Suicide Squad Is An Absolute Mess

[Music] well it's finally here the long awaited finale to rock steady's Arkham series with Suicide Squad a game which will undoubtedly treat the franchise with the kind of respect and grab a tus that deserves you stupid a series known for its flowing melee combat vibrant environments to explore and it's loving attention to detail to watered Source material so yeah what a great idea it was to turn it into a flashy third person shooter with a completely different cast of characters who are all introduced to kill off the series literally and metaphorically task force act your new mission is to kill the Justice League yeah so you probably already heard by now but Suicide Squad isn't very good it's a master class on how to not design a combat Loop featuring some of the absolute worst visual clutter I think I've ever seen in a video game along with serving as A Treatise on how to absolutely ruin the dynasty of one of Gaming's most beloved characters and franchises don't sweat it Batman doesn't kill people the whole thing takes place a few years after Arkham Knight and the premises that super villain and all around ass white Brainiac has invaded Earth setting up shop in Metropolis and brainwashing the members of the Justice League I'm in the middle of Recon braia let's walk talk having already successfully turned Green Lantern Superman and Batman to make matters worse The Flash is also captured early on in the game too with Wonder Woman being the only one able to evade capture but she's off on the side there doing her own thing this is a hall for Heroes not you so apparently the best course of action to deal with the very likely outcome of global Annihilation is for Amanda Waller to get the band back together and stop brainiac's plans which means forming a team comprised of a giant man sh a girl with daddy issues an edge Lord in a knockoff Deathstroke costume and an Australian kangaroo looking ass because you are Australian the first 20 or 30 minutes of the game is a bit of a prologue showing how all of these guys get banded together and then showing them getting suited up and how they end up in Metropolis to take on this Mammoth task you know that's just what I was going to say and I mean in all fairness like it's not the worst characters they could have used if nothing else king shark Harley Boomerang and Deadshot are kind of well established even for people who aren't really into the comics like myself still though the concept of these guys somehow being able to take down the Justice League is completely laughable and that's a problem because it's the whole point of the story you know in case the title of the game wasn't clue enough brilliant you'll work alongside familiar faces as well like a reimagined poison ivy and the Penguin who craft upgrades and weapons for you along the way it's your lucky day with the whole base of operations being set up inside the former Hall of Justice I've seen it on TV it's the Hall of Justice meanwhile at the Hall of Justice and there's going to be a whole lot of people talking trash about the writing in the premise and to be honest a lot of that stuff's going to be true but I got to say that even still like I was surprised at how much the game actually made me laugh at times the fastest man alive according to all these girlfriends because despite all the bad stuff and there's a whole lot of bad stuff there's still some genuinely funny character moments here and there a big part of which comes from the character modeling and the animations which really has to be some of the absolute best stuff I've seen in recent memory and some of the facial expressions the characters show off during cinematics forms a big part of that humor reminds me watching The Naked Gun movies when you'd get those reaction shots of people looking around the room awkwardly after Leslie neelson said something out of left field uh CB uh no oh dut Irish my father was from Wales Harley isn't even as remotely annoying as I expected her to be either and it even addresses her history a few times as well where she directly references events from the Arkham games and how she's had to deal with all that stuff over time once a promising young psychiatrist she returned to the Asylum to terrorize it as Joker's sidekick every girl has a face they regret wall is played by Deborah Wilson who I think at this point has basically been scanned into every single video game ever made and she plays a pretty good version of war the 2 being this Stone Cold badass who's going to do anything she can for the so-called greater good this is a microb bomb injector from our friends at leor stick it in your Target's neck and it's good night I like her I even found Boomerang to be a funny guy at times which really is at odds with the secondhand cringe I often get in most other video games where there's an Australian character who almost always comes across as an absolute CW pay back your little but it's not the way the game handles this main cast that's going to piss people off instead that's really going to come from the way that it handles the Justice League these resistors just don't respect martial law I do want to say though that the premise is at least interesting even if the whole what if Superman was evil thing has been done to death but I mean still man seeing these iconic hero brainwashed and acting like total dick bags was at least different enough to keep me intrigued the way they roduced Batman was actually kind of [Music] awesome go get it flash it's like a sequence early on here where you're in a museum and the power's gone out and Batman's taking at the members of the squad one by one even outright toying with them along the way and what's basically going on here is that you're seeing what it would look like during the Predator mode from the Arkham games if you were seeing it from the perspective of someone Batman was hunting there's there even a joke in there someone where where Harley mentions that people should avoid standing under gargoyles my guys picked off one by one this is all feeling real familiar so they knew what they were doing here and it kind of works as a fun self-aware way of introducing the guy and establishing just how much of a badass he is but then it's like they just don't know where to take him from there and despite the squad royally messing brainiacs operations Z we don't even see him until the second and final time which is when you have to fight him and it's like about all that can muster up there is just recycling the same idea all over again that is avoiding Batman in a pitch black area yeah emphasis on Pitch Black before a metaphorical boss fight which is absolutely awful as for the fights against the other members well that just comes across as kind of lazy writing and it always comes down to the squad conveniently finding some kind of Gadget that's somehow able to weaken that Justice League member just long enough for them to do share a bit of damage the device will allow you to destabilize his constructs and and render Lantern vulnerable to attack whoa whoa slow down Egghead which explains I guess why they become suddenly vulnerable to bullets and makes them stand still for 5 seconds at a time at least for the Flash and the green L anyway as for the Superman fight well let me just say hope you're not going to try and beat that with a controller overall the story just really comes across like bad fanfiction man really pissing in the faces of all these beloved characters and forcing us to watch them act and ultimately get treated like without any real resolution these are the absolute worst possible versions of The Flash the Green Lantern Batman and Superman and they all go to their desks here without ever really reconciling for their actions I don't know the whole thing just left me feeling super miserable and I don't think it was the premise itself it's just the way they've handled it which could have been a damn sight better maybe they'll resolve that in the upcoming DLC because Lord knows man they've got enough of that stuff already planned get him now as for the game play you'll be completing various missions for warlight and the arus organization and Metropolis is a big city man which means getting around it it's going to take a bit of time with each member of the squad having their own means of traversal to instantly set them apart Harley for instance controls the most like the other Arkham games using a combination of a grappling hook to pull herself up to the side of buildings along with being able to swing from a combat drone that hovers in the air Deadshot on the other hand's got a handy jetp pack which really gives you complete autonomy of movement you know as long as it's got enough charge but then you can also cheat your way into a second wind with this thing to propel yourself that little bit further before finally needing to touch grass literally to reset it I had really thought about that Boomerang however is probably the clunkiest one out of all four using some kind of ghetto speed Force tech which teleports him short distances which is cool but it also feels kind of clunky zipping you ahead in short burst as opposed to feeling like the fluid movement that the others have and it's specifically for that reason that I think shark is the most fun in that regard because controlling this guy is basically like playing those old Incredible Hulk games we can make these massive leaps to clear large distances along with running up the side of buildings and slamming into the ground with your fists sir I just found him to be the most fun to play in general and there's just something about a guy built like Haku the wrestler with a shark for aead and a fast firing minigun that's universally enjoyable to players seing Metropolis the prologue sequence early on I guess is supposed to help you decide which character you want to play as but if you're playing solo you can swap out to another member at any time assuming you're not in the middle of a mission you got something and what a quickly started to realize is that outside of the traversal there's really not that much of a difference between any of these characters during combat this is on the surface just a pretty basic third person shooter where you run around slide jump aim down sights and shoot and throw grenades certain characters can only equip certain weapons but the actual combat Loop is always going to be the same regardless of who you're playing as you just shoot enemies with whatever gun you've got when they're at a distance and when they're close enough you can melee them keep the from BL a Mele attack is often going to knock an enemy up into the air which then sets them up to be air juggled with your ranged weapon and that's about it I mean there's no combos or unlockable moves like we had in the Arkham games all just replace with a pretty generic third person shooter and one twoo that even lacks all the other basic features you'd expect in a modern shooter you know like being able to take cover for instance because yeah man it's not like in a game set outside in a massive City where you get attacked from all angles that you'd ever want to take cover is it that was sarcasm the only real depth to the melee combat is that enemies with shields or armor have to be meleed first before you can actually damage them and certain enemy attacks can be counted which is made extremely clear by a giant icon that flashes up on the screen and speaking of shields suicide squad has a really weird way of handling this too because the main way to get your Shield back is to shoot an enemy in the legs in the hope of stunning them at which point it leaves them open for a shield Harvest which it's kind of like the glory kills in dur maternal where at which point if you melee them again they're going to drop pickups to refill your Shield only this can be really problematic during combat especially if enemies are teleporting and shifting all over the place well just if the other Squad members are killing them before you've even had the chance honestly it's just such a weird mechanic and in any other game they would have just added in regenerating Shields and called it a day so I think the real reason they've done it is just to put it into play for the boss fights because in those moments it forces you to actually use your counterattacks and learn their patents and during those moments that's the only way to get your Shields back seriously otherwise you could have just run away for 10 seconds to get a full recharge which would have totally removed any challenge that those battles had all up though when it comes to the combat mechanics I mean that's about as deep as it gets and I feel like once you've played for 20 minutes you'll have pretty much seen all there is and got the gist of it got the gist and I can't help but think too that this really would have worked well as a single player game with each member having their own strengths and unique abilities like maybe you'd have to swap out to shark for the tougher brute enemies for instance and then back to Deadshot to deal with the snipers we lacking Grand Theft Auto 5 you know we'd play the driving missions as Franklin and leave all the shooting to Michael and Trevor each character has their own skill tree which is just this messy wall of graphics and meaningless text and despite all these numbers and percentages looking quite complex all of these characters share the same exact basic skills with each of them getting a traversal kill which wipes out enemies in a small area along with the suicide strike which is a focus powerful attack against a single enemy going out of fles get a wle on and yeah like the animation might differ for each character but it's still the exact same move regardless of who you're playing as even the so-called Squad ultimate which I still haven't unlocked is the exact same for each member they do introduce grenades at one point and you can eventually unlock afflictions which Elemental effects like ice and poison that can be applied to a bunch of enemies at once but again like every single Squad member gets the same tools so what's the point seriously I mean look overall there's nothing bad with this stuff and it functions mechanically how it's supposed to you know like 99% of the time I never had any serious bugs or issues with hit detection and the combat works as it's supposed to but it really is an absolute example of style over substance and no matter how many flashy effects they cram onto the screen it's not going to cover that up what your last task force d don't look I already did no I won't eventually they start adding in all these tougher enemies kind of but you still deal with these more or less the exact same way and the tactics which overcome the game's weaker enemy types still works against the bigger tougher ones you're going to see in the end game I will say one thing though and that's that in the game's defense it does run amazingly well once I messed around with the settings a bit and tweak things I was able to get it running at 144 FPS on the maxed out settings without it ever really dipping even during moments of utter chaos as for the city itself well yeah it looks decent enough I guess and the whole futuristic Art Deco Vibe Metropolis has got going on makes for an interesting backdrop I will say though that the time of day and the weather can greatly affect how the city looks with it even genuinely looking last gen During certain conditions plus it's also completely devoid of any activity with only the odd enemy patrols really offering up anything interesting but presentation wise overall it's definitely pretty decent and yeah I know we shouldn't be praising Developers for making sure a game runs smoothly but the optimization is definitely worth mentioning the problem though is just with the insane amount of visual clutter which really brings the whole thing down and the amount of stuff popping up on the screen here it has to break some kind of record I mean it seems every single into of the screen just has some kind of information overlaid but health or damage numbers counter flashes an ability power bar or meter that's filling up along with like a dozen explosions and other visual effects it's like the scene at the end of 2001 of Space Odyssey when Dave gets pulled through that Vortex and starts tripping balls think of every hand of their gun in yours penguin said you and this stuff is bad enough when you're playing solo I can't even imagine what it's going to be like when you're playing with three other people one of the first encounters against the flash I'm certain is going to induce seizures in at least one person it's like being stuck inside a tumble dry while you're dosed up on LSD the enemy countering some of these missions has to be in the dozens and with all of these guys being on different rooftops on the street level and then climbing up the side of buildings it just makes it absolute pandemonium it honestly reminded me of playing prototype back on the PS3 we you've been that similar large city environment where all hell was breaking loose and that's what it really does feel like here man just this barrage of all at once hearkens back to what I said earlier too about playing this with a controller and I genuinely can't imagine trying to play through this without a mouse and a keyboard because the erratic movement of some of the enemy types is hard enough to track as it is let alone trying to do that with thumbsticks despite all of that though I didn't really find Suicide Squad all that challenging outside of a few moments here and there and if you're playing solo like I did the AI seems to be capable enough to lend a helping hand without ever really stealing a thunder I do find it really odd though how the game's clearly been designed around Co-op play but then it also seems to encourage playing Solo with certain Squad members favoring certain Missions at which point swapping out to place them is going to net you more XP than the others you all want to end up a poly plated spring mix you better put me in charge and let me talk to IES first but then even when you're playing solo it has all the worst components of a live service game that being this ridiculously tedious mission complete screen you have to sit through every single time you finish one which just feels so out of place when you're playing solo such power is best left with me along with of course the fact that the game is always online meaning you're at the mercy of the server as to if you're even going to be able to play in the first place more Firepower and aspirational power and what I found the weirdest though is that you can't even change your gear during a mission come again which is just this incredibly bizarre mechanic so if you're stuck in a fight for instance and don't have the best weapon Shield or grenade for the job well then I'm sorry to say man but you're basically I was in a situation where i' basically brought a shotgun to an assault rifle fight if that makes sense and I didn't even have the basic convenience of being able to rectify this so what it basically meant was that I had to accept my defeat quit out to the main menu just so I could modify my load out and then of course because this is an online game the best it could do was restart me at the beginning of that entire mission you know from 20 minutes prior because apparently checkpoints St exist either and I got to say like I genuinely cannot think of a single other game that has this limitation outside of taking down the Justice League you got to complete a whole bunch of missions speckled across the city and a lot of these are just the same two or three formats repeated over and over like one where you've got to destroy a bunch of incubators quickly exploit this incubator's weakness there's another one where you need to charge up these energy pulses by collecting Essence left from falling enemies their tfx just off capacity well how about this Banger here man we've got to escort a slowly moving vehicle through town which feels like something out of an old PS3 game it's actually kind of funny to say that because I remember that infamous on the PlayStation 3 had a bunch of missions like this one too and it's the same kind of thing again here where they needlessly drive like they're stuck in first gear another common one is where you'll need to evacuate civilians from a hostile area firstly by clearing the bad guys away and then carrying them back to a nearby bus for extraction throwing explosive the way the game tries to mix these up is by adding in these bizarre limitations to the combat like they might make it so you can only damage enemies through critical hits or that the enemies can only be damaged when they're Afflicted which really though is just a bit of a means to hide the fact that they're repeating the same missions over and over then once you've dealt with all of the Justice League the final component of the game is taken on Brainiac but then you can only do this after grinding for a specific resear Source named promethium that then allows you to travel to the universe that one of his iterations is hiding in and you do this by yet again completing more side missions across the city and then when you've got enough of that stuff you can travel through the Multiverse to kill off one iteration of Brainiac with there apparently being 13 in total and what is he Doctor Who or something good job taking out the trash tfx keep in mind as well that this was only after 12 hours of game time which more or less means that in half a day I'd managed to kill three metahumans the world's greatest detective not to mention one of the most powerful super villains in the entire DC Universe wa wo slow down Egghead obviously though it's not the final iteration because apparently there's 12 versions still out there which are going to be released in upcoming DLC until that stuff comes out though well I don't know I guess you can grind for more promethium and complete all the side missions with your buddies you know assuming you've still got any left congratulations ja for that was the kind of extreme high-risk operation you were made for at the the end of the day Suicide Squad isn't quite the dumpster fire that some people are going to make it out to be but having said that like they still could have done a hell of a lot better than what we've gotten some very talented people have worked on how some of these characters look and it does have some genuine moments of liy throughout the campaign they're in my size but then it also has some of the absolute messiest combat I think I've ever seen and just a whole bunch of repetitive boring and uninspired missions all of which comes at the expense of killing off some of DC's most beloved characters I mean look man I'm not even a huge Comics guy and the way some of these people get treated pissed even me off and I can't even imagine how some of the real nerds are going to be feeling all of them all I can say is Batman deserved better we all deserved better but you know what it at least let me leap tall buildings in a single bound there's a 7t tall man shark so I don't know I guess it wasn't a total wrof Sur up because you are Australian [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: GmanLives

Views: 484,376

Keywords: suicide squad kill the justice league, suicide squad kill the justice league review, kill the justice league, harley quinn, suicide squad, suicide squad review, suicide squad game, suicide squad game review, the flash, green lantern, king shark, suicide squad preview, suicide squad review game, suicide squad kill the justice league gameplay, suicide squad batman, suicide squad game ending, xbox, ps5, xbox one, gmanlives, gggmanlives, rocksteady, batman arkham, kevin conroy

Id: DdjTevvqI5s

Length: 22min 26sec (1346 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024