Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League shows off beefy new gameplay

^{Image: Warner Bros. Games}

The Batman: Arkham creators’ new Suicide Squad game is all about… killing Batman?

Warner Bros. Games and Rocksteady Studios have delivered a beefy 20-minute gameplay preview of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, the next game set in the Batman: Arkham franchise. The game was delayed from 2022 after a rather controversial early showing, with criticism levied against its live-service elements and strange gameplay choices.

Nothing much has changed on that side of things, but Rocksteady seems confident enough that the game is shaping up nicely:

New details on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

Rocksteady’s new ‘Insider’ YouTube series dives into everything players need to know about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, the studio’s long-awaited follow-up to Batman: Arkham Knight. This video focuses on the game’s story, characters, traversal and combat. It also briefly touches on the new setting of Metropolis, which promises to be twice as big as Arkham Knight’s map without being quite as gritty.

If you’ve been keeping tabs on the game, nothing too major was revealed here besides a few cutscenes and lots of gameplay. We first see the Suicide Squad rob the Hall of Justice to get various traversal gadgets that allow them to teleport, fly and swing around Metropolis without getting mobbed by the Braniac-possessed goons in the streets. Harley Quinn for example, uses Batman’s grapple gun while Captain Boomerang taps into the Speedforce to zoom around.

The big sticking point for anyone craving the superhero power fantasy of Arkham Knight is still annoyingly present: these superheroes don’t fight like superheroes. It makes sense that Harley Quinn uses guns in combat, but Captain Boomerang - whose whole thing is that he fights with boomerangs - also uses guns just like the rest of the cast. Their signature attacks, like Harley’s baseball bat, Deadshot’s wrist guns and the aforementioned boomerangs, are relegated to special combat abilities.

The video also shows the Squad recruiting the Penguin, who has moved from Gotham City to Metropolis to become an anti-meta weapons dealer. He won’t join the team in the field, but he will likely supply them with gear. This is a multiplayer looter-shooter in the same vein as Destiny 2 and Marvel’s Avengers, meaning that there will be gear to upgrade, cosmetics to earn and entire battle passes to purchase and grind through. This level of monetisation was controversial during the game’s last showing, which is likely why the video doesn’t touch on it at all.

Rocksteady has also revealed a bunch of classic comic book-y outfits for the main cast, though you’ll have to pre-order the game to get them:

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League launches on February 2, 2023.