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00:00 "My name is Amanda Waller. I am the director of Argus, a division of Homeland Security you've never even heard of."
00:09 Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we're taking a look at the pros and cons of Rocksteady's latest superhero outing,
00:17 Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League.
00:19 [Dramatic music]
00:22 "Just checking. We're all seeing that thing, right?"
00:25 [Dramatic music]
00:26 "Cool, cool."
00:27 Before we begin, we publish new videos all week long, so be sure to subscribe to Mojo Plays and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos.
00:35 [Ding]
00:37 Worst. Heads-up display.
00:39 [Gunfire]
00:44 "Boom! Job done!"
00:45 Credit where credit is due, Rocksteady quickly started working on fixes for this after screenshots emerged a few weeks before launch.
00:53 The ailing game was faced with yet more pre-release criticism when people got a look at the extremely busy UI.
01:00 UIs like this have definitely started to fall out of fashion with the release of games like Elden Ring,
01:05 which proves that less really is more, even in the world of video games.
01:10 Thankfully, Rocksteady took all that criticism on board, and the game has highly customizable HUD options so that you can see as much or as little as you like.
01:18 "Go off course, and you'll get a migraine until you return to the AO."
01:22 Best. Performance.
01:24 [Grunting]
01:30 "Aw, poor penguin. All that money never got you much in the way of loyalty, huh?"
01:35 When Gotham Knights released back in 2022, its performance received the bulk of the criticism.
01:41 Even over a year on and after many patches, Gotham Knights still only runs at 30fps on PS5 and Xbox Series X.
01:49 So it was nice to see Suicide Squad avoid this issue, with Rocksteady announcing that it was going to target 60fps on 9th gen consoles.
01:57 This at least is a breath of fresh air when developers still seem to be struggling to eke out performance on consoles.
02:04 It also appears to be well optimized for PC, at least in comparison to Arkham Knight's infamously bad PC port.
02:10 "Fire!"
02:12 "Keep it down, Hal. These are still ringing after that last bonnie."
02:17 Worst. Combat.
02:19 [Dramatic music]
02:22 "Mine."
02:24 Arkham Asylum brought us one of the greatest, most enduring combat systems in any third-person action game.
02:30 That's what makes the combat in Suicide Squad even harder to swallow than it would have been coming from another studio.
02:36 It's bogged down in the RPG-like nonsense we've been seeing in games for years.
02:40 Despite Gotham Knights also getting a poor reception for having damage modifiers, weapon upgrade systems, and XP,
02:47 it looks like Warner Bros. hasn't learned.
02:49 The fact that a lot of the game is spent taking down swarms of generic brainiac enemies is also painfully disappointing,
02:56 as is the lack of variety between the different characters.
02:59 "You're behind enemy lines in occupied Metropolis."
03:03 "Maybe the most dangerous place on Earth. Humanity isn't welcome here."
03:08 "Sounds like Gotham."
03:10 Worst. Boss fights.
03:12 "When I think of the Justice League, I think of Wonder Woman, Superman, Green Lantern."
03:20 "You don't want to mess with that one."
03:22 The moment-to-moment combat isn't great, and unfortunately, neither are the boss fights.
03:26 Rocksteady isn't exactly known for its boss fights. Yes, we all loved the Mr. Freeze fight in Arkham City,
03:32 but when it comes to more traditional boss fights and arenas, they were some of the weakest parts of the Arkham trilogy.
03:38 All those tank battles, for instance.
03:41 Sadly, the trend hasn't bucked here.
03:43 The Flash, Green Lantern, and Superman boss fights just see you chasing them quickly around a large arena ad nauseam.
03:50 Batman is a little more interesting since we see him use the fear toxin,
03:54 but it ends up being a fight against a static, nightmare Batman in one room.
03:59 In a game all about killing the Justice League, killing the Justice League isn't all that fun.
04:04 "We have to die to save the world."
04:09 Best. Traversal.
04:11 "Ah, shit!"
04:13 "I'm still on time!"
04:15 Where Insomniac's Spider-Man games borrowed heavily from Arkham,
04:23 Suicide Squad is taking a few lessons from the web-slinger in turn.
04:27 Fun traversal is now an integral part of a superhero game,
04:31 and Suicide Squad gives us four unique traversal options for its characters.
04:35 Now, they definitely don't reach the lofty heights of Spider-Man,
04:39 but when you compare it to its nearest competitor, Gotham Knights, the difference is clear.
04:44 Simply put, you've got a lot of options for how to get around the world,
04:47 and you don't have to complete long challenges to unlock a character's unique traversal,
04:51 like you did in Gotham Knights, for example.
04:54 "Well, tickle me stupid shark, and fly!"
05:04 Worst. Always online.
05:08 Yes, the game supports four-player co-op, but if you want to play it solo, you've got the option.
05:13 However, even playing solo,
05:15 Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League requires a constant online connection.
05:20 It's never a good sign when a game does this,
05:22 and it's deeply exclusionary to anyone who has poor or unreliable internet.
05:27 It also led to the game being taken offline the day it went live, because it had a huge bug.
05:32 Players logging in for the first time had already finished the story on their save file,
05:37 which obviously they hadn't.
05:39 While the game was down, nobody who'd bought it could play it,
05:42 because there was no way to play it offline.
05:45 It's now being said that eventually, it will get an offline story mode, but not just yet.
05:51 Worst. Battle Pass.
05:53 Speaking of the people who couldn't play the game while it was down,
06:01 those were all the players who'd coughed up to play it early.
06:04 This was being touted as "early access", as if it's a Steam release still being worked on,
06:10 rather than a cheap way to get some extra cash for Warner Bros. and trick people into pre-ordering.
06:15 Worse than that, though, the game has a battle pass and seasons despite being single player.
06:20 Through this battle pass, you can unlock cosmetics,
06:23 and new seasons will introduce things like episodes themed around different villains,
06:27 new weapons, and boss variants.
06:29 The silver lining is that the seasons aren't limited time,
06:32 though more will keep being added, you can always go back and keep playing the older ones.
06:37 Best. The characters.
06:41 While the quality of the main plot has left a lot to be desired after seeing the deaths
06:54 of many major characters, it's not all bad on the writing front.
06:58 The writing for individual characters is very consistent with what we know from the comics,
07:02 and James Gunn's latest movie about Task Force X.
07:05 The four leads bounce off each other well, even if Captain Boomerang will seriously test your
07:10 patience, and also work against Waller and the members of the Justice League.
07:14 Wonder Woman 2 is great to see every time she shows up,
07:17 it's just a shame the bigger story beats and some of the side characters let the game down.
07:23 Worst. The extra characters.
07:36 Also included in the battle pass are at least four characters for the first four seasons it's
07:44 going to cover. We know the first character is the Joker, and that the suicide squads romp through the
07:49 DC multiverse is going to explain how he's able to show up even though he died back in Arkham City.
07:56 This also explains those boss variants and shows how a season pass can work in a single player
08:01 game, as the new content is all explained away as part of the Elseworlds format.
08:06 But paying for extra characters in a game like this is a tough pill to swallow.
08:10 It may work for fighting games, but it definitely shouldn't be a thing in an ARPG, even if it is
08:15 co-op. Best. Kevin Conroy.
08:24 This one is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the late and great Kevin Conroy gives a
08:38 phenomenal performance as the Dark Knight, but on the other, a lot of fans are understandably up in
08:44 arms about how the caped crusader meets his end. As well as Batman's death, the Bat family are also
08:50 killed off screen, but we get to hear Conroy again and we finally have our answers about Arkham Knight's
08:55 post-credits scene, where the Batman returns using the fear toxin. He also uses some of his Arkham
09:01 gadgets against you, sneaking around and laying traps. But perhaps Batman should have stayed dead
09:07 after his Arkham Knight send-off or remained unaffected by Brainiac. Are you playing Suicide
09:20 Squad Kill the Justice League? What are you liking or not liking about it? Let us know what you think
09:30 about the game in the comments below and be sure to subscribe to Mojo Plays for more great videos.
09:43 [outro]