On Thursday, Rocksteady and Warner Bros. Games lifted some of their restrictions of the NDA they had players sign to participate in the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League closed alpha back in November. Since that was lifted, players began posting their opinions on the game, both positive and negative. Insider Gaming decided to ask 100 people who played the Suicide Squad closed alpha about the game, and get their thoughts.
When asked what they’re rating of the alpha would be, 47.7% of people game it a rating of 7/10 or better. Overall, it seemed to get a lot of votes for a 6 and 7 out of 10, which would put it around the mixed/average rating if you were to use the Metacritic system.
When it comes to being a release day purchase, that’s where the numbers dip quite a bit. Of the 100 people we asked, 61% of them said that they wouldn’t be buying Suicide Squad on release. Most will either wait for a sale or just skip the game entirely.
We also asked players to leave their overall opinion on what they experienced in the closed alpha, knowing that changes to the game were still likely to come. Below are some of the responses.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Alpha Feedback
Positive Feedback
“I enjoyed my time with it. Combat felt good, story was developing nicely. I couldn’t get into it at first, but there’s a mission revolving around Batman (from the announcement that Conroy’s Batman was going to be in the game/trailers of Batman in front of the arkham asylum sign) that happens early on and i thought that was *really* well done, they were really respectful with that section and how they portrayed their previous Arkhamverse work.
I’m looking forward to release. Also, unless the HUD’s changed massively since the alpha game build, i think the outcry of complaints about the recent footage isn’t exactly fair either. It wasn’t an issue for me during that playtest.” – Thomas H.
“Ran very smooth for an alpha. Ran as smooth as Titanfall 2’s PS4 beta or better. The combat is very addictive. You can combine shooting ( on par with Borderlands 3 & Anthems shooting ) with traversal , melee and special attacks to create a limitless amount of combos.
By limitless I mean combo strings left up to the imagination as you can continually combo combo combo. The character, weapon and enemy design is of very high quality. The writing for the characters is very clever.” – Aaron C.
“I played in co-op game with my dad. We’re both big fans of the Arkham games, but after hearing about the live-service elements we expected very little. But we were pleasantly surprised! The story was interesting, the characters were funny, the traversal and gun play felt pretty good, although sometimes lacking in “weight”.
There definitely seemed to be a learning curve to stringing together movement and shooting effectively, which I’m looking forward to. I’m not sure how it’ll fare as a live-service, but if the campaign keeps the quality of what we played, I expect it to be a solid, fun time.” – Teddy C.
“I was very skeptical when entering the alpha, I noted that it was a live service game and the combat didn’t seem like something I’d like, but fortunately the combat did click with me, I enjoyed playing through with each of the heroes and the combat was more of a slowly evolving deal. The story was also really really interesting and actually surprised me with how much I enjoyed and wished to continue it.
The only issue I had was the traversal which felt a bit confusing to navigate through the city, I’m still worried about it being a live service game but otherwise I’m hopeful to see how the game works in the future and would love to continue it.” – Jarvis M.
“I went in thinking nothing of it , just not what i wanted in a rocksteady game but was blown away . the dialog was really fun and what was pushing me to the next story bit . combat was different but not bad and the traversal abilities are fun to use .” – Rusty J.
Mixed/Negative Feedback
“I thought the game was just okay & fear it would be DOA. The traversal system was easily the worst part of the game. It reminded me of Sunset Overdrive but it wasn’t actually fun to move around the map.” – Zach H.
“I played through a sizable chunk of the Alpha and was fairly unimpressed with the similarities in the characters. Loot feels uninspired because of the pool of weapons being all ballistic based guns, rather than designing a selection of unique weapons for each playable character. Melee attacks are genuinely embarrassing when even remotely compared next to Rocksteady’s previous combat system in the Arkham games, one I feel has yet to be beaten in a superhero title.” – Carter S.
“The game isn’t great. It looks pretty, and the story seemed okay (from the little bit we saw), but the traversal ranges from okay to terrible (depending on the character), and the fighting felt like a dozen other generic shooters. Definitely not one ill be recommending to friends at full price (or possibly at all).” – Tom L.
“The story was the shining star of what I played, but gameplay felt stiff and a bit janky. So if I came back to it, it would be to see how the story unfolds. The painting looks promising but the canvas and the brush are making it hard to finish what could be great.” – Spencer P.
“It is a terrible game that has shown just how far Warner Brothers and Rocksteady have fallen. Chasing trends and banking on nostalgia will not work in a live service game.” – Frank M.
“The traversal and combat seem to show some promise, but the controls are rather cumbersome. So much so, that while the UI takes up too much real estate on the screen, I was constantly reminded of the controls via pop-ups on the screen because they are fairly complicated to remember everything.
This game definitely requires a lot of time and experience to become familiar with it and to truly enjoy, but in my 20 hours of playtime in the alpha, I didn’t quite get all the way there. I want to like this game, but until Rocksteady allows me to play the game without an internet connection, I’ll wait pick this game up once it’s on sale, if I do at all.” – Conner C.
If you took part in the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League closed alpha, leave your thoughts in the comments below.
