How Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s Counter Shot Iterates on Arkham’s Counter System

Highlights

• Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has garnered mixed reactions due to its departure from the gameplay and genre of Rocksteady’s previous Arkhamverse games.
• The game’s emphasis on live-service elements, including Battle Passes, has received criticism from single-player fans.
• The recently aired episode of “Suicide Squad Insider” provides a lengthy look at the game’s story and gameplay, with some similarities to the iconic counter system from Arkham games.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been a contentious title since its gameplay was originally revealed, largely due to how starkly it abandons the gameplay and genre direction of Rocksteady’s previous Arkhamverse games. WB Games diving head-long into live-service endeavors makes complete sense when looking at Suicide Squad on paper, and the leak of its Battle Pass elements sent many single-player fans into a fury since it seemed like that’s where the game’s emphasis would be.

Suicide Squad was given a long delay that fans shouldn’t have applied any substantial expectations onto, but it’s finally ready to share more in hopes of relieving fans in the months before its launch. Today, Rocksteady aired the first episode of a series dubbed the ‘Suicide Squad Insider’ with crumbs shared about the action-shooter’s story and gameplay, giving a quite lengthy look at early cutscenes. The game’s pre-order and special edition details don’t seem to alleviate any live-service concerns, but Suicide Squad’s gameplay does at least look to be taking important cues from the Arkham games where it can.

RELATED: Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad Would Make Perfect Sense Moving into Gotham Knights’ New Home

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s Gunplay Includes Arkham-Like Counters

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Has a Neat Spin on Enemy Counters

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League takes Rocksteady’s traditional, tried-and-true combat formula and almost wholly reimagines it in action-shooter gameplay with four-player multiplayer functionality. Essentially, looking at them both in a direct comparison bears almost no similarity with Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark firing guns and moving around at all times with unique traversal abilities.

However, a peek into gameplay today dissected a mechanic that is actually fairly close to what fans may remember from Arkham games, and that’s its iconic counter system. This has become ubiquitous in modern gaming and usually extends into elaborate parry mechanics, but Arkham games were simplistic in how they gave an enemy a flashing symbol over their head when an incoming attack could be countered.

Batman Arkham Combat Left a Hole Suicide Squad Needs to Fill

Countering left them open to an attack if they weren’t padded in armor or a ninja variation, but their primary function was seemingly to help avoid taking damage and continue amplifying players’ combo meters. This seems to be carried over into Suicide Squad although in an alteration that makes sense with its gunplay—a similar flashing symbol appears over an enemy that is about to attack, even from a distance, and countering these enemies is performed by firing at them first.

This “counter shot” mechanic may not be supremely helpful for fans hoping their Arkham muscle memory will carry over since it requires entirely different inputs to perform, though. Still, it’s great to hear that elements of the gameplay fans adored from the Arkhamverse will still be around in some fashion.

Suicide Squad Insiders Have a Lot of Heavy Lifting to Do

Startlingly little was actually described about gunplay in general, and maybe that’s being withheld for a later Suicide Squad Insider episode with more interpretations of popular Freeflow combat sprinkled through Suicide Squad’s divisive gameplay. These Insiders will now be profoundly important in shaping how fans perceive Rocksteady’s upcoming game ahead of launch.

Moreover, deciding to put out videos such as Arkham Knight’s own Arkham Insiders could turn out to be an invaluable decision if these episodes can inform fans of everything they need to know well in advance. Otherwise, if fans aren’t convinced that the gameplay or story is enough to engage them, Suicide Squad could have a rough release in February.