So I think it's safe to say that Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League hasn't exactly had the smoothest of possible launches ever. In fact, some might even go so far as to call the game's release something of a tragedy that betrayed everything fans were looking for out of Rocksteady, innovators of third person action combat, which a generic and uninspired looter-shooter that ignored the strengths of the team and the IP they had been given. Sure, there have been some people who gravitated towards Suicide Squad despite it's lack of originality, I presume it's hard to shoot for creativity when you are a fan of a genre distinguished by everyone trying to copy each other as much as possible- but for the large part Suicide Squad has slipped past it's place in pop culture far too quickly for the anticipation everyone had placed on the game. Or the investment that went in to bringing it to life.
For most the game was dead on arrival, portraying not an ounce of potential that could be worked on later to make the game that people longed for. (Were people longing for a Suicide Squad game? I certainly wasn't.) But as it's always been said when it comes to Live Services- 'You need to wait until the content starts dropping'! Personally I always think this to be a redundant argument, as if the game cannot drop in a satisfying state why would we expect the following updates to suddenly raise the bar to a worthwhile degree? There's no way the team are going to magic up a masterpiece from their basement- now are they? But be that as it may; the rest of the world were willing to chalk the coming season up as Suicide Squad's last chance to impress. And I sighed knowing the cycle- the first content drop would be marginally interesting, people would thus attach themselves to the release cycle eager for a total one eighty that would never come because the team is slowly shrinking as Rocksteady reclaim their talent to work on the next proper game, and disappointment ensues over the course of the next years.
Maybe Rocksteady saw that writing on the wall too, because rather than follow that tried and true method of disgrace- they speedran directly to the destination and decided to just push Season 1 out the door as a tried and true disaster. I gawked in genuine disbelief when I learned the absolute state of Joker's debut into the Suicide Squad, not just for it's laziness but for the inability for literally anyone with their head on straight to speak to it's defence. Not even Paul Tassi, defender of Live Services the world over, could swallow his convictions long enough to give Suicide Squad the benefit of the doubt after season 1. Not even the most staunch Youtube defence squad for the game could stomach the embarrassment. Rocksteady told every well and truly, they did not give a crap about supporting this game.
Firstly, Season 1 obviously told the story of beating the next Brainiac- although 'story' might be a strong turn of phrase. Turns out that Rocksteady grew out of love with presenting the 'story' of Suicide Squad and preferred to have the next arc of their story told entirely through repetitive side content culminating in another recycled boss fight from the main game. Essentially the team developed nothing new at all for the gameplay. No new enemies, no new bosses, nothing. All we had was the new Joker to play around with, because of course this franchise couldn't go more than 2 months without caving and going for the most obvious Suicide Squad member addition first. (Good luck getting people excited for the future when you blew your load out the gate.) But that was not the end of any troubles.
The fact that Mark Hamill retired his Joker just as Kevin Conroy died means that we have to deal with a new interpretation of the Joker from an actor who took an... less than iconic direction with him. The Joker is a very difficult character to play, many have tried and many have flopped trying to mix and match here and there- the actor here unfortunately ended up in the list of failures. Particularly given that technically, even though this is a multiversal variant, this Joker ended up in the Arkham verse- which basically means the Joker can be compared directly to this- Jonkler. Of course, his writing also leaves much to be desired- the team had a whole one cutscene to flesh out this character and decided to go with 'unpredictable' which is the lowest form of character writing. They didn't even let him chat with Harley Quinn. It's shameful.
Of course, that one cutscene is only rewarded for those that grind up to level 35 'Fear' on all characters in order to unlock the Brainiac fight- in a levelling pool that was designed specially for this season. That proceeding 9 hour grind, of recycled content from the main game, before a boss fight, which is recycled from the main game, in order to unlock a character who, let's be honest, was probably developed along with the core game and gated off surreptitiously. Essentially making it so that by the time you've unlocked the Jonkler, you've run out of content to use him on because you've bored yourself silly playing the same crap for the past 10 hours. Oh, unless you fork up an additional 10 dollars to unlock him off the bat, because yes- they offer a 'time saver' pack on top of their $70 game. The absolute sweethearts. I remember feeling confused leading up to launch how the team would handle reshooting all the scenes for the game with drop-in replacement Squad members added every 100 days. Now I know- I was a fool to expert that in the first place! These idiots will be lucky to get screentime let alone be integrated into the core story paths! When you have to go to these extremes to pad out what little content there is, no one is going above and beyond to remake a bunch of cutscenes no one is watching.
Beyond that the team threw in some extra skins, a few new weapon series' based on even more DC heroes and villains- one that actually has a gun this time! And that is... it? It almost makes you shiver to think this is a release from Rocksteady games, like you're feeling the veil of the Rocksteady that was passing over the grave of the Rocksteady that is. When all the cards were on the table and all eyes were on them, Rocksteady made a legitimate shot for the weakest Live Service support effort ever put out across the Industry. I'm wracking my mind here- I really am- but I can't think of anyone who achieved so pathetically little! Diablo 4 at least did the bare minimum to be considered acceptable in it's first season, Fallout 76 took a while but they dropped focused content packets in various areas of the game- Suicide Squad took no time off to wipe themselves off from the debris of the crash that was this game's launch, and scared off all survivor with this mistake. What are they doing?
Truly, I knew that the writing was on the wall and Rocksteady's heart wasn't in it when they made this game- that much is obvious. In fact, I hear rumours that it was actually a different studio's project to begin with, but they ended up being shut down or something and it was passed on to Rocksteady. (Which makes all their marketing fluff about this being their 'dream game' and 'vision' sound like bunk, if it's true.) I think now we've seen the bubble burst. When Suicide Squad just gives up with an update like this, there really is no going back. I thought Helldivers might revive the subgenre, but they've honestly just revealed how much effort is needed to make something like this work- and most studio producers out there don't have what it take to support a game like the Helldivers team do. Let Suicide Squad die.
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