After seven months of radio silence following immense backlash, Rocksteady finally felt ready to return to the spotlight with a new Suicide Squad: KIll The Justice League showcase. However, this new gameplay presentation hasn’t exactly landed as they may have hoped.
Rocksteady’s trilogy of Batman games cemented the studio as one of the very best in the superhero genre. From Arkham Asylum in 2009 through to Arkham Knight in 2015, the British dev team was on a roll without compare.
That momentum hit a screeching halt from that point on, however. Eight years without a full-fledged game release under their belts, many have been eagerly anticipating their next step. Though with the reveal of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and the many live service elements that came along with it, this anticipation swiftly turned to disappointment.
Initially set to release in early 2022, the project has since been hit with multiple delays on the way to its new launch target of February 2, 2024. Most recently, Rocksteady went radio silent throughout 2023 after an immense wave of backlash to its previous deep-dive.
Finally entering the spotlight once again in hopes of winning prospective players over, a new gameplay showcase on November 15 may have only just reminded said players why they were critical in the first place.
Although the Suicide Squad game still carries many of the same hallmarks of Rocksteady’s previous works, being a “story-driven game” with an emphasis on action-packed third-person combat, it’s many of the surrounding features that players aren’t too thrilled about.
Claiming “this is going to be the biggest fall of an acclaimed studio in a long time,” some Twitter users think the pivot to more of a live service model, with microtransactions baked in from day one, could spell doom not just for the game, but Rocksteady as a whole.
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“I don’t know what to think about what I just watched after [you] took a [seven-month] hiatus,” another said on social media. “I don’t want to be negative, but this just looks… Mediocre in every sense,” one more gamer replied.
“Cool, so they basically changed nothing and took none of the criticism to heart,” one Redditor chimed in.
Venturing away from the traditional singleplayer structure, Suicide Squad boasts four playable characters designed with cooperative play in mind. Furthermore, with replayable missions and a loot system throughout, players have to upgrade the villainous squad with incrementally powerful guns along the way.
“Whoever decided to make it a live service game is just rolling the dice,” one fan said on YouTube after watching the 20-minute breakdown.
Looks like garbageThis game going to be a massive flopGAAS games SUCKno one asked for this
— WarhammerDave (@dave_warhammer) November 15, 2023
Despite years of delays and immense backlash online, it appears Rocksteady remains steadfast in its goals to deliver a game as a service, one they hope players will stick with in the long run. With battle passes planned, new missions set to debut post-launch, and even the possibility of new playable characters down the line, it’s clearly a project the devs hope to support for years to come.
Whether this early criticism will be quelled upon its February 2, 2024 release is anyone’s guess for now. We’ll just have to wait and see how things pan out early next year when the Suicide Squad tries to kill the Justice League.