Yesterday, Rocksteady announced that their newest game, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, will be delayed yet again until further notice. This is in response to the fan backlash over the recent gameplay footage shown along with wanting to add more polish to the game.
This new Suicide Squad game has been in development for quite a while now, making it the first Rocksteady console game since their successful Batman: Arkham series concluded in 2015 with Batman: Arkham Knight and their first overall game released since Batman: Arkham VR, which came out in 2016. After the Arkham series wrapped up, fans of Rocksteady have been waiting for years to see what the company had in store for their next game. There’s been speculations of a Batman Beyond game and even a Superman game that was in development until those ideas got scrapped in favor of a Suicide Squad game, one which would take place in that exact Arkham universe.
However, fans and gamers alike haven’t been all too thrilled what they seen so far. Because of that, Rocksteady have decided to push the game back further in the hopes of delivering a more quality product for everyone. While that’s all well and good, I don’t think any of that will matter unless the real obvious flaws that people have been complaining about are fixed. What are those flaws? Let me go over them!
Battle Passes
This has been a thing that many gaming companies have been trying to force on players for many years to try to squeeze as much money as they can out of their wallets. We live in a time that the prices for games are at an all-time high, which each new game costing $60 to $70 to play along with special editions costing even more than that. As much as one can claim that inflation might have something to do with that, it more has to do with how there are plenty of gamers that are willing to spend extra bucks on pre-order bonuses, exclusive content, and of course, battle passes to justify raising the prices. Because of that, companies have realized that they can easily take certain elements out of a game before release unless someone pays extra for it and they can get even more money from it. If you ask me, that has what led to gaming being more expensive than ever.
In the case of Kill The Justice League, it has been confirmed that the game will indeed have it’s own battle pass system. This will be a system that will be launched after the game’s release and contain only cosmetics. This battle pass system will earn the player new outfits, emotes, and other items to customize playable characters. Each battle pass will have free tiers of it’s own for free but will also have premium tiers that will be available with an optional in-game purchase. All of the battle pass items will reportedly be cosmetic and isn’t expect to impact the gameplay in any way.
While that last part I just mention is a sigh of relief, the rest of it seems yet again another attempt to get more money out of the players. I can’t speak what the actual premium tiers will be but if the way big games have gone in recent memory, there’s a big chance it’s nothing too special and could have easily been made free or be able to gain when you have enough XP points in the game to upgrade to get those tiers. What makes this more pointless is that it’s likely gonna be available for free another year or two down the line once the special or GOTY editions are released. For those who are smart, they will likely just wait until it’s made for free and the price had drop for the game. For everyone else, yet again, you are just falling for the same greedy trap that gaming companies have been setting up for many years.
Required Online Connection
It’s baffling how we are approaching the ten-year anniversary of when the Xbox One was revealed and companies are still repeating the same mistakes that Microsoft made with that console. One of the biggest controversies surrounding the Xbox One when it was announced was that it would require an online connection and it would require daily update or check-ins from Microsoft themselves. This clearly angered gamers everywhere as not everyone has access to the internet at all or even any times. So much so, that about a few weeks after E3 2013, Microsoft announced they were removing all of that due to the massive fan backlash over it. That should have been a lesson to gaming companies everywhere not to mess with gamers by trying to force things such as a required online connection. But yet, here we are again in 2023, with Rocksteady trying to force this matter with Kill The Justice League.
It has been confirmed by Rocksteady themselves that Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League will in fact require an online connection at all times. Regardless if you are playing in solo or co-op, you will need to have some sort of connection to the internet or online to be able to play the game in any way. I’m not gonna list all of the obvious reasons why this is dumb but if there is one main one, it’s that we now know that the game itself will likely only last or be supported for a limited amount of time. Just like many other games that require an online connection, there will come a point where the servers are shut down and the game will be deleted from existence. And even when the game is still being run, it will cause a slew of problems once there’s something wrong with the internet servers involving the Playstation 5, Xbox Series X, and the PC. Problems that could have been avoided if you could just let anyone want to play the main story whenever they want and for those who want to go online and play with others whenever they want.
This is yet again another example of a company basically asking themselves for trouble with required features that gamers clearly won’t like. I don’t know why companies are continuing this trend when there are plenty of examples of games that fall short because of it but here we go again. That’s not even mentioning that once the servers of the game shut down, Kevin Conroy’s final performance as Batman will be deleted from existence. Let that sink in for the rest of your day!
Is This Really In The Arkhamverse?
Expectations were always gonna be high with Rocksteady after their commercial and critical success of the Batman: Arkham series but those expectations would only grow once it was announced that their new Suicide Squad game, again their first overall game since the mid 2010s, would take place in that exact same universe as the Arkham games. That in of itself sets the expectation of not only the storyline of the Arkhamverse continuing and the expansion of that universe itself but that the game would play similar to those games except for more combat and guns thrown into the mix.
However, judging by the gameplay footage we’ve seen thus far, if you would have told me beforehand that this game is suppose to take place in the Arkhamverse, I and many others would not have believed you whatsoever. If anything this looks like it could take place in the same universe as the recent Gotham Knights game or the new Wonder Woman game that’s in the works than Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Arkham Origins, and Arkham Knight. A change of tone, pace, and gameplay is fine but you have to be careful to not go too far out of that ballpark or else you are making something else entirely. For what we’ve seen thus far, Kill The Justice League is clearly going too far out of that ballpark.
From the looks of it, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League seems to only take place in the Arkhamverse just for marketing purposes and the hopes that in of itself would boost sales. If it weren’t for the confirmation from Rocksteady themselves, I would have believe that Kill The Justice League would be as connected to the Arkhamverse as Crystal Dynamic’s Avengers would be connected to Insomniac’s Spider-Man, which is basically not all that much. I wasn’t asking for the new Suicide Squad game to be exactly like the Arkham games but I would have figured it would at least be something that would fit organically into that universe as oppose to feeling like some random puzzle piece that just doesn’t fit.
Can The Game Still Be Saved?
In the end, while delaying the game will certain prevent more bugs and glitches to the gameplay, none of that will mean anything unless these issues I just mentioned are resolved. I’m no gaming developer but I would assume removing all of those features will take plenty of time and the game would have to be pushed back another year because of it. I know Rocksteady and it’s fans don’t want to keep seeing this game get pushed back, especially since we are now approaching a decade since the release of their last main game, but those changes will have to be made to deliver a true experience worthy of it’s brand.
If Rocksteady is delaying it because of the criticism involving the battle passes, required online connection, and forced tie-ins to the Arkhamverse, then maybe there’s a chance that this game will be what Marvel’s Avengers, WB Games Montreal’s Gotham Knights, and EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront 2 should have been at the time of it’s release. Delivering a full quality game that includes all of the features that should have been included since Day One along with added DLC and bonus content that is ACTUALLY worth the extra few dollars. If they aren’t delaying it because of that, then none of that will matter at all and Rocksteady is clearly stalling out an inevitable fate of the game not meeting expectations critically or financially. As the old saying goes, you can polish a turd all you want and it’s still a turd.
Unless Rocksteady is able to get their heads out of their asses and avoid the mistakes of prior games in the past, then they are doing nothing but polishing a turd of it’s own. And I will have done my Batman: Arkham retrospectives for nothing. I guess no matter who wins here, everyone will lose. As a previous Batman movie villain once said, the world is cruel.
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