and his iconic portrayal of Batman narrated by Lois Lane's voice actress after the credits of Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.

Several aspects of SS: KTJL's writing, like the banter between the cast and bits of lore shared through Lois Lane's panicked live-streams, are engaging and effectively help build its characters and the sense of dread the remnants of humanity share. Still, as the story progresses, the disappointing cracks in the writing begin to grow. The game introduces the Arkham-verses Justice League but spends little-to-no time getting to know these new incarnations before or after they become Brainac's lackeys. That lack of character writing is reflected in the game's boss battles, which devolve with each fight.

Player's can complete the game single-player or with cooperative online multiplayer with up to 4 players. An offline mode for Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League is currently in development.

Killing the Justice League Feels Mundane When It Should Be Super

As soon as Rocksteady announced that its follow-up to the Arkham series would be a game about killing the Justice League, one of the biggest mysteries that entered players' minds was how they'd kill god-like characters like The Flash and Superman. Without spoiling too much, the answer is incredibly disappointing: you shoot them a lot. Instead of employing creative and unique tactics for each battle against beloved characters turned evil, story missions eventually enable all of the player's guns to damage previously unstoppable Justice League . Boss battles against some of history's most legendary characters feel like generic fights that mirror countless other games.

While Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League's attempt to adapt Rocksteady's brand of exciting comic action to the co-op shooter genre has fun moments, its combat fails to hit as hard.

Watching the Justice League getting unceremoniously dispatched is as disappointing as it is to fight them. Superman is barely in the game, which is a real shame as he seems like the foe that the Suicide Squad should be powering up to defeat. It would have been much more enjoyable if each defeated JL member gave players a unique item or ability that, when used together, proved necessary in SS: KTJL's final battles. Instead, each boss is a bullet sponge that unleashes only a few different attacks from the famous character's large arsenal of well-known abilities.

Metropolis Is A City That May Put Some To Sleep

Rocksteady's previous Batman games did many things right, like including rewarding gameplay that increased in features and difficulty as players progressed through the mysterious story. Unfortunately, a lot of the tension and satisfaction that helped make those games so memorable is lacking from Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. Shooting at consistently respawning hordes of Brainiac's converted creatures quickly loses its luster. Thankfully, players can switch between squad (while not in a mission), and each character has unique abilities that make traversing the city one of the game's most exciting features.

The city of Metropolis is a bright and optimistic setting compared to the iconic Gotham City that Rocksteady previously created. Despite impressive weather effects and the occasional Riddler challenge, Superman's hometown feels less interactive and bare than Gotham. There are occasional Easter eggs hidden throughout the city for DC fans to find, but there is a lack of memorable locations that Rocksteady could have added for more connections to the game's cast, bosses, and the universe's vast array of characters.

Colorful Combat That's More Flash Than Substance

Slowly-paced Skills Trees unlock unique perks and attacks for each character, but even the unique attacks yield the same results; Suicide Strikes that damage one particular enemy or traversal attacks that damage many enemies in a small area feel very similar. When not playing with friends, other squad controlled by AI will only sometimes use the weapons and abilities that have been unlocked, and other times, they will stand around doing nothing. There is also no feature allowing players to give orders to U-controlled teammates. This feature would have helped set up ambushes or coordinated special attacks.

The nearly half dozen types of side quests in SS: KTLJ generally revolve around protecting a specific point from waves of enemies. The three primary types of foes - grunts, snipers, and brute-like enemies - spawn during missions and can be found patrolling Metropolis' open world. Brainiac attempts to add some variation by giving foes abilities from slain Justice League , but it does little to add meaningful variation to help prevent gameplay from growing stale.

Completing missions and side quests can earn weapons, shields, and augments. However, most Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League weapons are effective against all foes and do little to differentiate them from one another, so there is not much incentive to grind for new gear beyond what weapons missions provide. Like other popular cooperative shooters, SS: KTJL provides a home base where players can craft and alter weapons thanks to The Penguin, imbue weapons with elemental damage, and more. However, the monotonous enemy encounters throughout Metropolis may need to be more appealing to fight after players complete the 12-hour main story.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

3/5

SS: KTJL is not a live service game, but it has enough of the features associated with the genre to be confused for one. Endgame activities promise to add more difficult missions, more effective weapons, and additional playable characters, with a version of the Joker coming in a free update in March. Brainiac is still at large, and a proper ending to the story will likely arrive after a series of seasonal updates. However, when players reach the game's currently disted ending, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League's stale gameplay loop may fail to keep them from wanting to participate.

A PlayStation 5 Review Code for Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League was provided to Screen Rant for the purposes of this review.