I'm sure someone is looking at this, thinking about the deluge of new releases in the first few months of this year, and wondering why on Earth out of all the games out there, I'm writing about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Some of that is purely about practicalities. I'm simultaneously deep into Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth (sixty hours!), while also being far from the end of that, and while I'm loving Helldivers II (and definitely intend to write about that), I'd like to put some more time into it first. Which is increasingly a problem considering there's genuinely too many people playing that game and the servers can't handle it. Also my friends seem to be mostly playing with...other people, which makes me sad, but whatever.
SSKTJL, though, I have played through to completion, or at least to see credits and spend some time in the end game. I did it all co-op too! Well, I spent some time on my own post game to find Riddler riddles and such, but the campaign I did all in co-op. And, to be clear, I enjoyed this game. It has issues, for sure, but I think it is an overall genuinely good game.
It is, however, the sort of game that I think averages out to being good because parts of it are really great, but some other parts...not quite so much.
The core game play, the combination of the mobility all four characters have, and the combat is great. At its best, this game is an absolute blast to play. High mobility action games are fairly common these days, but I feel like most of them are first person shooters. DOOM 2016 paved the way for smaller games like Severed Steel and Prodeus, and Titanfall 2 is one of the all time greats, but for whatever reason I feel like third person shooters really don't try to go for this level of fast, high flying movement? Anthem certainly tried, and Deadshot's jetpack makes him feel like he's just a mechanized suit away from being a Javelin at times. Thing is, as mobile as Anthem felt, it never really felt fast like SSKJTJL?
Part of it is probably that, on console at least, Anthem couldn't even hold a stable 30 frames per second, whereas SSKTJL either hits 60 most of the time, or at least stays in the variable refresh rate window of my TV, so I don't notice small drops. At least usually, it's not perfect, but it's more than good enough for me.
Something that never fails to impress me is when a game like this has multiple different characters that all feel meaningfully different from each other, and they're all fun to play. There are enough games out there that can't even manage to do that with one character, after all. Four is already cool, but more are coming via free updates in the future, so hopefully they all manage to feel different and fun too!
But what makes them different? It's mostly in their different mobility abilities (mabilities?). As mentioned earlier, Deadshot has a jetpack, which lets him fly around like any good jetpack, and hover in the air while aiming, again not unlike Anthem. Pretty straightforward, but the jetpack will overheat, so he has to use a combination of his secondary mability and landing/skimming the sides of buildings to keep that meter out of the red. Obviously just landing is slow, but hitting the dodge button right as he touches the ground puts him into a slide, which instantly resets the jetpack meter and keeps him moving at a good clip. Sliding to chain this stuff together is pretty important to all the characters, I just happened to mention Deadshot first.
The character I've spent the most time with by far (basically the whole campaign, and gotten to the level cap with) is Harley. Not really surprising considering of the characters in this game, she's my favorite generally, but also my favorite to play. Her mabilities center around a grappling hook and Bat-Drone she stole. The grapple can be used just like how Batman used it in the Arkham games, to scale buildings quickly, and with a well timed press of the jump button, she can get a decent jump out of it when cresting the top. When used with the Drone (and the other mability button), however, she can swing anywhere. It's similar to the swinging in Insomniac's Spider-Man games, except instead of actually attaching to a building, she hooks onto the Drone in midair. Really the only similarity is the swinging.
Again, being a video game, there is a delay between swings, and that delay grows after the second swing. Getting the...swing of this was a little tricky at first, but after a while I really got into it. A double jump is enough to keep her at altitude after the first swing, but after the second the cooldown is long enough that she'll almost certainly fall before it's back. So, the strategy becomes a mix of either grappling up and over a building ahead, or diving down into a slide off a building below, and jumping into another pair of swings. When I'm in a good groove, I can get moving across the city real quick with Harley, and she's a blast to play.
King Shark's powers are probably the least complicated of the bunch? He just jumps real good. I guess he does have two different types of charged jump, one straight up, and the other more of a pounce (that also makes him run faster on the ground), and he can air dodge (though the animations really look like he's literally swimming through the air). He's got kind of a ground pound too (separate from his stronger mobility attack), but it's not as fast as Harley's dive, so I didn't find it as useful.
Captain Boomerang, last, but certainly not least here, is definitely the most technical of the bunch. Using his iconic Speed Force Gauntlet (which he also stole), he can...run really fast. Except not really? Most of the time, at least. Being enough of a DC fan that I have a decent familiarity with the Speed Force (I've seen all nine (yes, 9) seasons of the Flash CW series), I know that moving at the sorts of speeds the Speed Force allows for would be really hard to accurately capture in a video game. It'd be some combination of near impossible to control, and maybe more doable with modern SSDs to load in stuff super fast, but still would be hard to implement from a technical perspective.
So instead, Boomer's mabilities are controlled by through his boomerang to target where to go, then there's a fun animation of him zooming about to get there. For example, if he's on a roof and throws the boomerang across the gap to a building on the other side of a street, it'll show lightning bolts of him running down the building, across the street, and up the next building, but all in about a second, ending with him hopping up to grab the boomerang. It's cool! He also has a short dash that's good for darting around in fights, or just eking out a smidge more distance after a long jump.
He does have a way to just run fast, but in order to do it, I think he needs to be above the ground, and throw the boomerang down to it, and if you time a press of the jump button well, he'll start running for a bit, instead of jumping. That wears off after a handful of seconds though, and I think that whole rigamarole needs to be done again to keep going. Unless he's running up the side of a building, then he can just keep going, since all of them have a “just go up the side of this building” move. Anyway, my friend Jay has Boomer as her main, and since we were playing through the campaign in co-op, she was the one running around at the speed of sound whilst I was swinging.
As a quick aside, my only “complaint” with the mobility is that you move through Metropolis so quickly that unless you actively stop to take in your surroundings, there's never much time to just appreciate the scenery. Which is a shame because the retro-futuristic design of the city is really cool! It's bright, and colorful, and maybe it doesn't quite feel real, but it does feel like Metropolis in the same way that the dark and grungy Gotham felt just right in the Arkham games. If anyone reading this does go and play the game, take some time to appreciate the city. It's rad.
Okay, back to the game design.
The other main difference between the characters comes in what weapons they can equip. Everyone has a different type of melee weapon, and I think there's sub-categories of each, but I dunno if that really has a big impact beyond just stats, and maybe a slightly different animation. But this is a shooter after all, so a lot of time is spent shooting, and I think the game does a decent job of getting at what the different fighting styles of each would be. Deadshot is the world's greatest shot (or one of them, DC has a weirdly high number of people who are really good at shooting), so his arsenal is more precise, with sniper rifles, pistols, and assault rifles. Harley, on the other hand, is a wild card, so she can use pistols, SMGs, and...heavy weapons. You know, miniguns. The only other character who can use heavy weapons is King Shark, to put that into perspective.
They all have their own skill trees, which frequently have skills that can be swapped between, but those are basically all passives. A lot of this game revolves around building up a combo meter by getting kills (or other things, depending on the character) without taking too much damage (again, there's skills to mitigate things, so you can take an extra hit or two before the combo goes down). Hitting specific combo counts can activate skills that do things like increase damage, or damage reduction, or regenerate things like grenades, or whatever else. Some other skills are activated by doing specific character mabilities.
For example, since Harley can shoot while swinging from her Drone, she has abilities that buff her whilst swinging, or just airborne in general. So for her, a lot of the time it's smart to keep swinging back and forth, shooting at enemies, then jump off when the grapple is about to give out, and use her mability attack to zoom in, blow up some enemies, then get in some melee hits or a finisher before going back up and swinging over to fight another group of enemies. Boomer, on the other hand, has buffs that go for a certain amount of time after using the Speed Force, so he wants to keep moving. King Shark gets buffs to his melee damage, and I think Deadshot is mostly focused on getting crits with headshots? I apologize for not remembering all the skill trees for all four characters, especially when Harley is the only one I hit the level cap with.
Anyway, suffice it to say, this game is a lot of fun, and there's still a bunch more stuff like afflictions (different status effects that affect enemies in various ways) or the shield harvesting technique that add even more to the combat that I didn't really have time to get into. It's a lot of fun, they all feel suitably different from each other, and aside from a couple quibbles, it's really fun to do with a friend, or friends. Big quibble being that the AI controlled allies feel like they do nothing when playing in co-op, despite being pretty capable in single player. They won't even revive you if you're downed in co-op! They will literally stand there about ten feet away, just looking at you while you wait for your friend to come do it.
We were playing on hard though, so maybe that's different on a lower difficulty? I dunno, but this game felt kinda easy on normal, so I'd still rather play it on hard. The AI doesn't hesitate to revive in single player on hard, I know that much.
So, what's the problem, one might be thinking after I praise the core combat. Well, at least in terms of game design...that's kind of the only thing you do in this game. Most of the missions are basically just defend a thing while fighting waves of enemies. Slight variations, like instead of defending a thing, you need to rescue civilians. But you do that by waiting for an icon to show where they are, then you clear out the enemies, and rescue the person by shrinking them down, collecting them into a Pokéball, then bringing them back to a bus before they suffocate from lack of air. Maybe they should put some more air holes in the balls next time? Certain missions put arbitrary restrictions up, like enemies can only take damage from crits, or when afflicted, and those do add some variety, but they can also be a bit of a pain if you aren't properly equipped.
There's some more unique parts of the game, like an early sequence in a museum retelling the events of the Arkham games, and the boss fights with the titular killing of the Justice League all feel unique, and fun. Otherwise, SSKTJL's biggest issue is it's very repetitive. Playing it with a friend helped alleviate some of that, just by nature of playing games with friends is almost always better than doing it alone, but even then, it's still repetitive.
The story though, and just the writing more generally, are shockingly good? I know there's some number of people online complaining about that stuff, but I feel like they can't have actually played the game. I know story is one of the most subjective things out there, I might love something that someone else hates, and vice versa, but I really like this game's writing. The actual narrative isn't doing anything unexpected, but I kinda prefer that to Rocksteady's focus on big twists in Arkham City and Knight, especially when if the twist ain't so great (like in Knight), it drags down the narrative as a whole.
Suicide Squad is going for something pretty different from those games, which honestly it should be. It's not a Batman game. It's a Suicide Squad game. One about killing the Justice League, and one with a suitably DC explanation for why they need to do so. Brainiac has invaded Metropolis, turned the majority of its population into monsters, and mind controlled all but one of the Justice League to do his bidding. Having played through the game, I think it's a good set up, and one they do good stuff with.
Of course, the other thing I want to write about here is why these sorts of stories, and characters in DC (or at least adaptations, I'm not really a comics reader (to my own detriment, I'm sure)) appeal to me so much. You know, I love characters like Batman like as much as anyone else, obviously I wouldn't have watched nine seasons of the Flash, even when it got bad, if I didn't enjoy the “main cast” of the DC universe. There's just something about when DC focuses on the weirdos and losers on the sidelines that's compelling to me.
Part of it I think is that this is a uni/multiverse that goes to such ludicrous heights in terms of what its most powerful characters can do, that it's just fun to see stories about...not exactly normal people, but closer to normal than the Supermen and Wonder Women of the world. Characters who have no actual superpowers of their own, but whether through resourcefulness, learned skills, or just plain luck, manage to achieve and do super things. So when you take non-super people, and add that extra zest of them being screw-ups, it's a formula that really speaks to me.
And yes, I know, “Batman doesn't have superpowers.” But let's be real here, his superpower is he's a billionaire. He has effectively infinite money. His superpower is that he has the resources to ignore even attempting to have a normal life, so he can instead focus on fighting crime. He can still be a compelling character even after countless different incarnations (Robert Pattinson was brilliant in The Batman!), but he's not the type of loser screw-up I'm talking about.
We all love screw-ups and losers because no matter what we have or haven't done in our lives, we've all screwed up and lost at some point. I got my college degree, and I've completely wasted it, made absolutely zero use of it in the decade since I graduated. You know who else doesn't make good use of her college degree? Harley Quinn, because she lives a life of mildly clown themed crime instead. Okay, that part isn't quite as relatable, but I also don't live in the DC universe. Maybe if I did, I too could be a clown criminal in a queer relationship with a plant person!
Getting away from what-ifs, I think a lot of modern DC stuff is at its best when it's focusing on these sorts of characters from the sidelines than when it focuses on the “main cast.” Even if I'm only looking at the CW DC shows, in a lot of ways I feel like Legends of Tomorrow might secretly be the best of them. It's a collection of side characters from other shows (mostly Flash and Arrow), who team up and travel through time, getting into to all sorts of hijinks along the way. It's far from the best show I've ever seen, but it's fun! Especially after season 1 when they got a better feel for the tone they should be going for.
By focusing on characters that most people haven't really heard of (or might be entirely new to the CW DC-verse), they get to do things that feel different from most “superhero” storylines. Whether it's the bizarre nonsense stories they cooked up, or simply having queer characters, it's just refreshing. For context, two of the main characters in Legends of Tomorrow get lesbian married, and the guy in universe who invented time travel did so because he wanted to go back in time to save his boyfriend.
And don't get me started on Doom Patrol, a show comprised almost entirely of C and D tier DC characters I'd never heard of (and also Cyborg, for some reason), but ultimately I think is genuinely one of the best comic book related shows out there. Also one of my favorite shows that I've seen in the last handful of years, period. It's about a bunch of weirdos who don't really get along at first, but all of them have their own baggage, their own traumas, and I just grew more and more attached to them the more I watched.
Plus, what's not to like about a show where Brendan Fraser voices a foul mouthed robot man? Or a show with a living intelligent street that serves as a safe haven for queer people? A show where, increasingly one of its main points is about how people who are different, for whatever reason, need to stick together, and work together to keep each other safe, and try to make the world a better place. Because if they (or honestly, we) don't, the monsters of normalcy will destroy us all, and if we're not careful, trick us into destroying ourselves.
Again, not to focus too much on just that stuff, because I don't see the main DC movies having queer characters in the forefront. I don't see any Marvel adaptations doing queerness in any sort of meaningful capacity, but Doom Patrol? That does, and it's good! And it does it from the first season too (primarily with Larry's backstory and his former lover), so it's not like something they accidentally stumbled into. It's part of the main thrust of the show.
Anyway, watch Doom Patrol, it's good. I teared up at the end of the final season.
Perhaps more relevant to this game, I also think that The Suicide Squad (the James Gunn film with Idris Elba) is probably the best DC movie from at least the last...decade? That or Shazam, but since Shazam is just kind of a good ole fashioned superhero movie about a kid learning to help people, I kinda appreciate The Suicide Squad feeling different a bit more. Same thing with Birds of Prey, honestly. The Batman is also great, but that's its own thing and it mostly works because it's entirely separated from their mess of a cinematic universe.
Back to Harley, but the Harley Quinn animated series I really like too. Season 4 I felt was probably more miss than hit, even if when it hit was really funny, but on the whole, I like that show a lot. Because it's a show about misfits, weirdos, and losers, but they're losers with heart. Even if it's a bit sappy at times, it's earnest and endearing. Plus, at least from season 2 onward, Harley and Ivy's relationship is a core part of the show, and that is relevant to something I want to say about Suicide Squad the game.
This is, I guess maybe a little spoiler-y, but not really? Also I feel like anyone who actually cares has played the game, so whatever. Since SSKTJL is a continuation of the Arkham games, Ivy is still dead at the start of this game. There's a couple moments early on where Harley expresses how she still misses Ivy, and those moments are sweet, but they're just a couple quick moments. A bit later in the game (but still early-ish), it turns out that while the original Ivy is gone, in the years after Arkham Knight, Lex Corp secretly cloned Ivy, and thus there's a new Ivy!
Except she's a little kid now, which I have mixed thoughts on. Certainly some of those thoughts are that this is their way of preventing any sort of romantic relationship between the two. The sort of thing where based on some of what Harley says to the new Ivy (who can't remember anything clearly from her past life, even if Harley seems familiar), it's up to interpretation whether the two of them were just really close friends, or more than that. My other thought is that I like the way this Ivy is written better than she was in the Arkham games, because she's a maniacal little murder child. That's fun, and I can't deny that I enjoyed listening to her delight in the Suicide Squad inflicting elemental pain on Brainiac's minions.
You know, I don't go into big budget AAA games expecting queer representation. I've written about this plenty. It's just annoying when things like this happen to characters who are about as canonically queer as they can be these days. The closest you get are some allusions that are up to interpretation, and a scene where I'm 99% sure that Harley was hitting on Wonder Woman, but even that is up to interpretation too.
I probably shouldn't write about leaks, but apparently the second character being added is Victoria Fries, rather than the usual Victor. Ms. Freeze, or Mrs? Again this is second hand information about a leak, but supposedly Nora Fries is the antagonist of the Freeze update to the game, so I'm curious how this is going to be handled. Mr. Freeze's entire character, at least in halfway modern versions, is based around how much he loves his wife. So I guess I could see how if they already gender bent the character they could bend that too, but who knows.
That's months away, since the first big update is adding Joker, which I'm also super curious about! More story stuff is coming with every big character update, and like...how are they gonna handle that with Harley? I think that, (despite one of Arleen Sorkin's last performances as Harley being in Arkham Asylum), those games didn't really handle Harley all that well. Certainly not in terms of outfits (which SSKTJL even makes a joke about), but by the time of this game, Harley is very much in the, “regrets her time with the Joker” phase of life. But, thanks to the wonders of multiverses and Elseworlds, it's a different Joker, so I think they could do something interesting with it. Hopefully?
Anyway, one of the things that makes the story side of this game work is that the Suicide Squad are a bunch of ragtag losers. Both in terms of their lives in universe, but also how they're treated as characters as a part of a media franchise. Harley's by far the most popular one here, having had her own feature film and animated series, but the rest? They're two-bit nobodies, but that's what makes them fun!
Crucially, the game leans into that aspect. Yes, they all have useful skills, otherwise Waller (played by one of my favorites, Debra Wilson, doing an absolutely tremendous job with one of DC's most ruthless characters) wouldn't have picked them for the mission. But they're all in prison at the start of the game. And even if they weren't, it's not like their lives were going all that great. At one point in her life, Harleen Quinzel was a psychiatrist. A doctor. Then she fell victim to an abusive relationship that completely changed her life, and now she's a mildly clown themed criminal. George Harkness was just another criminal, but one with an ego so big he decided to declare himself the rival of the fastest man alive despite his gimmick being...boomerangs. Floyd Lawton really only does contract killing to support his daughter, and Nanaue... Well if I'm being honest, I think you really need to screw up pretty badly to go from being a demigod(?) heir to an underwater kingdom, to being locked up in a prison with the likes of those clowns. That, or just trying to escape his own family baggage like everyone else.
Ragtag groups that don't get along at first, but slowly grow to trust and depend on each other aren't anything new. But you know why it's a popular trope? Because it's good! The edgy loner who does everything on his own, using only his skills and billions of dollars to fight crime is cool, but increasingly less relatable the older I get. The bi disaster clown who wasted her college degree, and now commits crimes with an assassin, Australian, and shark? THAT'S relatable.
In all seriousness, the fact that the Suicide Squad are constantly screwing up in the early hours of the game, and getting berated for it by Waller, Lex Luthor, Wonder Woman, basically any and everyone they encounter, it's just kind of refreshing. Lots of games lean heavily on stuff like, “oh, chosen one, you're our only hope,” that sort of “make the players feel good about themselves” stuff. I just like it when a game is about a bunch of dumbasses and they get treated like the dumbasses they are.
It wouldn't work as well as it does if the writing, voice acting, and quality of animations weren't all top notch. And I'm not kidding about the animations, this might genuinely have the best animated faces in any game I've played? To the point where a fair amount of the game's humor comes from little glances, looks, and things like that in the background of cutscenes. Funny reactions to whatever is happening in the foreground, or was said a moment ago. It's a sort of humor that I can't really think of being in any other games, and it's cool to see. Especially since I can only imagine it was an enormous amount of work for things that a lot of people will probably miss, because again, it's often in the background, and pretty quick.
There's plenty of goofy slapstick, and more overt jokes too. One of my favorites is from a conversation between missions when roaming the open world, early on. The Suicide Squad is on their way to “recruit” Penguin so he can supply them with weapons, and en route Harley recounts how Penguin killed and “stuffed” one of her pet hyenas. Upon hearing the word “stuffed,” Boomerang chokes like he's trying not to laugh, and just says, “that means something different in Australia.”
What followed was a second of silence as Jay and I processed what he said, then we both cracked up.
Aside from Deadshot, who by nature of being the one normal person in the group, I think the rest of the Suicide Squad are all really funny. It's kind of a shame that Deadshot misses out on that stuff, but I still think his characterization is good enough. You kinda need at least one normal guy for these kind of groups, to keep it at least a little grounded. Harley is Harley, and as a Harley fan, I think she's good in this game. Captain Boomerang is probably the butt of the most jokes, but he is Australian, after all. And King Shark, more than anything else I'm just glad that Joe Seanoa (aka wrestler Samoa Joe) was cast because he was actually good for the role, and not as a celebrity “stunt” casting.
All the acting is pretty good to great, but there one elephant in the room here. The fact that, for better or worse, this is the final role of Kevin Conroy. The man who was Batman for probably several generations of people now, and for those of us who grew up hearing his voice, likely he always will be. His passing hit me harder than, I'd say any other celebrity death has. Just how much his incarnation of Batman meant to me, and kept meaning to me as I got older, and he kept popping up. The Arkham games were a big reason why I remembered how much I loved his Batman.
And for anyone who hasn't, I highly recommend reading “Finding Batman,” a short autobiographical comic Conroy wrote about his life, and how that all led to his being cast as Batman. It's sad, but all the more powerful for it.
I'm not sure if that's necessarily the best link for it out there, but it's what I found that wasn't like, part of a comics subscription app or anything like that.
Anyway, Kevin Conroy's Batman means as much to me as he does anyone else. All the more so after reading the aforementioned comic and learning not just that he was gay, but how much that shaped his life and who he was. So, when it was announced that his final role was going to be in Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League... I had mixed feelings. Part of me was just happy that we were getting one last role with him, but...did I really want it in a game where he was one of the bad guys, and one where, based on the title of the game, he was going to be killed?
In the time between that announcement and the game's actual release (partly due to it being delayed almost a year), one of those feelings got a lot more subdued compared to the other. By the time I started the game, I was just happy to hear his voice again. Hear him doing something new, rather than rewatching the old animated series again. And I get it, I don't think there's anyone out there who wouldn't rather his final performance be a really personal, touching story about Batman, first and foremost.
But that's not how life works. Sometimes things like this just happen, and people pass away too soon. Besides, I don't think he would have taken the role if he didn't want to do it. There have been so many other Batman voices, across cartoons, animated films, and video games (even one of the Arkham games!), that I can only assume he picked and chose the ones he wanted to do. I saw a video clip where, when asked what characters other than Batman he would want to play, the answer he ultimately gives is, “villains.” So, no, this might not be the final performance people wanted from him, but it's the one we got. And I think judging from his performance in the game, one he enjoyed doing. He definitely didn't phone it in. Honestly, I think his presence makes the game better, and I'm just glad we got to hear him one last time.
I apologize for that being a link to a twitter video, especially if it ever gets deleted. I tried to find a YouTube clip, but I didn't try that hard.
There's also a lot more of him than I expected, as he spends the bulk of the game as the de facto leader of Brainiac's ground forces, so he's constantly heard on the radio giving commands, or trying to demoralize the Suicide Squad. It's good, and again, I think he had fun with the role.
I certainly don't think the game is in any way disrespectful to him, or somehow to fictional character The Batman. If anything, by virtue of none of the Justice League being playable, the game doesn't have to hold back on how their powers are portrayed. Again, I think it'd be extremely difficult to really capture what characters like the Flash and Green Lantern can do as playable characters, never mind the “impervious to everything except what he's 100% weak to” Superman. Wonder Woman I think is in a sweet spot where you could reasonably make a good game with her in the lead (and hopefully whatever Monolith is working on eventually sees the light of day, and is good). But in this game, she is definitely portrayed as being on a level totally above what any of the Suicide Squad is capable of.
Even Batman, it's fun to see what he can do from the opposite end. That sequence early on in the Batman museum begins with him stalking and taking out each member of the Suicide Squad, one by one, until...well, play the game (or look up a YouTube video) to see how they luck into getting out alive.
Part of why I think this game works from a story perspective is that it's about a group of losers who eventually learn that by working together, and using the help from others, they can overcome the impossible suicide mission of taking out the most powerful superheroes on Earth. And even then, it's only because the Justice League have all been mind controlled by Brainiac, and in all his hubris, he just assumes the Suicide Squad poses no threat. He never makes his Justice League actually work together as a team. If they did, I'm pretty sure they would have wiped the floor with the Suicide Squad.
Anyway, flaws or not, I had a lot of fun with SSKTJL, and I fully intend to come back to it for the big updates, at least. As much as part of me would like to get all the characters to the level cap, there's so many other games that I just know realistically I won't. Not in the short term, anyway. But, as much fun as I had...it's the sort of game that I don't know that I can really recommend it to most people. At least not at the current price, I know I wouldn't have wanted to spend $70 on it if I hadn't gotten a $75 PSN gift card for Christmas. Unless you and a friend (or preferably friends plural) are really itching for a co-op shooter, and you're all DC sickos, it's hard to justify right now.
Even if you need a co-op shooter, Helldivers II is right there, and it's a lot cheaper. Never mind being a better co-op game in that you need to actually cooperate as players to succeed on higher difficulties. I guess SSKTJL isn't running into the “too many people are playing” problem, haha, so it's got that going for it.
Still, fun game. Would have been a better game with more bespoke missions, and less repetition, but at the end of the day, the core game is fun, and I liked the story and characters. That's enough for me, at least.
Dunno if I'm going to write anything about Infinite Wealth, that kinda depends on how the story ends up and if I have things to say about that, but I am having a blast with it. That's a heavy recommendation from me. I'll try to write something about Helldivers II, but it might be a while, depending on how much I get to play in the near future. Hopefully the server situation gets sorted out, and my friends have time to play with me, instead of the umpteen other friend groups they have. Listen, it's hard not to get at least a little frustrated when it feels like everyone is playing a multiplayer game, just not with you.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is so soon, and I do, genuinely, really truly want to play Persona 3 Reload, since I've not played any version of that game. It's my blind spot in the “three Persona games,” Personas 3, 4 (watched Endurance Run, haven't played it), and 5. We'll see what happens with that game in terms of price drops after I'm done with Rebirth...and Dragon's Dogma II. I can't commit to any other long games until I've gotten through those two. And obviously the other 100 plus hour Sega published JRPG I mentioned above. Oh, and that Prince of Persia, I gotta play that at some point too!!
Lots of great games right now, so I hope everyone reading this has something they're loving at the moment, and something they're excited for soon! Take care out there!
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