Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's forgettable enemies, empty missions, and incongruous gun obsession prove why superheroes and live service do not mix

BossDj , 4 months ago

I’m only a short way into the game, but I’m having fun. Maybe It helps that I’m playing with someone? I dunno

It’s not a great game. At all. But this article feels like a crappy hit piece. It’s a bit disingenuous.

There are 3 skill trees per character that unlock new mechanics and combos (with unique animations). You can pair those mechanics with different guns or even gun mods to make your build unique. One of the trees specifically enhances and alters how the character’s unique weapon functions (and in particular adds this really bad ass gruesome boomerang attack).

On that note, I really don’t understand the article’s complaint that you can’t stop a high tech alien invasion force with a baseball bat… And Harley uses all kinds of weapons in every iteration I’ve ever seen.

Plus, yes if you’re playing correctly, you should ‘knock’ the baddie with the bat (or boomerang), then blast them. Or don’t, if you had Ivy add pheromones to your bat, they’ll rage and attack each other instead. Or if you have any variety of freezing or toxic grenades or whatever, use those instead? The game is only boring if you don’t explore.

I really don’t see how this is different mechanically to, say, Spider-Man (which we absolutely loved – swinging is way more fun than traversals). Granted, I said it’s not a great game, and Spider-Man did all of it better. I’d take multiplayer Spider-Man easily over this.

But this article, along with some videos I’ve seen, show people using the basic default attack over and over. Sure, you can do that. You can do that in Diablo, too, or Spider-Man. Both are hugely popular, go to area and beat up slightly different bad guys type games that are also more fun if you use unique builds and tactics.

This game does merit tons of criticism. There’s any other game that did things better. Did every piece better. But the game can be really fun. The second it goes on sale, I’ll recommend it. The story is fun and funny (though a bit heavy on ‘a new reveal character showed up at the last second to save the team!’ narrative)

Ps. I’ve no intention of paying for any season passes or whatever, characters or outfits.

Rentlar , 4 months ago

Reasonable take. Haven’t played it but reviews that say that parts of Rocksteady’s charm do shine through at certain moments… but the live service elements and bland, repetitive grind missions drag it down and suck the life out of it.

The fact that a game pushes battle passes and extra stuff after dropping a sizable amount of initial investment is off-putting, but it is good to see it can be enjoyed without them (which is how I play F2P games anyway).

BossDj , 4 months ago

Thanks for reading!

I think with any grind game, it just has to be a grind you enjoy. That’s how Diablo was for me.

I do feel cheated like IF they have two seasons already queued up – isn’t that just content that could have been in the game already?? DLCs used to be “hey, this game is successful, let’s make more content for it” not “let’s withhold some and slow feed it to them!”

samus12345 , 4 months ago

Live service games are just particularly prone to sucking, because they’re usually designed from the ground up to squeeze money out of the players rather than to be fun first and foremost.

ekZepp , 4 months ago

All the Batman games, up until knight, worked great. Is when you sacrifice the “story” to give more importance to the “replayability” that you lose something.

Zahille7 , 4 months ago

And I’m replaying all the Arkham games right now. They still hold up to this day.

cheesorist , 4 months ago

not really the fault of the genre, it’s just a shitty game garbage in garbage out

bjoern_tantau , 4 months ago

I could see a Suicide Squad game working very well as a live service game. Give the “heroes” unique playstyles and add more and more from the seemingly infinite roster of bad guys over time.

Of course this doesn’t work when all the characters are basically just skins of the same boring shooting class.

Jagermo , 4 months ago

Like Warframe, that works very well even F2P. A warframe in the DCEU? Could be cool

Potatos_are_not_friends , 4 months ago

The industry has seen a lot of success with “hero shooters” like Overwatch, so dunno what this article is talking about.

This reminds me of all those armchair analysts saying “single player is dead everything must be multiplayer to sell”, then Cyberpunk, Elden Eing, and Baldurs Gate 3 came.

BossDj , 4 months ago

Suicide squad, though, each hero has the exact same ability. A melee strike that knocks the enemy to make them easier to shoot. Well kinda. Boomerang can knock from distance, shark can AOE knock. And the guns are completely interchangeable, too. Boomerang can be handed a sniper rifle and now he’s Deadshot.