The Last Gasps of Suicide Squad

 

Isn't it just bizarre how common The Suicide Squad have become in DC content? Some of the most side-tracked villians of all time are dragged into the spotlight by a couple of movies and now they're the biggest superstars of the universe to the common man out there. I'll bet that Peacemaker currently has more modern day recognisability than Darkseid or Doomsday, and that's mostly because of James Gunn's writing and John Cena's peerless performance. We have a revival of the Peacemaker comic imbued with James' take on the character, a isekai anime featuring the full squad, an uncoming follow-up series to Peacemaker and a rumoured Suicide Squad show. (although that rumour has been shopped around since before the end of the DCEU so I'm not hopeful that one is still in the docket.) All that exposure, and all it took for Suicide Squad Kills The Justice League to squander it was to utter the words 'Live Service'.

I think there is a real disconnect between the common man and the creatives out there regarding exactly what Live Services bring to the industry, and whilst I original believed that to simply be a situation of executives with eyes bigger than their hands- now I actually think it runs a bit deeper. We've had actual key members of Warframe come to defend the honour of their chosen industry- claiming that more companies just to need to stick with it- through all the decries and boos from the a public sick of them, perchance? We've seen The Long Dark devs criticise Manor Lords for just releasing a full experience and not imbuing it with a steady road of new content every two months like a healthy live service would doing- all to the chagrin of the Manor Lords' dev who just wanted to make a game people could experience at least once- not a platform that will keep them hostage. 

Suicide Squad's mangled corpse should serve as the example to which all fingers point. Not an experimental grasp by an unbloodied dev to shoot at this genre that collapses in on itself (Babylon Games, Platinum Games should have tried figuring out how to make a normal multiplayer game before trying to build a platform around it) or a studio not so familiar with this world of fiction trying to strike gold with a big brand- (Crystal Dynamics'  Avengers needn't have been so ambitious) the example should be a dev iterating on a franchise which has scored universal appeal, (Arkham) which people cry out for more of every other day (r/Arkham) totally squandering their potential by making that follow up an unwelcome and unloved Live Service. What better example is there of the poison in the industry?

But of course the Suicide of Suicide Squad is not yet complete. We have a list of content still due to come out for at least one full year of support ending with a Deathstroke, so that's something to look forward to at the very least. (Wonder if he'll be anywhere near as cool as he was in Origins.) And right now that means the pre-slotted content needs to pump out misaligned series' releases like the current 'season of snow' featuring Ms Freeze- an alternate version of Mr Freeze who's name everyone mispronounces in order to get around the bad pun. (It's supposed to sound like 'Freeze', just say it ya cowards!) And with this the last gasps of this dying game persist.

Much ado has been made about the design of Mrs Freeze and yeah- it sucks. It's boring and generic, unappealing and sad. Most of the alternative shop skins look better, although somehow they still put out a couple that made her worse- indicating that the team literally have no idea what a good design even looks like anymore. And worst of all, for me, is the fact they went for literally the least inspired version of an alternative universe Mr Freeze possible. She is a gender swap in the literal definition of that term- they could have taken Nora, reversed roles and then conjured up some way that Nora fell into the same trappings as her husband but in a unique way, the same way Flashpoint did with Thomas Wayne- but that sounds like effort. And Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League loathes effort.

At the very least the attempt was made in order to replicate the 'Ice skates' moves of Marvel's Iceman when coming up with the girl's movement. She glides through the air creating ice tracks in her wake and skating through them deftly- it looks graceful and entertaining. Unfortunately the promise of such an ability doesn't quite pan out with the technology on display because the ice tracks that you create vanish actually instantly the second after you've left them behind- meaning there's no dynamically creating terrain for other team mates to fight around, or even turning back around to see the icy remnants of your recent flight- it's just kind of a waste of a concept to be honest- and it makes me wonder if the team really had their hearts in these add-on villians after realising this title wasn't going to make the cultural impact they hoped it would.

Of course, 'team' is a bit of a misnomer when talking about Suicide Squad given the fact that everyone who worked on this game has moved on aside from a skeleton crew who keep the lights on. Reports claim that everyone is working on a new edition of Hogwarts Legacy, a non live Service game that actually did well- leaving behind a workforce so minimal that there's literally no chance of correcting the wobbling ship. People complained about the layout of content in the Joker season, with the reward for the grind being the ability to play as the Joker- but with no actual follow-up content to use him on? Too bad, Freeze has the exact same problem! It's a symptom of the 'always be developing' ethos of the Live Service, where content is designed several updates in advance and so the ship of development bloats itself far too wide to turn effectively.

There comes that morbid fascination in watching a dying thing fumble, like seeing an ant ecology crumble under the weight of a powerful stream observing the awesome might of inevitable doom and the tragedy of loss potential. Suicide Squad gives me that sad fascination everytime I watch it, only devoid of the curiosity to actually try the thing out because I lack the patience. With Paul Tassi recently throwing in the towel, it really does feel like the circle of audience members are growing tired with the display. Now Robespierre cuts off heads for a dwindling crowd that are slowly turning his direction and the meagre disenfranchised 12 people who still call Metropolis home can fester under the putrescence of their dead brand. Whilst I poke.