Highlights
- Rocksteady, known for the successful Batman games, may have taken on more than it can handle with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, a multiplayer live-service game that doesn't showcase their previous success.
- Fans were skeptical of Rocksteady's departure from their single-player action-adventure formula, and the disappointment was clear when gameplay was revealed, as it featured same-y environments, dull enemies, and uninteresting character mechanics.
- Rocksteady should have started with a single-player Suicide Squad game or a scaled-down multiplayer experience before diving into the ambitious live-service model.
Originally a relatively small developer from London in the UK, Rocksteady was formed in 2004, and put out its first game in 2006. Titled Urban Chaos: Riot Response, Rocksteady's first game was a mediocre first-person shooter that puts players in the boots of a riot squad member, and tasks them with taking down a gang by any means necessary, a premise that hasn't aged all that well. But despite its humble beginnings, just a few years later, Rocksteady would release Batman: Arkham Asylum, and the rest is history.
Though Batman: Arkham Knight wasn't the 10/10 title that many had hoped it would be, it was still generally considered to be a great video game, and Rocksteady's future looked incredibly bright. After a lengthy hiatus, Rocksteady announced that it was working on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. But in the following years, the more that fans found out about the game, the more it didn't seem like a Rocksteady game at all. And with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League now undergoing a hefty delay, it might have been better for Rocksteady to have walked before it ran.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Might Be Too Ambitious
Despite its shortcomings, Batman: Arkham Knight still proved that Rocksteady was an incredibly talented team, one capable of producing very high-quality AAA blockbusters at a consistent rate. And with that reputation now fully cemented, Rocksteady essentially had the pick of the crop, with the world being its proverbial oyster. For years, fans speculated on what Rocksteady could be working on, and though it could have been something non-DC, the vast majority of theories revolved around the popular comic license.
At first, fans were sure that Rocksteady was working on a Superman game, with supposedly leaked images cropping up every few months for a good year or so. Then it was a Justice League ensemble game, and at one point it was even alleged that Rocksteady was working on a Green Arrow project. Though the property was subject to constant changes, the one throughline of every theory was that the next Rocksteady game would be a single-player action-adventure title, just like Batman: Arkham was.
So, naturally, when Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was first announced, it raised a lot of eyebrows from long-time Rocksteady fans. A 4-player multiplayer shooter, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League seemed like a major departure for Rocksteady, and fans were a little skeptical that the drastic change was something the studio could handle. And by the looks of things, fans might have been right. When Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League received its first gameplay reveal earlier this year, many fans weren't afraid to voice their disappointment loudly. A live-service, always-online multiplayer game in which the environments look same-y, the enemies look dull, and the characters all play the same, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League showed absolutely no sign of Rocksteady's Arkham pedigree.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was then promptly delayed out of its May 30, 2023, release date and pushed all the way back to February 2024. It seems fair to say that Suicide Squad might have been more than Rocksteady can handle right now. Rocksteady is attempting to go from a history of all single-player action-adventure games to a live-service 4-player co-op game, intended to last for at least a few years after release. This is no easy task for any developer, with even Naughty Dog apparently facing similar struggles with its Last of Us multiplayer game. Instead of jumping right in at the deep end, Rocksteady probably should have started with another single-player game based around the Suicide Squad, or even keep the multiplayer angle, but pair it back to just two players while removing the live-service burden.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League releases February 2, 2024 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
