'Dawn of microtransactions'.
So we're pretty clearly in the marketing cycle leading to the release of the Suicide game which is everything that Rocksteady fans don't want. I fully expected the team to go deathly quiet and hope to stealth release this bad boy when nobody is watching, but much to my absolute pleasure we seem to be going through the whole nine yards of gameplay reveal meets interview meets endless trailer after trailer until we're so sick of the game we could dig out our eyes and still have the purple hues of Brainiac's ubiquitous hitboxes emblazoned within our minds. That's just the world that Warner Bros. has to reside in, given that they alienated the inbuilt Arkham audience by now- every step from here is a bitter battle to win over the audience from scratch. And in that respect, how they doing?
Not brilliantly off the bat, I must admit. Afterall they are trying to shill out a game genre that has outlived it's welcome, led to the downfall of many games before it and even a dissolved studio or two, and seems diametrically opposed to the context of the game proposed. But then again, if we take the weaknesses of the Superhero genre and the Live Service genre and whittle them out by conjoining the two successfully, then the finished product should be a superior to them both, right? That's some of dat thar Hegelian Dialectics I dun herd about on the rray-dee-o. So if we fool ourselves into believing that half-digested philosophy, then we can delude ourselves as fully as the others who are actually doing their damndest to drum up Suicide Squad Hype. (And they do exist.)
Now let me start off by clarifying exactly what it is that makes me so cross with Suicide Squad. Because we've seen other games slip the way of Live Service tomfoolery and I hardly let it bother me, I just write the game off with prejudice and check back in about 6 months for the inevitable: "we've reached all our goals and that's why we're immediately shutting down, it's not because the game was a financially disaster- it actually makes tons of money, I'd show you my accountant to prove it but she goes to a different school!" I am upset with Kill The Justice League for two clear reasons. Firstly, this is Rocksteady: The guys who brought us the best Superhero games of all time, and who were in the process of a kickass follow-up which would have shot the franchise into the modern age in a way that would have been everything the fans wanted. And secondly, I'm upset because the game looks good.
On a purely cosmetic level, I hasten to add. In that sort of- "wow, they're cute! If only they had a personality to match"- kind of way. Because unlike the many disasterpieces of this year, Rocksteady haven't magically forgotten how to do their jobs. They've made a game that looks gorgeous, with spectacular animations, a fluid looking movement, and an apparently giant landmass. (They really harped on about the size of Metropolis in this trailer. Does that mean it will be open world afterall? Why is it so difficult for the team to just bloody tell us?) Even the cosmetic skins, which are of course being sold as extras because we live in the worst timeline, look fantastic. I didn't think a 3D Old School Harley Quinn could work, and that apparently makes me a fool because they nailed it. It just wish the game felt like it had a little bit more of a soul.
One of the great conceits of Live Service games is what they want to extract out of the player. Most games want the player to extract from it, but Live Services turn that relationship on it's head. Whereas Arkham presents itself as an alluring present begging to be unwrapped by the player, by it's very nature Suicide Squad is an open bear trap hoping to latch around your ankle and force you to be an addict. A Live Service wants to sap away your free time for as long as possible so they can whittle away at your free will until you're drink up their microtransaction soup which in turn justifies the continued construction of the game itself. The only way a Live Service can succeed is by dragging more money out of the player than they expected to spend going in. A deception off the bat. (Guess this game really is for the bad guys!)
The only problem being that a Live Service works best in the framework of a forever game, one in which the player is constantly employed to grind towards some ultimate unattainable end be it that BIS pairing for their gear or some ultra-rare game changing drop. Whereas a Superhero game is a simple power fantasy. There's some level for crossover there, but I struggle to see where they come together neatly. If we start the game as underpowered nerds who need to grind to become powerful, then the game will feel like a slog to start off, but if we start off powerful (as the developers attest we do) then what is the point of designing this like a Live Service, with gear levels and loot rarities and all that, to begin with?
And then there's the shooting. It looks good, again I can't deny that, but it feels wrong, and that might be the bigger deal considering the genre we're messing around with here. King Shark going around lugging a minigun? It's just not right! And sure, there are more personally appropriate finisher animations, and they look great- why can't the gameplay be focused more around them? The unification of playstyles feels like yet another concession made in order to better fit the Live Service angle, whereas instead of trying to come up with various new variations of 'Bat' for Harley Quinn to collect, they can give her new guns instead. Because guns are easy. When the style is giving away it's agency to the gameplay genre, the question of whether or not these forces are congruent should really come into question.
I probably won't be coming around on The Suicide Squad game when it launches, which sucks to say considering the developer we're talking about, who put together some of my favourite games of all time! I want it to be good, and I hope it's successful enough for the team to turn around and use that momentum to make that Batman follow-up; (even if it will be without Kevin in the role) but my gut tells me this isn't going to work out. The same gut feeling which churned when it first saw Forspoken advertised all that time ago, and which nearly burst when the NFT game craze started to infect the industry. That's the gut which says Suicide Squad is going to disappoint. And man do I hope it's just the ol' acids playing up this time. I really do.
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