May is about to be one hell of a month for the games industry. While many gamers are still working their way through Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, their attention is about to be redirected to one of the biggest games of the year with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom releasing on May 12, 2023. And though Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is set to dominate the month of May in the gaming landscape, it wasn't going to be the only heavy-hitter releasing this month, with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League originally slated for a May 26, 2023, release date.
Of course, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League isn't going to meet its May 2023 release date anymore. After a pretty brutal reception to its first true gameplay showcase, Rocksteady and Warner Bros. have decided to delay Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League by almost another whole year, with it now slated for a February 2, 2024, release date. But while this delay will certainly give Rocksteady more time to improve the game, it probably won't save Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's Year-Long Delay Might Not Fix It
Originally officially announced back in August 2020, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has already had quite an infamous development cycle, with a lot of pressure placed on developer Rocksteady Studios to get this right. While some fans had issues with its final entry, Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham trilogy is still widely considered to be one of the best superhero video game series of all time, and that pedigree has raised expectations for Suicide Squad dramatically. And when those expectations don't look like they're going to be met, a big problem arises.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had its first proper gameplay showcase back in February of this year, and the immediate reception to it wasn't great. While some fans appreciated the overall presentation, plot, and character designs showcased in the trailer, not too many were happy with just about everything else. The game's floaty looter-shooter gameplay, its live-service model, the lack of enemy variation, and the similarity of each character's moveset were just a few of the biggest points of criticism from Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's gameplay showcase, and they're not the simplest of things to fix.
Delaying such a high-profile AAA game like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League just months before it's set to release, and delaying it by almost an entire year, is a pretty big deal in the gaming industry. In the vast majority of cases, a big AAA game is only usually delayed by a few months, and that decision often comes quite a while before the game is nearing its original release date. A year-long delay gives Rocksteady a lot of time to right Suicide Squad's wrongs. There's room there for story and character rewrites, new mechanics that make each hero feel more unique to play, extra action set pieces and reworked level designs, and plenty of time to ensure it launches in a polished state. But that doesn't address Suicide Squad's biggest problem.
The biggest issue with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is its central gameplay premise, and the very core of the game itself. Put simply, not a lot of fans were too happy to find out that Suicide Squad is going to be a looter-shooter in a similar vein to Borderlands, Destiny, or the recently released Redfall. And while Rocksteady can remove a lot of the game's live-service elements, it's probably not going to be able to remove the core gameplay loop that runs through the entirety of the game, and if that's not something that fans want to experience now, then no amount of tweaking or adding will likely change that outcome in a year's time.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League launches February 2, 2024, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
