The saga of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League continues to be a wild one. As I detailed yesterday, the marketing decisions that have gone into the game have been somewhat baffling, content of the game itself aside. Now, Warner Bros. and Rocksteady have done something that is extremely rare, they’ve lifted the NDA on a closed alpha test a month ago so players can now talk about their time with the game.
This comes after a preview embargo lifted for the game where journalists and creators were flown out to LA for a test of the game, but technical issues knocked down playtime to just a few hours, and there was little time to answer many of the lingering questions about the game as a result, and the disjointed playtime combined with other issues led to many headlines that were mixed-to-bad as a result.
For weeks now, I’ve heard much more positive impressions from the alpha test participants behind the scenes, and allowing them to share their thoughts make sense given that they had three days with the game, while the recent preview crowd only had a scarce few hours.
It’s not known precisely how many people participated in the closed alpha, but opinions are now flooding onto social media as a result of the NDA lifting, both positive and negative. Players also cannot share gameplay footage and screenshots, still however.
As for the opinions of the masses? Here’s a small collection from my readers, both positive and negative, now that they can open up:
- @JakeNoseIt – “Realized they aren’t going for superhero verisimilitude (Batman/Spidey)! instead making a fun looter TPS with DC Comics flavor. Traversal really worked for me and I felt rewarded for figuring out their systems. Found myself playing a lot just because it was fun on the sticks”
- @BrosophSZN – “Better than expected, was very well polished, only think I ran into 1 bug in several hours. co-op worked well and didn’t feel tacked on. gear is really the only concern I had, all seemed kinda same-y, but only had access to low level stuff.”
- @isolatedscot – “Played the story, remember none, played the gameplay, remember it being bad, movement was clunky and the shooting wasn’t very enjoyable either.”
- @EdFiftyNine – “The characters are great and the gameplay is fun in the short time I played but questions remain over how long it can hold people’s attention and if the game will be able to avoid the same slip-ups that other live service games have.”
- @oood – “Thought the gameplay worked really well! using guns to open enemies up melee to restore shields was fun. I liked the story and character moments a lot more than I expected to. Movement as Harley was also a blast with a grappling hook somewhere between Batman and Spider-Man!”
- @OfficialRyat – “Actually really liked the closed alpha, was very fun and the combat was smooth and enjoyable. A lot of different options for your skill tree. Instant swapping between characters made the game feel really seemless and immersive. 9/10”
- @Gh0stivan1 – “Very fun, reminded me of Sunset Overdrive, plays better than Gotham Knights. Story seems good in the parts we could play but I can see some of the side activities getting repetitive but that’s the same with most games like this.”
- @KYShaunT1 – “Traversal is fun as hell and very different for each character, and I legit laughed out loud a couple of times at some story bits/lines.”
I have also have thread here that has dozens more impressions from readers in addition to these ones I plucked out:
As I said, I am seeing probably a 10:1 ratio of positive to negative feedback, albeit with the caveat that many people invested enough to sign up for the Suicide Squad alpha may be more predisposed to like it. But still, it’s much more positive than the recent previews.
There’s no telling how this will translate to launch, or even if it is pretty good, if that will lead into a long live service lifespan. But this is definitely the most positive press the game has had for probably a year, and we’ll see what the larger reaction is now.
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