Suicide Squad: KTJL’s Gameplay Already Shows A Big Problem With Combat

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is already under fire for being live service, but the new gameplay trailer has shown more troubling issues.

Problems continue to mount for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League after a gameplay trailer showed combat sequences at Sony’s February 2023 State of Play. Worries that the title would be live service were confirmed, and new concerns about the game requiring constant online connection have only further hurt its reputation. However, what might be the most condemning flaw the State of Play revealed was something developer Rocksteady Studios was always expected to knock out of the park: combat.

Rocksteady Studios is the developer of the beloved Batman: Arkham series, and Suicide Squad: KTJL is supposed mark the company’s exciting return to the Arkhamverse after it appeared to end the multimedia franchise in 2015. Indeed, fans have missed using the Caped Crusader and his allies in the Batman: Arkham series’ excellent freeflow combat system, which remains one of Rocksteady’s highest achievements. The prestige of this combat system has made Rocksteady’s involvement with KTJL doubly exciting. After WB Games Montréal’s Gotham Knights failed to impress players, Batman fans could seemingly rely on a more reliable developer to make stronger DC game.

Suicide Squad: KTJL’s Combat System Makes Its Characters Fight The Same Way

Suicide Squad: KTJL‘s first extended gameplay trailer, viewable on PlayStation‘s YouTube channel, may have dispelled the high expectations for its combat system, though. As KTJL‘s Technical Game Designer Tim Hanagan explains in the trailer, “The core mechanic that everything wraps around in the Suicide Squad is your traversal. How that works is that you’re chaining your combat moves into your traversal moves.” This means KTJL‘s playable Suicide Squad members – Harley Quinn, Boomerang, King Shark, and Deadshot – have distinct mobility and weapon options that can be used in unique combinations. However, the gameplay footage shows that, instead of this, much of the combat between the characters looks the same: flying around while shooting weapons.

Related: Suicide Squad: KTJL Is Online-Only – Here’s Why That’s Bad

Suicide Squad KTJL’s Repetitive Combat Is Not A New Issue For Rocksteady

Suicide Squad: KTJL‘s playable characters do not literally move around and fight in the same way. Harley Quinn has a grapple hook and fights with her famous hammer; Boomerang uses his titular weapon to quickly cover large spaces; Deadshot even has a jetpack. But despite these differences, the gameplay trailer shows that the abilities of Suicide Squad: KTJL‘s confirmed characters function much in the same way: they have access to guns and mobility options that allow them to fly around while shooting down enemies. The lack of truly distinct fighting and traversal styles for characters could potentially make combat not only repetitive but character choice unimportant.

Creating distinct fighting styles for different characters is not a new problem for Rocksteady Studios or the Arkhamverse. Earlier in the Batman: Arkham series, the studio was actually criticized for how many of the playable characters had duplicated abilities, and though they might have distinct moves, they mostly worked the same in the freeflow combat system. WB Games Montréal even reused most of Robin’s moves for playable Death Stroke in Batman: Arkham Origins.

That said, Rocksteady Studios did manage to give each playable character in the Arkhamverse a unique combination of moves and abilities that helped express their personalities. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League shows its does much the same in the gameplay trailer. But it remains unclear if the characters’ different mechanics will manage to diversify gameplay in interesting ways.

More: How Suicide Squad: KTJL Can Avoid Becoming Another Marvel’s Avengers

Source: PlayStation/YouTube