Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s gameplay has me all sorts of hyped

The 2021 Game Awards was a lot this year. There were surprising winners, like It takes Two winning best family game versus four mainline Nintendo titles, and surprising reveals, like Cuphead finally getting some DLC. And of course, there were vague attempts to act like decent humans, with Geoff Keighley going out of his way to address the many companies treating their cis white male employees like the Eloi to everyone else’s Morlocks,  without actually doing things like mentioning these companies by name, mentioning their negative behavior, or actually saying anything that meant anything. There were a lot of things to talk about.

But the main thing that most people came for wasn’t the awards, the self-congratulatory speeches, or that game where you try to find a spark of life deep within the eyes of Geoff Keighly (I promise I’ll stop, eventually). Nope. Most of us were there for the reveals.

One, in particular, caught my eye in a big way. After waiting for what seems like an eternity we finally got to see gameplay footage from Rocksteady’s upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Now, if you read my past article about it, you’d know I had already purchased a full year’s pass for the hype train as I love the premise of it so much.

If you missed it, the story goes as such. Amanda Waller makes a squad of Harley Quinn, King Shark, Deadshot, and Captain Boomerang. As she is want to do, she pops a small explosive into the necks of each of them and sends them to Metropolis where Brainiac has completely decimated the town. Their mission is to stop the threat. Upon arrival, they find out the threat has little to do with Brainiac and more about killing the Justice League who Brainiac has completely defeated and taken over. So now, the Suicide Squad has to go after one Justice League member at a time defeating a warped, evil, murderous version of themselves.

It sounds awesome but up until now we really had no idea how it played. Many people, myself included, were worried it was going to play somewhere along the lines of DC Universe Online, or worse, The Avengers. But during the 2021 Game Awards, Rocksteady gave us two videos.

The first was a horrifically painful 17-minute video in which Will Arnett riffs with the Suicide Squad before visiting a horribly out-of-place Rocksteady development head. The second, which we’ll focus on, is an almost three-minute-long video showcasing the gameplay.

Fortunately, it looks amazing. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen cuts this confusing since Elon Musk’s last haircut.

While the game sort of gives me vibes of Borderlands with controls somewhere between Spider-man and Saint’s Row, I’m not entirely certain which of it was true gameplay. I’m also really interested to see what this game looks like with the HUD up.

One thing I really like is how the game works between single-player and multiplayer. In multiplayer, you can have four players going in together and fighting through the stages. But if you’re playing by yourself, the other three members are AI-controlled. And you can switch to the other characters as well which I like. I’m not sure if they mean you can switch between chapters or if you switch on the fly like in a LEGO game but I genuinely hope it’s the latter.

You can hear him talk about this at the 15:45 mark in this video. I’d recommend skipping straight to it because the first 15 minutes are literally just Will Arnett chewing scenario and Rockstar’s Sefton Hill being self-congratulatory and saying a lot of “never been a game like this before” type things.

I know that the more excited I get the more it’s going to hurt when the real thing comes out. Hell, I already know how bad Sonic Frontiers is going to hurt me. But this kind of game looks like it’s got a ton of replay value if you’re someone like me who will probably solo this game four times with each character.

Deadshot looks like he’s the more ranged fighter with the ability to hover in the air and snipe, blasting enemies with flames should they get to close. King Shark looks to be the big melee tank with fists, knives and a big ol’ chaingun. Harley is pretty much Harley with a variety of gadgets, guns, and what looks to be the world’s most unbreakable baseball bat. And finally, Captain Boomerang. I’m a little confused about him having his son’s speed powers but I’m fine with that because flipping around like Tracer and throwing gadget-laced boomerangs and firing SMGs looks like he’s going to be my favorite character to play as.

Hopefully, 2022 is the year when games start living up to the hype when this comes out whenever the hell it wants to next year.