Critics and players don’t always see eye to eye on things. Players tend to only think about fun in the moment; is this game more enjoyable than not playing the game, and is it better than sitting on my couch playing nothing? Likewise, critics can get too cerebral at times, performatively talking up games that are different and fresh, putting too much stock in a game with an awkward tilt, and forgetting that most of the players we’re talking to just want to have a good time. So I get that sometimes when I say ‘who would want this?’, the answer is sometimes ‘most normal players’ and I’m the Principal Skinner who’s out of touch. But surely no one wants 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice𒉰 League like this.
I’m on the record as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:wanting a Suicide Squad game, and I get that it’s designed to be a fun time. I wasn’t expecting 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Citizen Sleeper with Harley Quinn, I was expecting to punch bad guys in the dick and have fun doing it. Would I maybe have had some highfalutin thinkpieces after the fact about it? Sure. But I also would have sat on my couch and had fun with it, and that’s all anyone would have really wanted from it. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Now I&rsqu🐎o;m not even sure we&r🐻squo;ll get that.
For one thing, the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:gameplay looks pretty poor considering we’re eight years on from this very same studio perfecting the superhero formula with the Arkham trilogy. All four of the characters fly around and have guns, making them indistinguishable. When they get into melee combat (which again, does not feel tailored) the squishy punches feel like they hit nothing. It’s a far cry from the fluid and crunchy 🐻close-up combos of Arkham Asylum, City, and Knight.
Speaking of Arkham, this is also not set five years after Arkham Knight. I know it says it is, but it’s not. That just feels like a lie, right? Harley seems completely different in both her personality and look, and Batman died in Arkham Knight. I don’t want to hear any ‘akshully that’s not confirmed’, or ‘in the ending where you catch The Riddler, we see a new Batman’, the game is pretty explicit that ꦺhe reveals his identity and then kills himself, feeling both his work is done and his soul too far gone. If that’s all a big ‘gotcha, no he didn’t!’ then really, what’s the point 💃of any of it?
Maybe we take those things with a pinch of salt, though. I haven’t played the game, and while it looks bad, maybe it feels good. A girl can dream. Likewise, maybe the story justifies Batman’s presence - faking his death to quietly retire, and then being compelled by Brainiac to come back (yet still being in perfect Batshape and walking around in the suit) isn’t stellar writing, but I ♛can at least see how it makes sense. What I really don’t get though is the numbies.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is the latest game to go for a weird percentage based inventory that saps all the enjoyment out of customisation. Deciding on what jacket you want to wear is an inherently cool thing in a video game, especially for older players who grew up with just one blocky polygon of a protagonist. And I don&rsqu𓄧o;t mind if one jacket offers better melee damage but the next lets you cܫarry more ammo - that’s both realistic and a tangible way to let players tactically choose their approach. Unfortunately, Suicide Squad goes off the deep end.
Instead ofꩲ changing up a cool jacket or a fresh pair of kicks for specific reasons, we’re drowning in an endless sea of numbers. One item might offer 2.3 percent extra damage with explosives, while a different one comes with 6.4 percent increased explosion range when throwing grenades. If you add those two figures together you get (computing…): total bullshit that makes me feel empty inside!
If you didn’t think it could get any worse than drowning in colour coded, percentage based outfit upgrades that sap all of the enjoyment out of making a character your own and transform it into maths homework, fear not. It does in fact get worse. All of our characters use guns, applying the same drollery to your weaponry too. If you thought it was dull to be customising your socks and gloves, just wait ༒until you’re choosing the best scope, grip, and gun barrel for 16.4 percent faster reload speed.
Because you know, Captain Boom✨erang would have no other way to attack his enemies from a distance now, would he?
It’s been eight years since Arkham Knight, and video games take a spectacularly long time to make. Iജ have to think that if Rocksteady could see the future, this is not the game it would🌃 have made. Firstly, given that we’ve had two Suicide Squad movies since then where Harley Quinn was the star, Harley’s own spin-off movie, and her own successful cartoon series, maybe she would have been the way to go on her own. At the very least, the other three are not the three anyone thinks of for the Suicide Squad, and they make the game feel out of time. Captain Boomerang and King Shark have also seen new iterations in the years since, making their turns here feel either overly familiar or not different enough. The production cycle has doomed Suicide Squad before we’ve even had a chance to play it.
As with the gameplay though, that’s only half the story. After 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Marvel’s Avengers and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Gotham Knights both tried this weird combinatiಞon of numbies and overtly powerful superheroes, Suicide Squad is arriving under a cloud. There’s probably an algorithm som𓄧ewhere that says players like these systems or that it’s good for engagement, but the eye test tells you that’s not true. Suicide Squad feels like a movie made in the ‘70s but set in the 2020s - a prediction of the future, not a picture of it.
Numbers are everywhere these days, and players are increasingly growing tired of them. As with the two aforementioned titles, players aren’t just mumbling discontent but playing along anyway, as we’re doing with bloated runtimes. We’re actively turned off by these systems, and very few games that star⛦t development this year will use them.
Then there’s the live-service model. It’s cheap to take potshots at ‘no one wants live-service’ when we see how popular 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Destiny 2, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Apex Legends, and Fortnite still are, but it’s a question of knowing your audience. Suicide Squad requires you to be always online, even in single player mode, and has a self-contained campaign yet peppers it with the sort of eternal grind rewards that only make sense for 𝔍true online play. It’s like a checklist of things players hate but devs do anyway because a spreadsheet says they’re a good idea.
I want Suicide Squad to be good, and I’m not fully counting it out yet. Maybe it’ll be a silly blast of candy floss. But the latest trailer highlighted my worst fears🌟, and I don’t know why it’s so overstuffed with universally unpopular features. If nothing else, maybe Suicide Squad: Kill the Justic🧜e League can bring critics and players together.