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. 

SSKTJL Won't give up

 

You know by now what a sick, morbid, puppy I am. Drawn to the swirling void of the decaying like a vulture circling it's crinkled cadavers roasting to a fine boil in the midday sun. I'm a scavenger bird, ravenous and opportunistic, pouncing on weakness and gorging myself on it's last struggling gasps gurgled betwixt the plunge of my razor beak. Sure, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice league is a dead thing, we've all pronounced it and are happy to see the thing go- (except for Paul Tassi, the Live Service fiend who subjects himself to this torment like a true sadist)- but my god will I savour in the struggle! And with evert failure turn back around on an industry so eager to hop into this same wide-open grave with the vindication of practicality- mama-bird didn't rear no chump!

The latest news is... less than ideal. Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League managed to scare off those that stuck around the rough launch with- lo and behold- an even rougher first season that managed to get everyone at their lowest and ensure them that there was nothing more in the team's bag of tricks. The Stronghold missions that were dangling over people's heads turned out to be more endlessly recycled content, all of the Joker's narrative scenes were shown off in the trailers because there was that little to him as a character. Brainiac still hasn't figured out that if he really wants to kill the Justice League he should try, I dunno, using any strategy that the team haven't already been documented as being able to defeat?

Making any Live Service works requires that it's services actually be partaken in my a regular stream of players who are willing to engage with the the various skins and paid MTX that are released throughout it's lifetime. It's the reason why most Live Services are developed specifically to ward away large crowds a few weeks after launch, because the smaller group they maintain are the dedicated who can be squeezed for all their worth without kicking up a fuss everytime they drop something extortionately overpriced onto the storefront. See the big review bomb landing on the Tekken 8 thanks to it's post-release dropping of an MTX store? That's something that Live Services manage to avoid by keeping such a tight knit team of players. (Why do you think you never hear about Fallout 76's badly priced MTX? It ain't because they stopped, I can tell you that much!)

But the kind of numbers that SSKTJL is seeing, at least on PC through Steam tracker, look too low even to sustain that. Hanging between the sub-thousands is not really where any aspiring service game should be planted, and although we know their numbers are better on Console- the general consensus is that the game dropped the ball. Of course, this is a spiralling downfall because if the game cannot generate a sufficient enough revenue then the team cannot justify funding significant enough revenue to transform their lacklustre snooze-fest into a game worth generating an audience, thus the game sinks lower and lower into the metrics until it gets swallowed under the wave of better, less pricey, games. Although what if I told you that the stubborn lunatics over at Rocksteady are thinking of riding this one far past it's prime?

According to unconfirmed reports from the kind of folk who are digging through source code in order to drum up reveals of upcoming character additions- there is apparently enough evidence to indicate that Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League contains the framework to release 5 whole seasons of content before the abject failure of the product catches up with them and Rocksteady are forced to shut the thing down. That's just over a year of 'support' wherein we can morbidly watch how they keep the game updated with no money coming in and a skeleton crew of player keeping cobwebs out of the servers. Which makes it actually a heck of a lot more ambitious then I ever suspected the team of managing. Who could have forseen Suicide Squad escaping 2024?

Now we've already seen some silhouettes of the first year of content, and seeing how little effort went into bringing the first season to fruition, it's probably save to assume that Mrs Freeze up to Deadshot have already been developed to some degree internally. We've already seen that their lines have already been recorded. (For what little that's worth. Joker currently has the least amount of lines of any member of the team by a country mile. Seems the DLC content is just kind of plopped into the mix instead of thoughtfully integrated.) I suspect that the maintenance team, whom I'm going to be courteous to the core Rocksteady and assume already have control over the game, which is why season 1 was so pathetic, only really have to keep the servers running and perhaps polish off a few last minute bugs before throwing these last members into the game. Actual new development probably won't be covered in the 5 seasons.

Of course, we already know that this live service narrative is all going to be about course correction as we revive the Justice League and restore the world yadda yadda- (Will that include Wonder Woman? She was killed pretty much outright, without being a Brainiac pawn.) but will it fix the inherent disconnect between the Arkham universe of games and this totally bizarro iteration pretending to be it's successor? You know, this world where the secretive Batman who killed himself publicly as soon as his identity was revealed would just join a public facing Justice League and jauntily recall his adventures for the Justice Hall museum? A world where the writers seem to have gotten their psychotic and Joker-loving Harley mixed up with the modern iteration from the Harley Quinn Show- lacking any connective tissue bringing that character from one end to the other? How about the Deadshot thing? There really is no patching this leaky ship, is there?

But 'Suicide Squad Kills Rocksteady's Reputation' appears to not be giving up and that is morbidly commendable at the very least. There at least won't be a total abandonment of the hot mess like was originally most likely- they'll try to clear their name and at least won't leave an empty unfinished story in this game's place. Of course, we'll save the back pats for whether or not the team go out of their way to patch in an 'offline mode' so that the game doesn't become a glorified drinks coaster once support stops. Only after that can we have our drinks, pop those pills and forget this game ever existed as, ideally, Rocksteady get back to making knock-out single player masterpieces again. Pretty please? 

Suicide Squad's one chance

 

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.

The Batman Canon Coundrum

 Did we end up in the wrong timeline?

With the dropping of the preview period of Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League, I'm pretty sure it's open season on spoilers given the breakdown of the story- so if you are someone who cares about the events of the much maligned menagerie of mistakes that is 'Kill the Justice League'- I would recommend giving this one a miss until the floodgates have opened a bit more. And for everyone else- let me ask you a question- do you think that Suicide Squad and Gotham Knights ended up in the right places? Lore wise? I came across a Gamerant article that put a very decent argument for why both games should have been switched, but I want to take that even further to a systems level as we compare and contrast two desperately undervalued sectors of the Batman mythos. How could we have avoided the shame we share today? Switcheroo!

So the Gamerant article made the very sensible case that Gotham Knights should have been tweaked to be canon to the events of the Arkham franchise whilst Suicide Squad wanted desperately to be free into it's own fresh canon and would have benefitted much from the freedom. Gotham Knights literally bills itself around a world where the Dark Knight has died following a eye-wateringly stretched out cutscene against Raj Al Ghul in which the game leaves no doubt that Batman is fully dead. Not only does the Batcave literally explode- we find Batman's corpse among the wreckage- he is definitely dead. But what if he wasn't? Arkham Knight ends with the Batman's identity getting revealed to the world and then blowing himself to smithereens alongside Wayne Manor- all to disguise himself going underground to continue his campaign as a 'Demon Bat'. Who's to say that Gotham Knights couldn't have instead followed a Batfamily thrown into that situation? Left in the dark about Bruce's deception and left to grapple with a world where their mentor is either dead or left them to grow up quickly?

As for Suicide Squad? Well for some utterly bizarre reason, that takes place in a world wherein Batman has unceremoniously stepped out of the shadows and joined the Justice League- making his flashy pretend suicide at the end of Arkham Knight functionally perfunctory. That big and memorable ending had absolutely no impact on his story whatsoever. He just came back out as the Batman to the public, cowl and all, despite everyone knowing exactly who he is. How is he meant to resume duties as the 'embodiment of fear' now that everyone knows him to be a flesh and blood man? Some playboy douche with too much money and free time? Potentially interesting questions that don't get explored at all as Batman is relegated to villain in his own Arkham franchise. Beyond ingame summations of the events of the Arkham series, there's no narrative link between the two periods of game whatsoever- which boggles the mind a little.

And then there is the 'taste' angle to take into account. Arkham Batman is special to a lot of people out there for establishing the defacto combat system that all action adventure games have just adopted from that point onwards. It was a lovingly crafted and detailed exploration of the wider Batman mythos that weaved a complex and resonant journey wherein Batman came to confront his most challenging foes and overcame the extremes of his own limits in order to save the world. And then he was just chucked into the 'what if good guy bad' machine and came out a surly, thug who literally falls for the trope of 'we couldn't figure out how to make a boss fight out of this guy so here's a big monster fight with his face on it' cliché! The most embarrassing failure of a design team! Which is doubly insane because he is actually the one hero boss fight I could see genuinely fitting into a shooter-style game; maybe if you played up the gadgets angle and the cat-and-mouse predator style of Batman...

But what I want to really talk about, is how Gotham Knights could have better utilised it's systems if it committed itself to being a Live Service like it clearly already was. That story about the Batfamily coming into their own would neatly fit into the 'villain of the season' style narrative presentation that Live Services demand- we could have actually conclusive finales to plotlines whilst building up the meta narrative of each character becoming the heroes they were destined to be. Of course, Gotham Knights gameplay couldn't live up to that amount of sustained content, but we're living in a world of concepts right now- bear with me for a bit. Besides, in this very same merit- wouldn't of Suicide Squad been a lot better off as an ex-Live Service turned good?

Just as how Gotham Knights lost it's terrible Live Service elements and told a single contained story, Suicide Squad would have benefitted much more from reducing it's scope and shoring up the content they already had instead of desperately trying to stretch what little is available over a thirteen season period. Not least of all because no complete story exists meaning that the majority of the players who are going to drop off will remember this game as the one that didn't really have an ending and merely stretched on forever recycling the same one bad guy forever. If we actually let Suicide Squad be a normal game instead of a monetisation platform, we wouldn't have to wait months to here the stereotypical 'everyone gets resurrected nullifying the events of the entire game' plotline which has already been leaked from unreleased files. (Great job, WB. You never learn, do you?)

From every logical angle there's no reason why we ended up with the games that we did, both of which are a total betrayal of the franchise that made Rocksteady great. In fact, Suicide Squad feels like an active assassination attempt against everything they stood for as a company. As WB Montreal didn't have much of a reputation to lose! And to think that this is the trash we're being fed in place of genuine quality such as the rumoured follow up to Arkham starring adult Damian and old man Bruce! Gah! And you know we're still not going to get that legendary game, even with Batman getting resurrected before the year is out, simply because the original studio directors up and left when they saw what a mess Suicide Squad was shaping up as! (Why is there no justice in this screwy world of ours?)

At the end of the day, Rocksteady and Warner Bros are both guilty of the most shameful thing any game can fall to- obstinance. Of course it pays to be have confidence and stick to your guns- but there nothing about the Suicide Game worth sticking to except the promise of an easy cash cow that became less and less viable as the years ticked by as more and more like-minded would-be franchises crashed and burned around them. Now people are looking at the moderately healthy player numbers and noting how easily their dwarfed by others of the genre type and everyone is already counting the days until the game slinks away with it's tail between it's legs to be roundly forgotten. And it's all a damned unfortunate shame.

League-Squad: out of jokes.

So I was in a good mood yesterday and posted something about a topic that I love. Which I don't get to do so very often because the good in the world only really gets to be highlighted in one brilliant blaze in order to stand out and speak entirely for itself, whereas the spinning wheels of burning trash are unfortunately destined to draw attention to themselves. And even though I don't think that Suicide Squad is going to be as pathetic of a failure as it probably deserves to be- I know it's going to crash and burn just as well as anyone with their head on straight does. But as this is such a universal slam fail- it's constantly surprising to me the extents that Warner Bros are going to convince, at this point only themselves, that they have a chance in hell to steer a game that no one wants through the storm. After pretty much showing their hand and proving everyone so resounding right.

Firstly, I remember a comment made a scant few weeks ago about the direction of Rocksteady in the future and how they were committed to this new Suicide Squad direction- you remember that? 'Don't hold your breath for the next Arkham game!' they said 'we really do kill the Justice League!' A bold sentiment, and an attempt to try and get those that love the Arkham universe to subscribe to this new status quo, to see where the game goes narratively if nothing else. But I immediately saw through that and said the team would be walking back that stance and making this an Elseworld's story in no time flat. Seems my only mistake there was assuming they would have to release the game before turning tail, because as it turns out we didn't even have to wait that long. Suicide Squad has tipped its hat as an awkward Elseworld's mismatch of ideas where, just like in the worst multiversal comic stories you can imagine, nothing matters!

In showing off their endgame potential, Rocksteady has laid the groundworks for all the worst narrative tropes that hold back Live Service games. This coming from a formally narrative championing company who's strongest critical praise so far was that despite it's rudimentary and repetitive gameplay content, people were curious to see if the story went anywhere. Apparently it doesn't. Just like with Gotham Knights, in the post game the bad guy hasn't been fully stopped, but going even further than Gotham Knights, the post game throws you into the multiverse in order to stop various crisis on other earths. Which is a sound concept for a coherent Live Service style DC game to follow, mind you. Injustice 2 made the same premise for it's endgame. But for a sequel to a narrative championing franchise- you've just presented a story with no conclusion that drags itself on for eternity, which is exactly what people were afraid of.

Rocksteady Batman games used to be the kind of thing that you would play through, have a blast with and put down. What we're seeing of the brand right now has me deeply confused in that we're being presented with an infinite play scenario whilst being told that Rocksteady 'aren't creating a game that will take over your life'! That's right, according to the team they want people to play for just a little bit and not dedicate their every waking hour to levelling. Well in that case- why devote yourself to a medium that lives and dies off constant engagement? That- is- dumb! And probably a lie, were I to guess. How the hell can a game justify 3-5 years of constant development for a fanbase who dips in an out everytime there's a content drop every six months or so? Unless they charge the price of a full game for each expansion- which is a wonderful way to divide a fanbase right quick. Financially their statement has to be false, because overwise this is self destruction playing out in real time.

But the most bizarre thing is thus. The game will soon be hitting its strangely sizable Early Access period wherein a bevy of people who paid a stupid amount for the right edition of the game will be able to play the title as the servers go live. And reviewers won't be getting their review codes at this point. Now that doesn't mean for the full launch reviewers will be pushed out of the process, but it doesn't exactly set the best precedent for that eventuality, now does it? At the very least people will have made the irreversible purchasing decision of buying a crazy elite edition version of the game without being informed about the extent of what the game does via a review- and regardless of the actual impact that genuinely had, it's pretty poor form.

Because let's be honest- no one who has already spent 100$ on the game is going to listen to the raw opinions of a game's reviewer who doesn't like they game they are already fully sold on. I genuinely believe that the decision to lock out reviewer in this pre-release period benefits nothing to the game beyond throwing up yet another one of those endless red flags that the developers seem to spawn out of nowhere with every preview. (They seem to actually build some trust when they leave the gameplay at home. Then they show us footage and it just knocks out the room!) They aren't battling for the allegiance of their most loyal customers, they're fighting for the sceptics- and this- this is not how you win over the sceptics!

League Squad the killening is in a precarious position right now, wherein it kind of feels like they're treating this pre-release period as another opportunity to farm so positive early impression before their big February launch. And in that light it's actually rather genius. The best reviews they had up until now where from the sign-ups to the Alpha test from last year, and it's the grumpy old critics who found the game forgettable and threw it away like trash. This gamble, relying on the general public for a little more support, could either really work out to get the game looking presentable on launch day, or trash the game's reputation even worse. But to be absolutely fair to them, what do they have to lose? This game is a pariah right now anyway- what reputation are they risking?

I know what you're thinking, 'another blog about this game' but what can I say- the topic fascinates me! Not as a video game, but as a study of behaviour and desperation as one is pushed further up against the wall without any easy way out. Rocksteady bit off this piece of gum a long time ago and pretty much missed the boat on the genre's popularity during the production phase- every decision made from now on is being done in pure survival mode and it's making them entertaining to watch as an outsider with no skin the game. At this point I'm genuinely curious if they can squeak out a success, however slight, from a game no one wants. Just how powerful can social manipulation really be when your livelihood is on the line. So by all means- go off, Rocksteady. I'm fascinated. 

For the last time: What IS Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League?

 Questions that shouldn't be asked in the month of launch

If I were to make a checklist on all the things that are hallmarks of a successful or unsuccessful marketing campaign, based solely on the reactions of the public- I think the glaring red flag would be any campaign that has people in the weeks before launch asking "What is this game, exactly?". It would have to be right up there with "Wait, this game is coming out tomorrow?" and "Oh, are they making a game of that?" If somewhere along the line you haven't imparted this information to the interested parties, then I just have to ask what in the heck you're even doing as a marketing department. But then, maybe the blame doesn't just land with marketing, but rather the whole team for presenting an unclear image of the game that is supposed to be being sold. If no one can verbalise the vision, then is there even a vision to begin with?

Let me address Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League with a query: what is the main focus of this game in a systematic sense? Bare basic, right on the front of the first design doc- what was this game pitched as in the boardroom? Is is the successor to the Batman Arkham franchise, big on the spectacle and narrative focus on telling a compelling adventure with stakes and agency that excites and delights- or is this a live service gear-chasing game that spends it's efforts creating content loops for players to dedicate weeks upon months upon years of their time chasing? I know that in the mind of the marketing team they're certain these two concepts are not mutually exclusive, but personally I'm yet to find contributing evidence to that rather lofty assertion.

Gotham Knights is another Batman game released in the post Arkham World which suffered from left-over adoration for what that franchise did and expectation that the development team were not ready to meet. The game was clearly designed to be a live service from inception, but shifted direction following the downfall of live services into being just a co-op experience that was still resplendent with many of the hallmarks of recurrent play. I'm talking Gear Scores, content grinding, crafting materials, stat comparing- all the things that don't contribute to making a solid cinematic experience for a Batman game and which drove a wedge between the narrative that wanted to get out and the game the team were told to stick together.

Gotham Knights needed to turn all of it's villains and enemies into content hubs to drive retention. The league of shadows couldn't just be purposed for their narrative potential, but they had to be stuck all over the city pulling petty crimes so that the player could grind them in order to meet the quota of a 'stop X amount of crimes from this faction' style check-list quest. (The likes of which are infinitely spawning from any number of the dynamic open world quest givers.) The story couldn't just flow from one significant plotpoint to the next arc of the story, but they had to throw in a forced patrol quest in the middle of every chapter in order to force open world interactions out of the player. They couldn't even prioritise the coming together of the Batfamily without Bruce, because each character had to be playable entirely independently- so you can feel like a one man army with three tech supports if you're not playing with others. (Although that might be more a consequence of the co-op design as well as the Live Service skeleton)

Gotham Knights wanted to be too much and it ended up failing to do any one thing good enough to become genuinely praise worthy. I suspect it was even their limitations working with internet connectivity and 'collaborative play' which led to the vastly stripped back and genuinely less engaging combat which the game relies heavily on. Although of course, one mustn't conflate the resources that Gotham Knights team had with what Suicide Squad have available. It's clear from even a passing glance that Suicide Squad is a more expensive game. It's cutscenes look sleek and cinematic, it's character models are fantastic and dripping with character, the animations are at the industrial top standard- but is all of that enough to make up for the fact that it is a live service through and through?

Battle passes, unified gear systems, copy and paste enemy design format- this is all anyone can see from the footage we're being fed. But what we're being told alongside that footage? We're told how dynamic it is, how differently everyone plays, how transformative their progression system is! (With such spectacular perks as: 'Reload gun a little faster'. Transformative!) And lately; we're being told that this game is a successor to Batman Arkham in the all the ways it appears to not be. "It's still full of the DNA that infuses the Batman: Arkham series" insists Darius Sadeghian, the Studio product director in an interview with Play Magazine. And to Darius' credit, he seems to have his head on straight when it comes to selling his game. He talks about the 'trinity' or 'gameplay systems- shooting, melee and traversal' and the creation of a 'community' through the framing of the game's cooperative elements- and it all sounds... cohesive.

But then he says this. "We don't really think of our game as fitting any label." And I can't help but call absolutely hogswash on that nonsense! Every game has an identity, no matter how much you want to try and shy away from it in order to patch up public sentiment. Redfall tried to pull the same card out about how it was utterly genre-less, just to hide the fact it was a limp co-op shooter with vague looter elements sprinkled on top. Even Death Stranding was marketed without admitting it was primarily a really high budget physics puzzle game, which I guess is the true definition of 'strand type'. The didn't score a budget to make Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League by stumbling into the producer's meeting and just saying "Yeah, we wanna make a co-op game we guess, but we have no idea what it's genre or direction is going to be. Can you fund us to make the thing and support it for at least three years, pretty please?" Pull the other one, Darius!

I think this game is embarrassed to be part of a dying subgenre in a world that has no interest in it anymore. We're past the day when retail stores decide what genre of game is the it thing by stocking or destocking where they see necessary, meaning even a flagging genre still has it ardent and loving fan base. Games are digital and plentiful, yet still Live Service after Live Service has fallen from grace in lamentable fashion. Even Destiny is no longer where it should be in the popularity charts. That is the world that Suicide Squad is lumbering into, and it's doing it despite the reservations of a fanbase wanting a game more akin to the one they know and love. If this game really does manage to satisfy all comers, then consider the Rocksteady team actual magical miracle workers with the tools of no one else in the industry. Otherwise, prepare for a rude awakening with the next failure in the DC videogame slate.

Desperation thy name is Suicide Squad

 Feel like that title is one word away from spreading an entirely different message

I must admit that even though I personally held no faith in Suicide League Gank the Justice Squad- I did think myself pretty firmly in the minority in this matter. I mean sure, the circles through which I travel, the people with whom I speak and share fandom with, they all agree that an online Live Service Suicide Squad game from the Arkham team that maintains very little of what made the original games work in favour of soulless trend chasing is a bit of an L for a once legendary development team. But that is kind of the nature of circles and cliques, right? They have something of the same opinion to one another. Outside of what I know, I remember hearing that Destiny 2 was beloved for a very long time. (I have trouble backing up whether that is a worthy adoration given that fact that Destiny 2 has some of the worst early game roadblocks of any online game I've ever played.)

Live Services are somewhat popular in the mysterious cadre of online games. That bizarre species of people who like to play through the same rough game day in and day out, competitively grinding their heads in the same matches chasing the same awards and dedicating large chunks of their freetime to keeping up with the weekly updates of a video game- which to me sounds like a hellish proposal, but what do I know- right? Of all the Ubisoft games that I regularly mock ruthlessly, the only one I can't touch because I simply know nothing about it, is The Division- which seems to maintain a pretty favourable relationship with it's runners. There is an audience, is what I'm trying to establish. So I thought my own feelings about the trash that was Suicide Squad would have some sort of push back.

Recently the Warner Team tried their luck at throwing together a working marketing campaign given their overall failure to make the game any sort of clear for those that actually wanted to get a read on the thing. I mean, being unable to tell whether or not the game is even an open world game is something of a red flag for any marketing department, almost as much as the constant clowning that every reveal event has had where people rag on the repetitive look of the enemy design, the barren open world, the identical looking playstyles and just the general lack of a worthwhile excuse for this game existing in the state that it does above and beyond- "That's the easiest way to monetise it all." Which, let's be honest, is probably the culprit behind everything at the end of the day. No need to get the Scooby gang in on it, we've wrapped this one up and unmasked the perp all by ourselves.

It was with some confidence, then, that Warner Bros. reached out to a bevy of popular video game journalist publications to get a review event underway. It would have to be a confident move given that the scared usually NDA impressions until the day of release. But perhaps a little healthy fear might have done this team some good because: 'uh oh!' First impressions aren't good! In fact- they're really bad! (By the standards of a VG publication) As it transpired the event was beset by networking issues that limited what would have been something of a full gaming day down to a couple of hours, and judging from the feedback received- this hear is not the kind of game that wins you over in a couple of hours. In fact, many of the impressions seem to echo all the surface level vibes that the gameplay trailers were giving us all.

Outlets found the game to be generic, uninspired, repetitive- every epithet under the sun. In fact, the only consistently positive point of note was the cutscenes. People seem to think that the tiny snippets of narrative they received would pertain to an entertaining narrative, but I have to question that in the long run. Afterall, we know the team are planning to throw in new DLC characters to sell to us, so presumably all of these character moments are just puppet work performed with easy swap-in-swap-out characters, essentially resulting in an impossibility of setting up meaningful character stakes or interactions because you need to be able to swap out Deadshot for Deathstroke at a moments notice in the script. There's only so far you can go to make a script like that carry any sort of weight, and I'm not sure that this game is going to be the one to crack the code.

Honestly, I haven't seen previews this scathing since I myself was involved in the early Beta for 'Homefront: The Revolution'; although that game was much more of a trainwreck than Suicide Squad could ever possibly be. And I can just bet that WB marketers were seeing the same impressions we were and just freaking out. They were tearing out their hair, crying and shaking, and then they made a drastic decision. A distraction measure. They suddenly released the NDA for the game's beta back in November in the hope that the impressions of the general public would be softer on the ears than what the stubborn and grumpy critics were dishing out. And to their absolute marketing credit, they were right! For the most part.

The average joe-schmo who specifically signed up in order to get the chance of being in specific beta tests was of course going to have a higher tolerance for mediocrity than the seasoned game critics who were dragged along to a scuffed event. Plus, said-joes even got to spend an extended amount of time with the game in it's early hours, giving them a chance to feel out the game and it's style. Which is probably why we have people that were very excited about their time with the game, praising the punchy shooting and flashy bursts of effects, eager to get just a little bit more of the game in their hands. But then there were those with cautious optimism that found the whole experience deeply unengaging. It seems that we've got another Marvel's Avengers on our hands, where those that want to love it find it easy, and every else just rolls their eyes and tries to deal with it.

On average, it seems that critical perception has finally shifted against the Live Service model of business in it's very spirit, and the general public might be someway along the path of doing exactly the same. You'd have thought companies would have learnt from the failures of their contemporaries where this path leads, but just like an old wrinkly fish trying to cross the street, it's time we load up our fists and teach this lesson again. Rocksteady should have known better. WB should have known better. And rather than double down in headscratching interviews telling everyone not to hold their breath for the next Arkham because, quote: "We really do kill the Justice League in this game!"- maybe it's about time the team start cooking up some elaborate 'Elseworlds' narrative excuse to get out of the franchise assassination which is happening here.

Suicide League gank the Justice Squad

 '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.

The car that went too far

 It's a collector's item

Again with the Suicide Squad...

 The crystal ball didn't lie.

I've been trying to be a lot more positive this time of year. Does it show? I don't know, but I want to see the silver lining clutching to the edge of every rain-cloud, or some such nonsense. (Seriously, what kind of cloud has a silver lining? What kind of visual delusions do I have to be under to perceive mineral silver glittering in the sky?) That is getting very hard with the more we see of one game that I had quite a lot of excitement for once upon a time. One game that was the much anticipated successor to the beloved Arkham Batman franchise, and which was going to remind the super hero genre of games how to do it right after two prominent live service failures- well, I guess we can't call 'Gotham Knights' a 'live service' can we? It was just a game which had it's online live service elements haphazardly gutted at the last moment and acted like it never happened so we could all be shocked in five years time when the developers reveal that secret during a behind-the-scenes documentary. (I think we may be a bit ahead of schedule on that one.)

We knew this was coming ever since the leak of the new Rocksteady Suicide Squad game a few weeks back hit 4Chan and everyone's spine shivered with a cold dread: gear qualities, item scores, lobbies, Battle Passes; everything terrible about modern gaming crystallised into one truly cursed genre. I wouldn't mind so much if the Live Service genre knew how to stay in it's lane, but nowadays we're seeing every other game adopt these pitifully redundant and under-designed gear equip systems that drip with miniscule effects and stat buffs that have no tangible effect on a gameplay model not at all built to cater for them. For all of it's success', even Hogwarts Legacy has a haphazard Gear score system! And guess what; it's totally inconsequential meaningless trash where all you do is pick the gear which makes the 'gear number' get bigger. Not that you even notice the improvement, because you never do in these games. It's a fundamental design principal adopted by so many game designers that have no clue what made it work in the first place.

Even if everything else about Suicide Squad was perfectly spot-on for a co-op superhero/villain power fantasy; and that's looking like a very questionable hypothetical right now, the gear scores alone would be little more than excess fat ontop of the package. RPGs pioneered the concept of incremental gear power growth in order to create a sense of physical progression beyond levelling and abilities, but even then the best RPGs of yesteryear knew how to temper the amount of loot and gear available in order to keep new pieces feeling relevant and special. Action RPGs changed up that balance to shower players in loot, but presented the collection and modification of loot as an intrinsic gameplay mechanic. By the endgame for those ARPGs, those tiny stat increases mean all the difference in the world and that's what makes the gear grinding loop of those games feel rewarding. Live Services have always struggled to reach that level of synergy, from their very inception to now; to the point where even at a mere glance the public feels utterly familiar with the oncoming systemic disconnect without having ever picked up a controller. And why would they need to? Nuance has been lacking from the start.

But again, the gear system is just the cherry ontop of the cake. The fact is that Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League was pitched as a co-op team based supervillian game where every character played uniquely according to their own abilities and move-sets, creating a collaborative smorgasbord of experiences to share between you and your three friends. If that is indeed the case, why are Rocksteadr struggling to display that uniqueness? In the most recent gameplay trailer we've been witness to supercuts of all 4 protagonists swinging through the air with floaty, weightless abandon firing boring guns at glowing purple weak points in what almost feels like a reskin of Anthem. Why am I getting Anthem vibes when watching a trailer for Suicide Squad? That is absolutely not what I should be taking away from this game during the home stretch of marketing! Btu at least we've still got those great Arkham-level cutscenes to propel a hopefully compelling story, right? Well... actually, maybe we don't...

Because get this, unlike Gotham Knights; Suicide Squad is a live service through and through. (Except the team refuse to come out and say it, probably because they're embarrassed to admit it out loud. Always a great sign for how much everyone believes in the dream, no?) We already have confirmation that the team is already going to support this game post launch with a battle pass, probably some more cosmetics and... new characters? Wait a second... so how can we possibly expect a well rounded narrative touching on the four player characters... if they can be easily swapped in with upcoming DLC characters? This is sounding less and less like a Rocksteady Superhero game and more like a Square Enix Superhero title as we go on.

What seems to have astounded pretty much everyone up until this point is the fact that almost universally the public appears settled on the fact that this live service approach doesn't appear to work with these superhero properties. And yet we keep receiving them. This piece-meal 'the story is never quite over' style of presenting the narrative has, historically, only really had a shot in RPG games with custom generated characters that players can place their theoretical psyche within and carry on across countless stories. Actual characters have a bit more nuance and wear to them, even when they're bullet fodder in the Suicide Squad. Although, even then that's no guarantee with a genre as prone to failure as this one. Anyone remember 'Babylon's Fall'? Like... anyone at all?

And I know the hatred isn't completely universal. There are people who love the idea of a co-op superhero game that must find the prospect of a continuously developed one just tantalising. I've also heard scattered praise for the character movement which I personally do not echo. I agree that it looks smooth animation-wise, but without hands-on I think it's impossible to say whether float-guiding whilst shooting is any sort of fun. I didn't particularly think Anthem's iteration of that exact style was all that long lasting and effective. I just wonder how it is that Warner Bros. can justify sinking so many years of development through a beloved single-player studio to create a game in a genre tailor-designed to alienate all single player lovers. It seems like a frankly backwards philosophy, which only leaves me confused.

I do know that the Rocksteady Team originally had another Batman game lined up, which was going to feature a playable adult Damian Wayne and a much older mentor Batman; for which I will be forever mournful we never got. Rumours are bubbling now that Rocksteady had actually moved on to that Superman game everyone claimed they were making all of these years, only Warner Bros. forcibly pulled them off that project and moved them to this Live Service mess of a project instead. Honestly, that makes a lot of sense- but also sounds like too neat and tidy of a story to be the whole picture, like the kind of narrative a disgruntled former fan would concoct in their morose musings. Personally I hope the game beats the odds and becomes that runaway hit Warner Bros. must be desperate for at this point, but either way I'm going to be parting ways with one of the most beloved action adventure game developers that used to be around so the well wishes are bittersweet to taste.

Gotham Squad: Kills everyone's hype

 The horror, The horror!

What the hell is up with my internal 'bad game' barometer of late? I used to be able to spot this stuff from a mile away, but I guess I'm getting soft in my old age or something, because I'm giving so many things the undue benefit of the doubt. I'm sold to the Harry Potter hypetrain, enough to pre-order the thing, even though I'm about 80% sure the final product is going to disappoint me in some vast way. Callisto Protocol was one of my most hyped games of the past few years, only for it to fall short of what I needed it to be in order to fill the Dead Space shaped hole in my heart. And now we've got the bigger, supposedly badder, cousin of Gotham Knights, a game I rightfully bore down upon, only to discover that this title, Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League, might just be every bit as terrible as Gotham Knights was! I used to be able to spot these things coming...

When Ubisoft killed off it's three 'in progress' games that were in development earlier this year, there was a very specific reason given. They said that the games in question 'weren't what gamers wanted'. Further, decidedly more unsubstantiated, rumours declared that they were Battle Royale titles all. But the reason I'm bringing this up is to highlight the intelligence to look at your work, look at your audience and realise that they aren't meant for each other. Maybe the trend you're chasing moved on, maybe the flow of the market is against your style, maybe you're just not on the pulse of the people anymore. Whatever the case, when I read that as an internal justification from the Ubisoft paymasters, that might have been the first time I felt respect for any decision made within Ubisoft since Black Flag, which I believe turns 10 later this year. That is a self-understanding that, if leaks are to be believed, is sorely missing from Warner Bros Interactive for the games that they're publishing. (Which again, the Harry Potter title is Warner Bros published! Can you see why I'm scared?)

I'm using hedging language merely as a shield for myself to buy the benefit of the doubt in this situation. This isn't a revealed screen of the game, but rather a 'leak'; which opens up the tiny possibility that what we're seeing is a artist mock-up of a possible direction the game could have taken, or a straight up lying composite by a simple clout chaser. But the renders are too good, the UI too ugly yet professional, there's no shadow of doubt in my mind that this leaked screenshot doing the rounds is the real, mortifying, face of the 'Suicide Squad' game that the team have been keeping under wraps for fear of the obvious hatred it would accrue. The more I think about the tiny snippets of this game we've seen, scripted cutscenes split between heavy bursts of action, and the strangely twisted gameplay details they've let slip and refused to explain; (only being able to play as one of the Squad instead of switching at will) the truth becomes clear; this was a con job from the getgo.

"But what do these leaked screens contain?", I hear you ask because I'm not going to risk uploading them up here. Well, try to picture a screenshot from the menu of Gotham Knights. Seeped in dozens of currencies, endless menus for crafting slots, and take it one step further by adding a 'mission-select' screen implying there isn't even an open world for this title. And there's your game. Gotham Knights 2.0; the game built around the core fundamentals that make a live service without any reason to be one. A style of development soundly rejected by everyone who likes the Arkham style of game that this title was supposed to be a successor to, much more so than 'Gotham Knights' was pretending to be. This was the A-team, ostensibly the same people who brought us the Arkham masterpieces, making a new title after all these years! And it looks every bit as disappointing as what the B-team farted out last year as a pale imitation of the greatness this franchise once achieved.

At this point the only question is whether or not this game is just 'live service-like' in the same way that Gotham Knights was, or alternatively the full sin itself. And unfortunately I think I know the answer. Unlike Gotham Knights which draped itself in all the annoying necessities of a live service without any of the procedurally developed benefits that supposedly make up for those issues, the new screenshot of the Suicide Squad game does tease a Battle Pass. >Sigh< Which means this is probably a full blown live service game for some sickening reason. I feel like at this point, the only people who like and benefit from making these games are the publishers; because the game is never as polished, the user experience always takes liberties in order to accommodate and the replayability of the game in the future is irrevocably kneecapped. Do you think Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League is going to be repackaged into a remastered collection 8 years from now? Of course not, because the servers won't be online anymore; thank you, live services!

The worst part of this for me, however, is the unspoken impression (by the exsistence of a mission-select menu) that there won't be any open world. Just as we could start to get excited to explore Metropolis for the first time since... DC Universe Online, I believe- it seems that this game has gone another direction entirely and is going to ward itself off into tiny snippets of concentrated enemy slog missions that'll be capped off in Justice League themed boss fight. Which would actually, increadibly, make it more restrictive than Gotham Knights already is! Assuming that my reading into the game is accurate, which I can only assume it is given that literally none of the marketing has shown off open world exploration elements at all and the team have bent over backwards not to mention anything in that vein. Which begs the question; if you know the thing you're making is going to inspire backlash to the point where you have to shut up about it's features, why dedicate yourself to making it?

For what it's worth, some outlets have gone the distance to reach out and apparently confirm the validity of these screenshots, but the sources they got in contact with seem to double as hype-men because they rushed to 'damage control' in statements made at the same time. According to these insiders, the multiple currencies are skill point tallies divided between each character, making the prospect of levelling up 4 characters individually a daunting proposition right away. They've also tried to defend progression claiming that you don't start "rebuffed and weak", instead you "start off great and get ridiculous, like Arkham's Batman." Which of course calls into question- what exactly was ridiculous about Arkham's Batman? Was it his intricate and free-flowing balance will gave him a counter to every individual enemy type he fought against? What Batman game did they play to make such a statement, because I don't think it was the same one that I fell in love with.

So I'm a little distraught by all this if you can tell. Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League was supposed to be the wine to wash down the vinegar that Gotham Knights left us all with, but now it's looking like a straight shot of unrefined oil. Rocksteady have veered hard away from everything that made the Arkham franchise great whilst keeping their public face insanely hush about everything so as to not upset a base they know is going to be ruffled. I suppose this means that the spirit of the Arkham games has been soundly washed from the hands of Rocksteady, and my dream of them one day going back to that Damian Wayne starring Arkham game after this one is dead. Or even more so than it suddenly became the day that Kevin Conroy died. Oh right, at least Kevin is in this title for his last role, guess it's worth at least watching his scenes on Youtube for that. 

Suicide Squad Impresses the audience

 Okay, I'm on board now.

Of all the upcoming games that are must-haves for little ol' me, one I've been somewhat sleeping on when it comes to actual research and coverage is 'Suicide Squad kills the Justice League', despite my love for the Arkham series and all branches of it. I think my disinterest stemmed from the whole Suicide Squad concept which I felt was a little sullied by the first film, although somewhat redeemed in the sequel, reboot thing. But if I'm being honest with you, the reason I fast tracked talking anything I could about a DC related project was because I'd finally gotten around to watching James Gunn's 'Peacemaker'. Good god, I needed that show in my life. With Boba Fett being mostly lacklustre and my faith in TV dwindling, 'Peacemaker' swooped in to pick me back up and then push me in a puddle so it could laugh at me. I adore that freakin' show, I think John Cena is brilliant in it and though Peacemaker won't be appearing in the Suicide Squad game, he'll make for a decent enough segueway.

So for those of you who don't know, this game is going to be one of the first big AAA expansions onto the world established by the stellar Batman Arkham series, finally touching on the other big heroes of the DC universe. (Although through the lens of villains, obviously.) That means were going to see a Justice League without Batman in it, given that's he's currently totally dead and not at all faking it in order to continue working from the shadows without putting his close loved ones at risk now that his identity is out there, but still a story keeping with the incredibly solid and cohesive world that the Rocksteady studios managed to scavenge out of several decades worth of disparate comic book stories. It's hardly going to blow any minds if I tell you that I long for this sort of game, more Arkham universe stuff is pretty much my favourite vector into the DC comicverse. (Although if the HBO Max TV shows are all made to the standard that Peacmaker is, maybe I'll start expanding my horizons there.)

Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League isn't just going to play like Arkham did, however, and that's something we finally had proven to us with the gameplay reveal event we received during the Game Awards. What we have seems to be a much more free-form style of third person action combat where mobility and action comes together in a manner that at least looks super satisfying. We already know that every single member of the Squad is going to play differently, but if this trailer has done a good job of teasing it then it looks like they're going to feel significantly different just to traverse around with, which is a supremely good job from the design team if true. Harley Quinn seems to grapple onto a bat glider (Which implies this is the version of Harley who has teamed up with the Bat family in some way. Or whom is a decent thief) allowing her to swing around like a much heavier version of Spiderman. King Shark can run up buildings like the Hulk and throw himself as a deadly spinning object at enemies. Deadshot has a jetpack and a gun, so with him I guess we're pretty much playing Anthem, and Captain Boomerang appeared to have some sort of slippery-looking speed boots that he can rush around with. (Yeah, Boomerang looked the least interesting so far.)

Personally I am stunned and very impressed with just how vastly different this looks to what the team were doing with Batman, with the way that we see characters swing into and out of melee range with acrobatic zeal, marrying shooter and brawler in such a neat way. I have no doubt that shooting will be the main focus a lot of the time, but if the team have found a way to force us into some tight one-on-one bat-to-alien encounters for certain types of enemies, this might be a step up even from what the best Arkham combat sections wanted from us. Additionally, this vast array of movement options really makes the open world feel more like a free sandbox than we've seen from Rocksteady in the past. Gone are the instanced-feeling rooftop fights wherein enemies refused to leave their little battle area and would just pointedly forget about Bruce if he so much as slightly left their elevation level. Braniac's troops scale buildings, leap gaps in single bounds, and just keep the action mobile at all times, which I only imagine makes it all the more satisfying to jump from rooftop-to-rooftop squashing them like bugs. The game looks like a blast!

What we haven't seen any of in this trailer, and I see this as a real surprise, is the way that all of this comes together in the teamwork the game seems to promote. We already know that this is going to be the first Arkham universe game to support co-operative play, with each player taking up a different member of Task Force X, but we've yet to see, or even be told, what the benefit will be of playing in a team. Are there going to be powers and abilities that work best in unison? Will King Shark make for good crowd control moves whilst Deadshot cleans up with aggressive DPS? Is there going to be any form of group combo moves to encourage people to fight side-by-side rather than just zooming off to their own corners of the map and going on minion killing competitions like Gimli and Legolas?  Funnily enough, the very context of the Suicide Squad means that either eventuality, teamwork or asynchronous cooperation, would fit the style of the narrative just fine; I just want to know what to expect.

But right now the team seems focused in proving to us that the game can work fine for their established demographic, single players, which suits a lonely guy like me just fine. Although as an expansion on that point, we haven't actually seen any two Suicide Squad members on the screen at the same time in gameplay yet. (With the potential exception of one shot where King Shark is using his turret and we see some extra bullets that look like they might have come from off-screen, but it's hard to confirm) It makes me a bit confused. Are we actually going to be able to fight as a team outside of Co-op play, or is single player going to be exercise in: 'pick the one operative who's going to handle this objective entirely by themselves'? Honestly, the vibe I'm picking up right now makes this game almost not feel like an open world game at all, but rather like some sort of mission based objective regurgitator, although apparently there is going to be openness in the game according to reports. So maybe that just doesn't expand to include teammate AI? Or Rocksteady just aren't ready to show it off yet? (I'd imagine programming helpful Co-op AI that intelligently operates such a wide array of movement options is anything but easy.)

From here on out the big focus that I think we all want to see, although which I wouldn't at all be upset if it isn't touched on until the official launch, is how the boss fights are going to play out. Rocksteady have set themselves a tough precedent with some of the great boss fights from the Arkham series, such as both Mister Freeze fights, Origin's Deathstroke duel, Ra's Al Ghul's mindtrip, Killer Croc's sewer stealth mission and Poison Ivy's plant titan whilst disappointing us with some iconically bad boss fights too, Deathstoke's Arkham Knight fight, Arkham Knight's own fight and whatever that Joker thing was supposed to be at the end of Asylum. Bringing the bulk of the mainline Justice League as boss fights is going to be it's own brand of challenging, with inevitable highs and lows, but I hope for at least one series iconic battle akin to the level of Mister Freeze. And let me just put in my bet right now that the Superman fight is going to suck. I just feel it in my skin.

I don't think I've always been onboard with the Suicide Squad game, a part of me think it's too ambitious to work and another part is just scared of Rocksteady sullying the good name of the Arkham games, but after seeing this gameplay I feel somewhat reassured. It looks a lot of fun, honestly, and though I suspect the world isn't going to be as fleshed out and dripping with detail, references and mood as the Arkham games enjoyed, there's nothing inherently lacking in what I've glimpsed at so far. Whatsmore, and this may be getting ahead of myself, I see this as fertile ground for expansion in the future because with this approach to character design any DLC character is going to significantly change up how it feels to play the game in a manner similar to how Borderland 2 used to function; making any theoretical DLC characters absolute must-buys. Am I saying this to try and will-into-existence a John Cena voiced, James Gunn written, Peacemaker DLC? Yes, yes- please god, yes.

Is Arkham's driven narrative it's biggest problem?

Maybe Batman needs a rest every once and a while...

It's been a very long time since the Arkham series of Batman games have been relevant, so I haven't really had the excuse to talk about them; but with the impending release of two new Batman games, one directly related to the series and another inspired by it, I feel it's time to talk about the little bits which made up the greatest Batman games of all time. Although this wasn't all that inspired this particular blog, for you see I came across something which made me critically think about a key feature that all Arkham games share in a new light. It was actually a article covering some details about one of those new games in fact, Gotham Knights, which will change up a great many staples one has come to expect from their Batman games. As the article put it, the game would be 'fixing a common criticism of the Arkham games' by setting it's gameplay over a series of days rather than across one hectic night, and that got me to thinking; is Arkham's pacing one of it's biggest problems?

First let me specify what I'm talking about; in every single one of the popular Arkham games all of the action of the game, from the tutorial through to the post game, takes place on the same night which in which the game started. Of course, the series does shift days with different entries (and even years for some games) but every event in the main story will occur in roughly the same six hour stretch, with some games even noting the progression of the narrative as being concurrent with the progression of night. The developers play this up too, by having the battle damage system on Batman's suit which I positively adore, wherein the further you go into the game the more the Batsuit gets scuffed up. The wear and tear of this one particularly crazy night for Batman is written all over his person and although the legend never becomes tired (how could he, he's Batman) the bruises, scratches, bulletholes, popping poisoned veins and just destroyed gauntlets, all convey that sense beautifully.

But when we actually compare this to the way Batman's antics usually go in his many depictions on TV, film and in the comics, this is actually rather stand-out. Batman isn't usually the one to go duke out with every-single one of his villains in a single night of pugilism. I mean it does happen sometimes, sure, but for every single game to take place on that premise it does stretch the idea a little thin now that I come to think about it. The idea of having to fight one's entire rogue's gallery simultaneously is a pretty momentous one, but when you're literally doing that every other week it certainly does make Batman look a little overpowered, which has never been the idea when it comes to the Caped Crusader. But then if this is the case, why do all the video games thusfar circle around this idea? Well there's a few reasons.

Firstly come the convenience of it all, as Rocksteady themselves voiced when making Arkham City (as I recall) they weren't making a Bruce Wayne game, they wanted to make a Batman game, and Batman famously only usually comes out at night. Thus if the game takes place in the same night then there's no logistical transition that the team needs to figure out. Then there's the fact that with gaming, and the ability for adventure games to be as long as they really need to be, the team have the time and space to fit in these several villain storylines without the story feeling stretched at all. In fact, for gaming audiences we usually defer to the ideal of 'the more the merrier', as it were. Finally, and most resoundingly, when every single event is concurrent and not broken up by the passing of the idea, it creates a pace and rhythm that rides out to the final beat of the game. Pacing is a huge tool when it comes to storytelling and learning how to master it can be the difference between a breakneck adventure and a chilled stroll across action set-peices.

In fact, I keep coming back to the idea of the 'Pace' as likely being the key reason behind this design choice, maybe not even consciously, but it's influence is there. When Batman starts his night, whether that be through rolling up to Arkham Asylum or being thrown into Arkham City, a rubber band is set into the ground. From that point forth, as he unravels the mystery of his environment and get's deeper into the various factions involved or enters the sights of yet another assassin, the elastic band gets stretched, and for every moment Batman is active that tension is wound back. Breaking that up at any moment, even through a quick cutscene which shows of Bruce doing his day-to-day so that the player can get back to the action, immediately let's that rubberband snap back and makes it so that the narrative has to build up that tension and pacing all the way from the beginning again. Turning away from that and doubling down on the chaos of the one night allows for the tension to build into a towering crescendo where Batman's ultimate duels feel as weighty as they should, because they've been appropriately built up.

On the flipside; Gotham Knights approach of turning the events to more of a day-by-day affair does a good job of evoking the episodic nature of Comic books and really make the player feel like they're setting into the everyday life of a hero. As the overall story literally frames itself with Batman's protegees rising up to take his mantle, this neatly fits that mould as we see Barbara Gordon, and the Robins fill that mammal-shaped hole. This also allows the developers to simulate the daily lives of the citizens of Gotham which is something that we have, inexplicably, never got out of a Batman game before. Arkham City took place in an entire chunk of the City turned into a prison, Arkham Origins was on the same night as a blizzard warning, encouraging citizens to stay indoors, and Arkham Knight took place at a time when the city was getting bombarded with threats from a lunatic in a scarecrow costume; I wouldn't want to poke my head out the front door either!

Now to be clear there is no single better way to tell a story between the approach of many different days and a single night, in fact the 'man on fire' style of storytelling generally isn't done too much anymore, as it was done to death a while back. I'd say that John Wick was probably the best recent iteration of "All the events happening within a breath of each other." I think that Gotham Knights approach does fit the game a lot better, given that our villain appears to be The Court of Owls; A mysterious cabal of Gotham elites who specialise on being in the shadows and behind other schemes. Treated right this could even be as climatic as the Arkham games, it's all just a matter of execution.

In conclusion, I don't think that the narrative design of the Arkham series is at all one of it's problems, like that article would suggest, but rather one of it's strengths. But as this upcoming new title isn't even an Arkham game, why it's hardly the end of the world if that game frames it's narrative a little differently. (I welcome the diversity) When it's all said and done I will undoubtedly miss the whole 'progressive suit damage' as the story goes on, as well as the way that the environments you traversed seemed to become more chaotic as everything falls apart, but it's not going to ruin my day or anything. I yet remain excited for Gotham Knights and reverent of the Arkham series that helped spawn it.