Season 2 of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League launches today, a game determined to get through at least its first year of content despite little more than a couple hundred of players on Steam and likely not too many more than that on console.
And I have to say I am impressed with at least one concept arriving with season 2 today, the new addition of Mrs. Freeze to the roster.
No, not in terms of the fact she looks neat (her design is less than fantastic) or that her addition particularly makes sense (Killer Frost was right there!), but in terms of what they’ve done with her traversal? Incredible.
When they probably could have just given her a “chill jets” boost backpack or something, Rocksteady went all out and decided to make her traversal an Iceman/Frozone ice-surf that trails in front of and behind her. It actually looks very cool in practice!
Traversal is really the main thing that diversifies player kits in this game, given that everyone has access to the same slate of guns and grenades, and only ultimates and traversal are meaningfully different, one of the game’s core problems. But they have really been on point with these mechanisms. I also thought they did a great job with Joker’s rocket umbrella last season, and this certainly looks cool (no pun intended).
Of course, there’s still a lot of weirdness. In theory you could make a fire or electric build on Mrs. Freeze because that’s how this game works, even if she will no doubt have some innate cold abilities in her tree. And a melee slam axe isn’t going to work differently than a melee Harley mallet.
There’s also the fact that Mrs. Freeze could be the most fun character they’ve ever done and it’s just too late anyway. Suicide Squad will not recover. The launch of Joker had less than 25% of the players as the game’s launch, which was half the amount who showed up for the release of Marvel’s Avengers. I will be impressed if Mrs. Freeze does even half of what Joker did, and I’d expect the game’s playercount to be back down into the hundreds in a week or so.
I’m also just…not going to play this season. I’ve thrown in the towel at this point. I don’t know if the game is going to do another “grind old characters for a few hours to get Mrs. Freeze or pay to unlock her” thing, but I’m not doing it either way. I’ve uninstalled as I just don’t have the hard drive space or time to devote to covering a game where 400 people are playing it in a given night.
But if you want to give Mrs. Freeze a try? Cool, I don’t blame you. She looks sort of neat, and I respect Rocksteady for at least continuing to try here.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
