Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has released, pitting a crack team of conscripted DC supervillains against everyone's favorite superhero squad that isn't the Avengers. Eager to know what we'd learned about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League before release? Well, I'll put it this way: you won't be taking Superman out for tea.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was announced alongside Gotham Knights all the way back at the DC Fandome presentation in 2020, and we spent the next few years piling up pertinent info about the co-op villain shooter. Here's everything we knew about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League in its run-up to launch.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League release date
When did Suicide Squad release?
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice league released on February 2, 2024. The release followed its second lengthy delay, after an earlier pushback from its original 2022 release date into Spring 2023.
Rumors about the second delay started swirling months before the official announcement, beginning with a Bloomberg report published during a rocky PR period for the game. A Suicide Squad gameplay showcase in February 2022 received a middling response from fans, and its Steam page's release date was changed to "coming soon" shortly afterwards. WB released an official delay announcement on Twitter in April 2023.
It's worth noting that Rocksteady studio co-founders Jamie Walker and Sefton Hill announced in 2022 that they'd be leaving the studio. The announcement letter also revealed that Darius Sadeghian and co-founder Nathan Burlow have assumed the roles of studio director and studio product director respectively.
Read our Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League review
In our Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League review, our Morgan Park found glimmers of satisfaction in the Rocksteady looter shooter, particularly in its acrobatic verticality. Those glimmers, however, struggle to outshine an initially baffling truckload of ability mechanics and lackluster story missions. "It's a monotonous climb to find momentary flashes of greatness," Morgan writes, "and that's not an experience I'd drop $70 on."
Worth noting that Suicide Squad's most eager players met their own frustrations. A Suicide Squad early access bug that granted "full story completion" to some players who'd pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition, meaning some of their early access time was spent with the game down while a fix was issued.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League trailers
Here's a 19 overview of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League story and gameplay
In a lengthy first installment of deep dives leading up to release, the Suicide Squad devs laid out their story philosophy before detailing the core gameplay. We got a short demo from the game's opening where the Squad pilfers convenient gadgets from a Justice League museum that'll provide their character-specific traversal mechanics, and then see those mechanics in action.
It definitely feels like Rocksteady's putting in effort to make up for the lackluster response to their earlier gameplay reveal below. What looked like floaty, jumpy shooting across Metropolis now actually looks like it'll have some engaging traversal. For example, with a stolen grappling hook and bat-drone, Harley Quinn seems like she'll almost play like a gun-toting Spider-Man.
Here's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League gameplay from February 2023
This six minute chunk of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League co-op gameplay has our cast of ad hoc heroes fighting through hordes of Brainiac-controlled bad guys. Getting the elephant in the room out of the way now: people weren't thrilled by what they saw here. Everyone has a floaty, airborne combat style—even the burly King Shark. Their third-person shooting and brawling feels just as weightless; Deadshot's dome-shooting has a similar energy to checking boxes on a tax form.
It's not bad, but it also feels a little like a cry for help? Let me put it this way: after three and a half minutes of compulsive combat chatter, the triumphant climax is an uninterrupted fifteen seconds where you just watch a weakpoint on a turret get shot.
Here are the other Suicide Squad trailers we'd seen
The first cinematic teaser trailer for Suicide Squad peppers in a decent amount of background on the dynamics of the gang, the terms of Task Force X, and the villains of the game. As you can guess, the villains are the protagonists in this story and the usual heroes are the villains instead.
The second trailer still doesn't feature any gameplay. It's a story trailer that hints at a lot of Arkham game callbacks. You can spot King Shark putting on the bowler hat the Riddler wore in Arkham City and Harley Quinn firing Batman's grapnel gun. Poison Ivy and Penguin appear to both be along for this story as well. Aside from that, trailer two mostly recaps the story setup we'd seen originally: the Justice League has gone rogue and our band of four villains is out to kill them under the direction of Amanda Waller.
Finally, at The Game Awards in 2021 we saw a gameplay trailer. Some pretty brutal attacks—King Shark just bites a guy's head off—were combined with slick movement as the characters fought running battles across the rooftops of an open world Metropolis.
Then at the Game Awards in 2022 we got the final release date and saw the Shadows trailer, which revealed that Batman would be among our Justice League opponents, played by Kevin Conroy in his final performance as the Dark Knight.
This six minute co-op gameplay showcase from February 2023 has our cast of ad hoc heroes fighting through hordes of Brainiac-controlled bad guys. People weren't thrilled by what they saw here: Public reaction wasn't exactly positive for what felt like showcase of floaty, weightless combat—an impression that Rocksteady's been trying to overwrite in more recent showings.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League gameplay info
What is Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League's gameplay like?
In an interview following the reveal trailer, Rocksteady creative director Sefton Hill says that Kill The Justice League is a hybrid between their prior Arkham games and some "powerful, awesome gunplay." Hill also references weapons that you'll develop over the course of the game, which may refer to a system for upgrading or customizing each villain's signature weapons.
Rocksteady had also confirmed that Metropolis is an open world. Hill calls it the "fifth character" of the game, the way that they approached Gotham in past games.
A behind the scenes dev video that accompanied the February 2022 gameplay footage above explains a bit more of Suicide Squad's playstyle. In short, it's a looter-shooter: Through each character's brand of floaty third-person shooting, you'll be acquiring guns with different rarities, stats, affixes—and, of course, a gear score number. The number goes up. There are little red and green arrows. You know the deal.
Suicide Squad's campaign can be singleplayer or co-op
The Suicide Squad works as a unit but you the player can work alone if you want to. Rocksteady says that if you choose to play solo, the other three members of the squad will be handled by AI. You can pick a favorite team member to stick with, but you're also free to hop into the shoes of any team member at any time.
If you want to have friends drop in, they can take on the role of the other squad members for a total of four players in co-op. Rocksteady says that it's a seamless experience, meaning you can have friends join or drop out as needed and won't be forced to commit to solo or co-op during the campaign.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a live service game (for now)
As Rocksteady phrases it, the studio "will continue is legacy of supporting the game after its launch" with regular content updates. Mentioned in the February 2022 behind the scenes dev video are new playable characters, weapons, and missions. Suicide Squad will also be chasing the seasonal model: it'll have battle passes, but these will apparently only contain cosmetic items.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will have an offline mode, but not at launch
It seems like Suicide Squad will escape the fate of too many live-service games and will let you play solo offline—just not at launch. "We're happy to confirm, we are planning to add an offline story mode that will give players the option to experience the main campaign without an internet connection," Rocksteady rep EpicYeti wrote in an announcement in the game's official Discord. "We’re aiming to add this update in 2024 and will provide more details when available."
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League story & characters
What's the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League story?
Kill the Justice League is part of the Arkhamverse, meaning it carries forward the story of Arkham Knight, though the story is picking up in Metropolis instead of Gotham.
We don't know much about what's going on in Metropolis beyond an invasion by Brainiac, but it seems to be quite a mess. Various members of the Justice League have gone rogue under Brianiac's control, and only Task Force X, aka the Suicide Squad, can stop them.
The Squad take tactical directions from their boss, task force founder Amanda Waller. If you're not familiar with the Suicide Squad already, their incentive to stay in line, and in the line of fire, are deadly nano-bombs injected into their heads when Waller conscripts them into the crew.
Which characters are on the Suicide Squad?
The Suicide Squad sends dangerous super villain convicts on equally dangerous missions in return for reduced prison sentences. The government black-ops squad has had a huge number of members in the DC Universe. Kill the Justice League will star four of the bunch: Harley Quinn, Deadshot, King Shark, and Captain Boomerang.
Harley Quinn
Harley is as bombastic as ever in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. From the footage we've seen, she'll use her acrobatics to grapple through the city's architecture while firing light guns, before getting up-close and personal with her bat and ball. Wait that's not a ball, that's a bomb she's shoved into an enemy's mouth. I'm always getting those mixed up.
Deadshot
As the name suggests, Deadshot is pretty good at shooting. His specialty is guns at long range but as the trailers show, he also has a backpack that he can use to glide above enemies to get to better vantage points for his kit. Sniping enemies off one-by-one while jetting from rooftop to rooftop looks, frankly, badass.
King Shark
King Shark is the brawler of the bunch but also has a minigun for good measure. I'd prefer to take the minigun though, rather than King Shark getting his hands on me and ripping my head off with his teeth. Just personal preference. As for his movement, King Shark can super jump and then hit the ground with enough force to damage enemies around him in a shockwave.
Captain Boomerang
Boomerang is in his name, but the Captain also likes a gun or two too. Deadshot performs well from afar but Captain Boomerang seems to prefer a shotgun or a pistol in his arsenal. Additionally, he has his own teleportation abilities where he can make small aerial jumps by seemingly throwing his boomerang where he intends to go. Oh, and he's great at beefing with the Justice League. Like really good at getting them to fight the Squad by recording videos where he's mean to his nemesis, The Flash. That sort of thing.
The "villains" and wider cast
The set up for Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League is kind of apparent. You're playing as the Squad and you're out to kill the Justice League. They've not suddenly become the bad guys, though, they're under the influence of big bad Brainiac who is controlling their actions. From the info we've had so far, we'll also take on The Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, and maybe Wonder Woman, though it also looks like we'll get to team up with her as perhaps the only member of the Justice League who hasn't been taken over.
We can expect to encounter other DC characters, such as perpetual headache for the Metropolis resident, Lex Luthor, and the Penguin, who's getting a reprieve from Batman's rogues gallery by being conscripted to serve as the Squad's arms dealer.
