Highlights

  • Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's traversal mechanics feel slow and can slow down the pace of the game.
  • The lack of variety in traversal methods limits the gameplay experience in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
  • Marvel's Spider-Man 2 offers a faster and more varied traversal system, with unique animations and unlockable mechanics that evolve throughout the game.

One of the most divisive games in recent memory, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is finally out, and gamers can now decide for themselves whether it's an experience they're personally interested in, or a title they'd rather skip. A four-player co-op, live-service, looter-shooter, there's a lot going on under the hood of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, from unique abilities for each character to multiple weapon manufacturers and three individual skill trees per villain. And that's just scratching the surface.

By far one of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's most defining features, and one that's played a prominent role in the game's marketing, each character in Suicide Squad has a completely unique form of traversal. While King Shark leaps and bounds, Harley Quinn swings and grapples, and while Deadshot flies using a jetpack, Captain Boomerang uses the Speed Force to zip around the battlefield. But while these traversal mechanics look and feel suitably comic book-y and fun, they still don't really hold a candle to Marvel's Spider-Man 2, at least in two major ways.

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Suicide Squad's Traversal Mechanics Don't Hold a Candle to Spider-Man 2

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's Traversal Feels Slow

Generally speaking, one of the biggest things holding back Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's traversal is its speed. Every character's traversal ability in Suicide Squad feels just slightly too slow, though it's much more apparent in some characters. King Shark, for instance, is probably the slowest of the bunch. Though it's fun to leap 30-story buildings in one move, the time it takes to charge each jump slows the game down dramatically. Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad suffers a similar problem, though her traversal issues are more skill-based. If players aren't methodically blending swings with dives and grapples with finite precision, then Harley's movement can feel very slow.

Captain Boomerang and Deadshot generally feel a bit faster than the other two, though they're not without their speed issues either. Boomerang's main Speed Force teleport and sprint feel suitably responsive, but his quick phasing ability doesn't take the player very far, and its build-up animation feels just slightly too long. Deadshot's jetpack is probably the most consistently fast traversal option in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, but the constant cycle of needing to land every few meters to recharge the jetpack gets tedious pretty quickly.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2, on the other hand, features one of the fastest and most responsive traversal systems in gaming. From the get-go, both playable Spider-Men have a much faster swinging speed than in prior games, giving the traversal an immediate sense of improved momentum. Then through Spider-Man 2's various unlocks such as launches and Web Wings, the game's traversal speed is only increased further. By the end of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, players will be zipping across New York City and its surrounding boroughs in mere minutes.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's Traversal Lacks Variety

Another big issue that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's traversal faces is a lack of variety, a common thread throughout most of the game. While there's variety between characters, each individual traversal method lacks variety in itself. Essentially, after using each character's unique traversal method for just a few minutes, players have pretty much seen everything that it offers, in terms of both gameplay and animations. While each character has a dedicated traversal skill tree, these upgrades don't add any new traversal mechanics, but instead just increase stats and add modifiers to the traversal-related attacks and abilities. There's no real evolution to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's traversal mechanics.

Once again offering a direct contrast, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 doubles down on variety when it comes to its traversal mechanics. Not only do both Spider-Men have completely unique animations for web-swinging and air tricks, but both are also able to unlock a slew of new traversal mechanics throughout the game, ranging from air dashes to unique web-swinging maneuvers to new Web Wing abilities, all of which give the game's traversal system a consistent and satisfying feeling of evolution.