Highlights

  • Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will have a more humorous and colorful tone compared to Rocksteady's Batman games, reflecting the nature of the Suicide Squad.
  • The encounter between a mind-controlled Batman and the Suicide Squad has the potential to be a scene-stealer, providing tension and scares that evoke the atmosphere of Arkham Knight.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, if pulled off well, will show that Rocksteady hasn’t been stuck in the same slump of its ways from over a decade of developing Batman games. It still gets to make DC games, but Suicide Squad will be decidedly more humorous and colorful than its Arkham predecessors while obviously making a huge leap into the realm of live-service multiplayer. Rocksteady’s production manager Jack Hackett said it best when describing Arkham games as being dark due to that suiting Batman, whereas a Suicide Squad title is deserving of a more lighthearted and animated tone:

“The Arkham games weren’t gritty because Rocksteady makes gritty, dark games. They were that way because that’s what suits a Batman story.”

Still, Suicide Squad; Kill the Justice League doesn’t need to lean fully into irreverent wise-cracking and frivolity, at least not all the time. One sequence in particular looks ripe for the same brand of horror that the Arkham games depicted, unleashing a wave of nostalgia at the same time as ushering in a new era of the Arkhamverse with a unique perspective.

RELATED: Rocksteady’s Own Take on Gotham Knights Could Exhume One Abandoned Arkham Feature

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s Batman Encounter Looks Horrifying

Batman: Arkham Knight’s Jump Scares are Terribly Effective

Knight isn’t known for being the most beloved of the Arkham games, though it’s always a back-and-forth now between whether it or Origins is on the bottom of the barrel. That said, the barrel in question is still in a league of its own where action-adventure superhero-related games are concerned. It’s true that Rocksteady’s latest game might’ve leaned too much into its Arkham Knight militia army, for instance, but what it achieved more than any other Arkham game before it was a sense of psychological and existential dread coupled with some remarkable jump scares.

There are few jump scares in gaming that have surpassed the memorability of Knight’s Man-Bat jump scare, but the jump scares with Batman suddenly appearing behind the player while they spin around in a first-person perspective are truly haunting, whether it’s Batman sneaking up behind an unsuspecting Jim Gordon or a statue of Batman appearing behind a terrified Joker.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s Batman is Going to Be a Scene-Stealer

If Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League can achieve something similar in the sequence where a mind-controlled Batman encounters Task Force X, it would be a special treat. The sequence plays on Batman’s stealth in a comedic way initially when Harley stumbles upon a cutout of Batman, but tension instantly mounts when Batman himself appears. It’s possible that this encounter may not have the same tone at all in the actual game, but allowing it to be scary would be reminiscent of Knight in an appreciative way.

The first Suicide Squad Insider showed what looks like gameplay of that encounter with Harley running through a haunted house-like interior soaked in red lighting, and if pursued by Batman it could be extraordinarily frightening, even if all the scares come from a third-person perspective. It will be interesting to see how this encounter plays out and how other possible Batman encounters look, especially if it’s true that players must kill him and the rest of the Justice League.