It turns out that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is better than we expected. And it is normal that expectations were low: lately, the video game sector has gone through very bad experiences that mix great intellectual properties with games as a service. How can we forget Marvel's Avengers of 2020?
In this case, the development of the game is carried out by Rocksteady Studios, the company responsible for the Batman: Arkham saga. This inspires a certain confidence: it is a respected studio and Batman is one of the best adaptations of the great superheroes to video games that have been made. In fact, even Marvel's Spider-Man is largely inspired by Batman: Arkham.
The premise of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is simple: the player controls the four outcasts that make up the Suicide Squad – this includes Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang and King Shark – and they must face the superheroes of the League of Justice, who have fallen prey to Brainiac's mind control. Everything takes place in the fictional city of Metropolis.
If Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League inspired little confidence among players, it wasn't because of the game itself or the development studio. It was because publisher Warner Bros. Games was selling it as a game-as-a-service with all those aggressive monetization elements that make us raise an eyebrow. A set of anti-consumer measures that only detract from the game in exchange for trying to generate more profits.
If Warner had advertised the game as a new Rocksteady superhero title without game-as-a-service components, the public reception would surely have been more positive. That being said, the game isn't that bad. The characters are good, they are interesting and the story is very enjoyable.
The tone is more similar to the latest Guardians of the Galaxy game than the Batman saga. In addition, the animations, dubbing and dialogues are done with great love. It shows that there are very good people making this game. What makes a little less sense is the open world, which seems like an addition more aimed at artificially extending the duration and encouraging players to buy skins, cosmetics and additional content in general.
As is usual with this type of game, Warner Bros. Games offered a Deluxe edition that included early access three days before the game's official launch on February 2. This edition was priced at 109.99 euros on console and 99.99 euros on computer. The surprise was that the game's servers stopped working just an hour after early access opened.
This means that people who paid those almost 30 extra euros could not enjoy accessing the game 72 hours before the official launch. Now, Warner Bros. Games wants to compensate them and offers them 2,000 Luthorcoins (the in-game currency) as compensation.
And here is where the doubts return: 2,000 Luthorcoins are equivalent to 20 euros, but they only allow you to buy two normal skins, since each of the rare skins costs more than those 2,000 coins.
The foundation of the game can be solid and fun. The campaign lasts about 15 hours, the missions are entertaining and the characters have enough charisma to make the experience worth it. But then you see the interface (which defies any premise of minimalism and functionality) and you start to worry. Later, you enter the store and start seeing skins for more than 20 euros, a Battle Pass and the seasons. The recipe for disaster.
This desire to make money, to monetize every last element of the game, goes wrong 90% of the time. We have been surrounded by games as a service for years and, in the vast majority of cases, the game that ends up being released is much worse than it could have been. And all because of aggressive and ruthless monetization systems.
If Warner Bros. Games had let Rocksteady work in peace and focus on making a game in the style of Batman: Arkham or Insomniac Games' Marvel's Spider-Man, we would be celebrating this launch now. It is a shame that the greed of a few has prevented us from doing so.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League ya está disponible en PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S y PC.
