(logo dinging) - [Falcon] It is taken a
really long time for Rocksteady to follow up their highly
acclaimed "Batman: Arkham" series. Nine Years to be precise, and it's not going well
behind-the-scenes drama, angry fans, server issues, everything
you'd expect to see in a highly divisive launch
is here and accounted for. There's a lot of anger getting
thrown around at the moment and unfortunately it's
almost entirely justified. There is a lot to talk
about with this game. Hi folks, it's Falcon
and today on Gameranx, we're gonna ask the question
just what the hell is going on with "Suicide Squad:
Kill The Justice League." Before we get going at all, I gotta give you a spoiler warning. I'm gonna spoil the hell
outta the game up to and including the ending. If that's a thing that matters to you, the X is the thing you should
probably click right now, but I think you're gonna
wanna stick around, 'cause you know a game is gonna be trouble when even the previews
from major gaming websites are like universally negative. Here's the thing, among
Enthusiast circles, the game has been a
punching bag for years now after endless delays and major leaks, which have all turned out
to be pretty much spot on in their implications. People have been ready
and set to hate this game. Rocksteady's previous
games, the "Arkham" series, are highly-curated
single player adventures with tons of content,
and not just any content, unique, good content, and a bunch of creative
shifts in gameplay. The stealth system
upended the stealth genre, turning you from prey to predator, and the combat system was copied by just about everybody else. It cannot be understated
just how influential the "Arkham" games were. I don't know what's
more important to state that they're easily the
best Batman games ever made, or that they're some of the
best games of their generation. So to go from that to an online only, Games as a Service co-op
shooter about grinding for loot and collecting daily rewards is just not what anyone
wanted as a follow up. And for a lot of people, it's
not just a disappointing turn from a previously very good developer, it's a straight up betrayal. Is that a little hyperbolic? Yes. I'm not gonna claim it's not, but also it's how people are reacting and I think you can at least
see where they're coming from. I mean, the name itself is
enough to set people off, "Kill The Justice League, the premise alone custom built
to make certain people upset. This is a game where you
play as The Suicide Squad and your mission is to
kill the main members of the Justice League. All your favorite heroes, Batman, Superman, The
Flash, Green Lantern, you gotta kill 'em, it's on the tin. In my opinion, actually not
a bad premise for a game, like that has the potential to be the best boss
rush of all time, right? But they explicitly say this
isn't the Arkham Universe, and that sours a lot of people's fun. Also, the heroes are
victims of mind control. Aliens are controlling them, so kill them, they're evil now, but
they're not really evil, but you still gotta kill him. Go ahead, kill him. And I'm not gonna say this
premise could not have worked with a deft hand at the writer's desk, but you'll get what I'm
alluding to in a moment when I get into the story. Unless we get a full on expose of just what was going
on behind the scenes, we just don't know why the game turned out the way it did. We know the game had a rocky development, hell, the two founders of the studio, Jamie Walker and Sefton Hill
left the company in 2022 while the game was still being worked on. When the founders leave the studio, that's kind of rarely a good sign. But they didn't just leave, they left mid-development in the game, and the warning lights come on there, if they come on anywhere. On top of the internal
drama that was reported, the studio suffered a
number of high profile leaks that all but spoiled the entire story well before the game even came out. Most of the time these leaks sort of lead to misunderstandings, misinformation, about what a game story actually is. But "Suicide Squad," no. Everyone was right to not
like what they were seeing. Because of the live
service nature of the game, basically the entire story is told through long, not great, cutscenes. This isn't like "Arkham" where major story events
happen in the game. Everything story related
outside of boss fights is told through cut scenes. So it's easy to piece together the story without missing a lot, and the result is not great. Then after all this, something happened that
nobody could have anticipated. Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman, not just from the
"Arkham" games previously, but also from "The Animated Series," he died tragically in 2022, which made the game
one of his final roles, which a murderous, mind-controlled Batman, who gets clowned on and
insulted by The Suicide Squad is not the best way to go out. So it made it so the story
wasn't just bad in people's eyes in a lot of ways it felt disrespectful and an insult that the
character Conroy played for about 30 years. Here's the thing, I don't know that this controversy would be quite as fervent if they weren't trying to sell this game as a follow up to the "Arkham" games. If this was some kind of standalone thing about an evil Batman, there'd be some people griping about it, but like this is canon
to the "Arkham: timeline. I think if it hadn't been, the negative voices wouldn't
have been quite so loud, but there is a lot of negativity
surrounding this game, so much so that it makes you think it can't possibly be that bad, right? This is Rocksteady we're talking about. These guys know what they're doing. This is not the same Rocksteady that made the "Arkham" games though. On the first day of Early Access, which was only available to people who dropped 100 bucks on the
ultimate edition of the game. Go figure. The entire game was
inaccessible for most of the day because of a bizarre bug that started new players
off with 100% completion. The devs were already on the defensive. They gave $20 of in-game
currency as compensation. So players could buy costumes. Some of these bundles
could cost up to $40, and the game gives you no
way of earning currency or store items in game. So they're already not
off to a great start. They're also not providing review codes to most major websites, and that's not a good sign. I mean, sometimes you get a "Doom 2016," which also didn't do that, and it turns out to be
like a total banger. Some lunatic in the
marketing department is like, "Let's make people think
it's gonna be be bad, and then it's awesome." And it works because it's awesome. I'll go ahead and say I don't think that the marketing industry is usually filled with
creative lunatics like that. And most of the time
withholding codes like this, it's because the publisher doesn't have a lot of
confidence in the game. Here's the thing though, the game I played wasn't total disaster, but it's a pretty disappointing one. It's got a lot of controversial elements that are sure to rile up both Batman fans, superhero fans in general, and here's the real kicker in my opinion, anyone who respects good game design, I'm one of these people who
doesn't care about canon. Like if you wanna tell
an interesting story and it breaks canon, and does something even
disrespectful to characters, I'm cool with that if it
works, but it doesn't work. But even if we can't bank on that, a game with good game design
that is fun, I don't care. Sadly, this is a game
that has not one, not two, not three, not even four. Do you want me to keep counting? I'm not going to. I'm just gonna say how many, seven. It has seven main story
missions where you defend a car while it slowly drives down a road, and enemy spawn in and attack it. I want to reiterate, this is not the Rocksteady
that made the "Arkham" games. I don't know what kind of
staff has turned over there, but it ain't the same company. Now I will say in terms of
control and world design, Rocksteady still knows what they're doing. The minute to minute
gameplay feels pretty good, and the small chunk of Metropolis this game takes place in is fantastic, and it's full of these
cool little details, but everything else feels lacking, because the game's focus is being an open world loop grinding mill. The entire story is
basically one long tutorial for the endgame, and by the time the credits roll, the entire "Kill The
Justice League" premise feels like an afterthought. It's a game that could have
easily just been its own thing, but it really lays it on thick with the "Arkham" references
right from the start. The entire intro to the Squad is an extended riff on the opening to "Batman: Arkham Asylum"
with the same shots, same music, everything. Later on, one of the best
sequences in the game might I add, has you sneak through a
Batman museum with callbacks and references to all the "Arkham" games, and it does a pretty good
job recapping the plot. The game wants to make
it 100% clear that yes, this is the next game in the Arkhamverse. It is legitimately interesting
to finally see what happened to Batman after the teaser at
the end of "Arkham Knight." But then you remember that, oh yeah, the Batman everyone likes
is an alien zombie now, and he's gotta die. It's great hearing Kevin
Conroy in the role again and it's actually kind of amusing seeing him ham it up as a villain, but some of his scenes
have really set people off. And let's be clear here, the treatment of Batman
isn't the only part of the story making people mad. It's pretty much the
entire Justice League. They all have awkward ignoble fates that are bound to rile up a fanboy or two. But Batman really gets it the worst. There's a scene where
we get the double whammy of him giving a heartfelt message to the rest of the Batfamily about how to defeat him and
his friends if they turn evil and The Suicide Squad laugh at it, and fast forward through the message, and oh yeah, you could see
Robin's bloody mask on the floor, implying that Batman killed
his adopted son, Robin. It's likely the rest of
the Batfamily are dead too, meaning his own proteges
couldn't beat Batman, but you four idiots
somehow managed to do it. After you engage Batman
in a horror segment that goes on too long, after you beat Batman
with the game's weirdly, anti-climactic battle, you haul his knocked-out body
over to the Earth-Two version of Lex Luther, which by the way, this universe's version got his heart ripped out by The Flash. It's just another one of these games, shocking for its own sake. Scenes that doesn't
really amount to a lot. So you put Batman in a shrink ball and you can play catch by throwing him to other Suicide Squad members because funny, I guess, that's funny? And then in Luther's lab, Batman starts to say the iconic stuff from the opening of "Batman:
The Animated Series," before getting poked with a needle, and making a cartoon falsetto noise. A better written game
could probably pull off this kind of dark comedy tonal whiplash, but a better written game, it's not. The other most infamous scene is probably Batman's death. The Squad take Batman to the park as bait to confront Superman. They banter for a bit, nothing all that interesting is said, and Harley shoots Batman in the head. Like, I'll say this again, it doesn't necessarily bother
me personally as badly, but I get why it bothers people. You play it as him in
the three other games, and oh yeah, it's Batman. We're not really super
used to seeing Batman take a bullet to the brain, and having it actually mean something beyond you did the action
sequence incorrectly and have to start over. I don't really know what the
tone is supposed to be here. Is it sad? Is it funny? Is it, I mean it is shocking,
but maybe not quite as bad as when Captain Boomerang
whips his dick out to pee on The Flash,
which by the way happens, and also everyone compliments
him on the size of his dick, which nice, what the
hell is going on here? Of course it's, it's also likely that none of these
characters are actually dead in terms of the game's story. There are just enough
clues here to suggest that they're all still alive somehow, either kept alive by
Brainiac, or they're clones, or they're replaced with
alternate universe doubles or some crap like that. It just doesn't fix the not funny and awkward death scenes, even if it gets undone later in DLC. We still had to watch a scene where Batman gets shot in
the head on a park bench and it's not really played
for laughs or for pathos. Like it seems to not really matter, and that's the weirdest part about it. At that point, it just seems kind of like they're trying to wrap things up. Overall the story is a mess, and that's where all the
easiest outrage comes from, but it's hardly the
only problem of the game that fans are pointing out. Another issue is, well the graphics. I'm not gonna come out, and
say that this is an ugly game. It can look pretty damn
nice sometimes even. And on PlayStation 5 at
least it runs silky smooth. But when you directly
compare certain aspects of it to "Arkham Knight," it's tempting to wonder what
the hell they've been doing the last nine years. Like "Arkham Knight" came out in 2015, that is nine years ago. That's almost a full decade,
and it holds up extremely well. The rain-soaked city streets
still look amazing now, today the character
models still look great. You can clearly see there's
a difference in technology when you compare the facial animation in "Arkham Knight" to "Suicide Squad." But the differences are not so distinct in a lot of other ways. Take for example, a panning shot at night. In "Arkham Knight," the world is vibrant
and beautiful at night. While in Suicide Squad just
feels barren and empty. A flat gray-color tinted city. During the day, the city
looks much, much better, but ironically it actually
gets uglier and uglier as the game progresses. It's cool to see the city
transform from a modern metropolis to a dusty post apocalypse disaster area, but the end result is
you take a beautiful city and make it ugly. Also, the idea of ugly
here is kind of bland, just brown and gray, and PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 era-ish. Not necessarily in terms of quality but definitely in terms of color palette. It's not something I
wanna focus too much on because for the most part this is actually a good looking game. But if you're making the follow up to what's one of the best
looking games of all time, still a decade after its release, you're gonna get comparisons, and with this game, they are
just not always flattering. And you know, you've probably
been waiting to say this because I am me. You know, this was coming. If there is one thing that really, truly drags this game down,
it's the live service element. It's why the gameplay has been
flattened out into a shooter where most of the game is played by completing these basic
multiplayer-style objectives in a small open world map. The story negatively affected as well. The need to sell the endgame to the player completely
undermines the narrative in one of the most
bizarrely terrible finales I have ever experienced. So I mentioned you used Batman
to lure out Superman, right? Well, after, that you beat Superman, and the game immediately jumps into introducing the actual villain behind the whole invasion, Brainiac. But instead of setting up the epic finale where you infiltrate the mothership and take this guy down once for all, the game just stops all
the momentum of the story to sell you on the endgame. Seriously, my jaw was on the floor when this was all happening. Your bird, Falcon, hates
live service shit, right? Hate it, I hate it. And even I was kind of amazed by this, you might be able to suspect
that I've seen quite a bit of live service shit at this point. Like they don't just
sell you on the endgame. The endgame effectively nullifies all of your actions going forward. And I just have to say this, it's almost like they put effort into making it bewilderingly bad. So before you even fight Brainiac, you find out that beating
Brainiac is pointless, 'cause there's 13 of these
guys in different universes, so killing one of 'em doesn't matter. Now in an actual story,
this would be a bluff, for you and your plucky heroes
would come up with some way to defeat 'em once and for all. But this is a live service game, so there's gotta be an endgame. So enjoy endlessly
grinding those Brainiacs right at the finish line. The game removes all the stakes, all the tension from the story and replace it with
the dawning realization that this is what they expect us to keep doing in perpetuity. This is the service that you are intended to live in the live service. It makes the entire final story segment feel completely hollow. And the epic final showdown
with Brainiac number 13, it's just The Flash again, that's how they chose to end the game with a total whimper. Most live service games still managed to have a satisfying enough story. I mean hell, even "The Avengers" game had a proper boss and an ending. But this game does not even
clear that low, low bar. They seriously expect there
to be six distinct seasons with two new Brainiacs each to fight. Will Rocksteady even be around that long. I don't know, but one fight with this guy, that is enough for me. "Suicide Squad" is a game
running across purposes, for people who just want to
grind repetitive missions with their friends. There is some fun to be had here, the movement powers are all pretty great, and the combat generally
does feel good to play, but it's not enough, and it's definitely not "Arkham." Beyond that, it has this
story which gets in the way anytime you feel like
you're starting to have fun, which is rare, because even good gameplay is boring as hell when there's no reason, and that's what my problem
with live service games is, and it's what the problem
with this game is, in my opinion at least. People looking for a proper follow up to Rocksteady's "Arkham"
games are just gonna get mad. There's a bunch of strange
story choices here, and it also obviously doesn't
play like an "Arkham" game. There's some small elements there, and there's even some story things that allude back to the "Arkham" games, that you know, I don't hate, but like the game doesn't
even have a real ending. It's a bizarre game that
mostly left me wondering how this took nine years to make. Development had to have been
rebooted multiple times. That's the only explanation why this brief 10 or so hour story with a pretty small open world
and limited gameplay loop took so long. Even after playing it to completion, I am still wondering
what the hell is going on with "Suicide Squad." I'm sure this is a game that
will have its defenders. Like I said, some elements of the gameplay are actually pretty good, and beyond that, it's just a really
divisive high profile game. So that's gonna happen, but in my opinion, it is just undeniably flawed. As far as live service games go, yeah, there's worse out there both in terms of
monetization and gameplay, but this isn't the game that fans want, like there's a reason people
love the "Arkham" games. Some will say it's the story, but I'm gonna argue
it's not just the story, and given the fact that so
many live service game studios are reporting huge layoffs, and not getting very good earnings, failing to meet expectations, it seems like Rocksteady
is anchoring themselves to a sinking ship. I hope that's not the case, 'cause nobody wants to see
people lose their jobs, and for like this of all things. But Rocksteady could have
avoided this if they didn't make, or rather weren't forced to
make a live service game, 'cause you have to imagine somebody shoved this down
their throats, right? All we wanted was a single
player "Arkham" follow up, that's all you had to do guys, and it's probably all they wanted to do, and yet here we are. That's all for today. Leave us a comment, let
us know what you think. If you like this video, click like, if you're not subscribed,
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for watching this video. I'm Falcon, you can follow
me on Twitter @FalcontheHero. We'll see you next time
right here on Gameranx.
