Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League is a Rocksteady Studios action-adventure, partially online, third-person shooting game. Rocksteady Studios are the people who brought us the incredible Batman Arkham series, and this game is set 5 years after the end of the third game. The game, originally set to release in May of 2023, was pushed back nearly a year due to fan concern after seeing previews of the gameplay and learning that it was online multiplayer. Upon release in Feb of 2024, it received extremely mixed reviews and has had some major bug issues, with the studio having obviously not listened to fan-feedback and leaving it to be online-focused. This review will break down the game overall, why it has mixed reviews, and how it could be improved. This is not a spoiler-free review. 

From the start of the game announcements, there was mixed feedback about the game. I was hesitant at first because of how drastic Harley looked compared to before, and the story itself seemed unclear despite the title. After the first trailer, I was intrigued but still hesitant, but I was lucky enough to get early access to the Alpha Test to play a small portion of the game and provide feedback to hopefully improve it. The initial gameplay was rough, that was expected, but the game was fun and being able to switch between the characters who had distinct personalities was great! After playing this, I was excited for the game and decided to pre-order the deluxe edition for the Feb release date. Initially the game was a lot of fun, but as the story progressed and the side-quests became repetitive I lost my enamor with the game and was just playing to complete it. However, that is not technically possible, but let’s break down the game first.

Amanda Waller, one of the most detestable characters to exist, recruits Harley Quinn, King Shark, Deadshot, and Captain Boomerang to go to Metropolis and stop Brainiac from terraforming the Earth. The game is set 5 years after the Batman Arkham series and utilizes the same voices for Harley and Batman, as they are the same characters. The start of the game reviews what happened in Arkham through a museum and catches gamers up on what happened over the past 5 years to get to this point. I found this extremely helpful because it could be viewed as a direct continuation of the series, an off-shoot, or even an alternate universe. Task Force X (TFX) finds the Hall of Justice, steals some weapons and tools to utilize, and make basecamp there with Waller’s team. This is when we learn that the Justice League is brainwashed and Wonder Woman and Flash are the only ones who aren’t brainwashed (though he gets caught later). The assignment of killing the Justice League comes into play, and you can start traversing the city to power-up and defeat them.

Now this is where things start to get a bit dull. In order to be able to fight the Justice League, you have to level-up and get power-ups from other characters and side-missions. Penguin, Young Poison Ivy, and Toy Maker (an obvious copy of Big Hero 6), are fun additions to the game and great characters to interact with. But every mission they have, alongside the contracts TFX can get from the team, are basically the same missions and fights over and over again. There’s nothing unique about them, and it can get difficult to fight with 4 characters battling countless enemies at once. Also, the team does not level up together, you have to play each character individually and level them up, individually, which is a huge time-waster. You can’t fight Justice League members until you have a certain type of weapon, which requires doing certain tasks, which requires being a certain level. It’s very constricting and repetitive. 

At least, while you are doing these missions, you can see Batman off in the distance watching you the whole time. If you stare at him long enough, he will eventually disappear with a smoke bomb. 

Each member of the Justice League requires a certain type of weapon to fight them, but not all battles are equal. Flash is not as difficult a challenge as expected and Captain Boomerang gets to kill him. Green Lantern was a joke, but at least Deadshot got his revenge. Batman’s fight was better though, as it utilized the Fear Toxin from the Arkham series and clearly had more time and thought put into it. Batman is respectfully roasting Harley, but she stands strong and manages to get the team to defeat him. There was a huge missed opportunity here though to bring in the Batfamily, as Bruce speaks to them all in a video where they are clearly capable of taking him down. However, Robin’s bloody mask is found on the ground which, while I didn’t like that Robin, felt disrespectful to how far he went in the games. Harley had the honor of killing Batman though, which was the only just option and in the end, Batman won because he was defeated. 

The last member to kill is Superman, who has killed Wonder Woman and takes two fights to take down. I did experience a lot of bug issues here though, having to go through the fight multiple times because the game would crash or wouldn’t save my progress and kept resetting me. Eventually I did get past him though, and all that was left was to start taking down the 13 Brainiac’s and save the universes. 

After killing the league, I felt the game had been too quick to go through everything, but with 13 more people to kill I figured that this was only the first half and there was plenty more to do! However, I was wrong. Once you kill one Brainiac, the game rolls credits and basically claims to be over, and the only way to get to the other 12 is to wait for them to be released, because they want everyone to do online multiplayer for a game that doesn’t need it. This left the game feeling extremely incomplete and half-assed, because killing the league was not really the end and they should not have introduced all these other concepts if they couldn’t fulfill them. I’m not sure if I have interest in continuing, assuming the next versions of Earth ever get released. 

There is a lot of great humor in the game which makes the cutscenes the most enjoyable parts. Each character is clearly defined with distinct traits and humor, Harley especially. I won’t go through all the jokes they made, but I would recommend going to YouTube to watch all the cutscenes, especially if you don’t want to play the game. 

Though it started off strong, the game became a huge let-down and the ‘ending’ was a huge disappointment. I’m not sure I can recommend this game to anyone, even to play as Harley. But, maybe, the studios will improve upon it with updates or we can get a better game in the future!

Thanks for reading! If you liked this post and want to see more of what I’ve written, check out my full blog here or follow my social media for updates! Bluesky & Instagram & Pintrest