‘Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’ Delayed Yet Again – Fans Not Pleased
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League needs more time in the oven.
Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League used to be one of the most anticipated games of the year. It’s the studio’s first full-game project since Batman: Arkham Knight in 2015. The game’s plot is 5 years after Arkham Knight ended, Brainiac has invaded the Earth by mind-controlling the Justice League to do his bidding. The story has players controlling the Suicide Squad members Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark, tasked with saving the world by killing the Justice League in Metropolis.
The reason I say it WAS the most anticipated game of 2023 is for a couple of reasons. The biggest reason was just announced by Rocksteady.
Task Force X’s Latest Mission Gets Postponed
Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Twitter page broke the news to everyone that the game has been delayed for a second time from May 26th, 2023 to February 2nd, 2024. This is quite a long time later than anyone could have expected.
— Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League (@suicidesquadRS) April 13, 2023
The AAA DC title ran into a ton of fan backlash after everything was revealed about it at the State of Play back in February. Rumor was going around that the poor reception of the game’s everything made Warner Bros flinch and that they were debating delaying the game to later 2023. This was never confirmed by either Warner Bros or Rocksteady at the time. The reason behind the delay is speculation mostly on if they are working on trying to remove things from the game.
Jason Schreier of Bloomberg reported on his Twitter page that the delay is due to the team needing “polish” the game some more before release. He goes on to explain that it was not due to the backlash in February and a nine-month delay for working on the game’s “polish” could mean any number of things like “performance optimization to balance tweaks to bug fixes to server stability.” None being reworking the entire game since that would need a major overhaul and starting practically from scratch.
via Rocksteady
Backlash Reasons
The game’s presentation at the State of Play in February was incredibly poorly received. Forbes said the game “Looks Like Live Service Hell” and many others just lost all interest in the game. One of the major reasons I personally do not like what I am seeing is that since it is a shooter, everyone has the same guns. The characters have some unique stuff on them like differences in traversal or certain abilities that can be used like a ground pound. These characters really needed to be much different from each other to make using each one more worthwhile.
When you make a game where Captain Boomerang doesn’t really attack all that much with his signature weapon, you have messed up somewhere. Making all the characters feel the same takes away from what makes superhero games great, feeling like you are Batman or Spider-Man when playing. Instead, it’s just another 3rd person shooter in a sea of shooters.
Captain Boomerang? More like Captain Gun
The other huge reason for many is the very fact it is a “live service” game. The Batman Arkham series was great for being story-driven and emphasized great writing and good gameplay. What you bought was mostly what you got outside of a DLC here and there. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is just another Destiny clone where players do missions for loot and wait around for more content once they have grinded all they can get. The developers promised more characters would be released later down the line. The only thing is there wouldn’t really be a reason to add more characters if everyone plays very similarly to each other. If they added someone like Bane or Ratcatcher, it would be hollow since they would just be running around with a gun like everyone else. Not only that, the game’s main story doesn’t sound like one you could extend very easily to justify the addition of more characters like Marvel’s The Avengers.
via Reddit
The last thing is the Battle Pass addition to the game. Battle passes have become the biggest thing studios have used to get more money from a game after launch. It used to be loot boxes until Star Wars Battlefront 2 angered people so much, it killed the loot box. Most games use battle passes as something to unlock special characters, outfits, and more. Fortnite has perfected it well for many since anytime you finish a battle pass, you can get enough in-game currency to buy the next one. Battle passes also tend to be seasonal, which creates a reason why a gamer needs to buy them right then and there.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is being made by Rocksteady, the studio that made Batman Arkham City, and having battle passes shoved into it for costumes just feels wrong. Gamers were hoping for more reasons to play like unlocking the costumes on their own without needing to spend any more money. That might sound naïve with it being a live service game and all. It just highlights though exactly what is wrong with what this game is as.
via PlayStation
People wanted a story-driven game by the studio that made the superhero game genre something to look forward to. Instead, all they are going to get is a game that is exactly everything that Marvel’s The Avengers did wrong too, and none of the good it did.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will release on February 2nd, 2023 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
“So that’s it, huh? We some kind of Suicide Squad?” – Deadshot, Suicide Squad(2016)
