Diehard Batman and DC fans already know the talent Rocksteady Studios have when it comes to creating a thrilling and immersive comic-book world.
The fact that The Batman Arkham Trilogy is regarded as one of, if not the best video game portrayals of a comic-book character confirms this point.
However, Rocksteady will now be moving away from Gotham and expanding their created world with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
After the game’s initial announcement in August 2020, a new trailer was released revealing more plot details and a more detailed look at what the Suicide Squad will be up against. Let’s take a look at everything we know so far.
The Squad
While most interpretations of The Suicide Squad have comprised of a large team of some of the world’s most dangerous and maddest villains, Kill the Justice League will feature a more concentrated team of four fan-favourites.
Deadshot, Harley Quinn, King Shark and Captain Boomerang will be playable, each with their own special abilities, weapons and gadgets, such as Deadshot having a jetpack, Boomerang being able to teleport etc.
During gameplay, the character chosen by the player can be switched while playing, with the rest of the team being controlled by AI. A multiplayer mode was also announced.
Currently, it’s unknown if Rocksteady plans to release more playable characters or if it’ll be restricted to just these four.
The Mission
As the title implies, the squad’s mission is to kill the Justice League.
From what we’ve seen so far, the League are under a form of mind control by the villain known as Brainiac, who’s seemingly invaded and conquered the Earth, leaving it defenceless without its heroes.
The story itself is set in the Batman Arkham universe. During the events of the last game in the trilogy, Arkham Knight, the caped crusader seemingly met his end and perished in a premeditated explosion at Wayne Manor.
Whether or not this means Batman is really gone or that he simply faked his death is unclear, so maybe this game will shed some light on the matter, will we see Batman return to help the squad?
From what was seen in the trailer, Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash, and Wonder Woman are confirmed to be crossing paths with the Suicide Squad, however, it seems Wonder Woman may be the only hero left as we saw her trading blows with Superman.
Strangely, other well-known Justice League members were absent, such as Cyborg, Aquaman, Shazam and more, so it’ll be interesting to see if they show up too, even if it’s just for a cameo.
No Gameplay?
Unfortunately, something we still haven’t properly seen is gameplay and how the playable characters differ from one another.
Whether it emulates the third person, beat-em-up gameplay of the Arkham series or opts for a new playstyle, we’ll have to be patient until Rocksteady is ready to show us.
What we do know already is the aforementioned abilities that are specific to each character. Presumably, Deadshot will be able to fly around temporarily or indefinitely, Boomerang will be able to teleport a short distance using his boomerangs, Harley will have a grapplehook and King Shark will likely be a heavy type of character, with a large chain gun and the ability to jump quite far according to the trailers.
One more detail is that the game is set in an open-world Metropolis, which will be interesting to see as previous Rocksteady DC games have been restricted to Gotham City.
When are the squad dropping into action?
Kill the Justice League will be released sometime in 2022, with no exact release date given as of yet.
Hopefully, as the month’s pass, we’ll hear a bit more about what to expect, and it’s likely that we’ll see it in action during E3 2022. The game itself will launch on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
By Sam Cawley
Twitter: @sams_game