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Rocksteady Studios’ Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, the teamup shooter video game with the title that describes exactly what happens, announced recently that it will be ending its content updates in January of 2025. The last playable character added to the Squad’s roster is DC’s fan-favorite super-assassin Deathstroke, the guy whose costume vibe was so cool it got Marvel to make their own version, named Deadpool.
Rocksteady ambitiously planned for 13 seasons of content updates, but reception for the Arkhamverse-expanding game apparently did not meet expectations, so as of now, the game’s arc will close with Season Four.
I spent a good part of 2024 with SSKTJL (as it’s known if you’re into the whole brevity thing), and it’s safe to say that I love the game much in the way that Karen O loves you in “Maps,” that is, in a way that “they” don’t. I did in fact record a disco song about it, my first love song centered on a video game. I’ve written several reviews here at NOC expressing affection for what Rocksteady is trying to accomplish with the game, arguing that they are mainly successful, given some baked-in constraints of the live-service game format.
SSKTJL offers an epic story and an uninspiring array of submachine guns. What it has on top of that is a sardonic sense of humor and an intent to satirize the loud and lousy aspects of video game culture. I don’t wish to say “troll,” more like there are marvelous shots fired. Harley Quinn is a queer Dorothy who kills two Wicked Witches (Brainiac-controlled Batman, and Justice-League-infused Brainiac). Perhaps because the Harley-Poison Ivy snugglefest is well-covered in other media, SSKTJL makes it entertainingly weird by reintroducing Poison Ivy as an adolescent kid. Mrs. Freeze is a tank-like Asian lady. Deadshot’s daddy angst expands on the subplot in the films — his daughter, Lawless, is anti-all authoritarian power structures, including gravity. Joker is as charmingly incongruent as he is in all the fighting games, benefiting from a droll voice performance by J.P. Karliak, assuming Mark Hamill’s mantle.
Deathstroke is the formidable countenance we met in Arkham Origins. His design here leans into the ninja swordfighter aspect. I don’t know if it’s intentional or if it’s because I’m just starting his learning curve, but the way he plays is not that slick. His traversal is a little awkward, caught between Harley’s acrobatic Bat-Grappling and Gotham Knights’ odd teleport-dashing. His finishing moves gives the impression of trying really hard to dominate, which may fall under one of SSKTJL’s many meta-jokes about overpowered fantasies and tough-guy posturing in video games.
And the new Elseworld environs, in which you do battle to grind loot, is a medieval castle setting. Because… swords? No wait, it’s a reskinned Smallville, lampooning Superman’s pastoral small-town roots in a cheeky way that evokes the settings of Assassin’s Creed or every game with Dragon in the title. It’s these irreverent cognitively-dissonant choices that set SSKTJL apart from the pack, and make me disappointed to not see nine more variations on Brainiac’s invasion.
Despite, or in anticipation of, audience complaints about the deaths of the DC Alphas, SSKTJL was clearly on the long path to revive the Justice League for what I expected to be a truly awesome final set piece. Whether they manage to jam that arc into a truncated final episode, we’ll see in January. Perhaps the feasiblity of a Kingdom Come-level climax was destined to be undercut by the gun-centric mechanics and the fussy menu-managing. I’ll be happy to be surprised, but at this point I expect a dangling half-resolution, like the finale of V: The TV Series.
SSKTJL remains a very good game if you like the option to play as the queer gal or the Black person while annihilating waves of purple aliens. These are bodies you can choose to be, which is still against the grain in the video game arena. And if you are a DC Comics fans, the story campaign is as good as the DC Universe gets: the Superman-Wonder Woman confrontation is exceptionally great, the script by Sefton Hill, Ian Ball, Ben Schroder, Meredith Ainsworth, Allie Bustion, and the rest of the writing staff hits every comedic, campy, comic-book-cathartic note, and the voice performances by Tara Strong as Harley, Zehra Fazal as Wonder Woman, Jason Isaacs as Brainiac, Omono Okojie as Hack, Bumper Robinson as Deadshot — all merit special mention for understanding the assignment. The cutscenes carry on the tradition established in the Arkham trilogy with audiovisual craft and cinematic flair.
Ironically, or just appropriate to How Things Went In 2024-y, the experiment concludes with Deathstroke/Slade Wilson in OP gruff bro-mode, the guy with an eyepatch. The one archetypal character the SSKTJL roster didn’t have now ends up as the game’s swan song. I kind of thought we’d get his Chinese Imperial Palace skin:
It continues to be an absurd delight to speak with love on a game with all homicidal trigger-words in the title, so I’ll close by saying: if you’re looking for a probably-discounted holiday gift for the gamer who’s a DC kid at heart, I still heartily recommend Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, now with Deathstroke the Terminator.
“]] Rocksteady Studios’ Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, the teamup shooter video game with the title that describes exactly what happens, announced recently that it will be ending its con… Read More