Kill The Justice League’ Reviews

On Tuesday, Rocksteady will launch its first major game since 2015’s Arkham Knight, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. But if you’re wondering where press and creator reviews of the game are just a few days ahead of that, you’re not alone.

This is not a situation where everyone has played and is just waiting for a day-before embargo, which is not that unusual. But instead, seemingly no one has actual copies of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League right now.

I’ve been waiting for updates from the comms team for about two weeks now, and was supposed to hear something official yesterday, but didn’t. But asking around, the explanation is supposedly that since this is an always-online co-op game, the servers simply aren’t going to be turned on until the actual release on Tuesday the 30th. So no servers means that press can’t review the game ahead of that point.

It’s…an explanation, I suppose. But again, for Rocksteady’s first enormous game in nine years, a hugely important title, it’s pretty strange, and it feels like something could have been concocted in, I don’t know, the last year, to still allow actual early playthroughs of the game for review. Even if this is a live game with a lot more content to come, starting a month after launch, there’s a sizable campaign to start with which obviously can be reviewed.

It’s also that this just wasn’t communicated at all. If the decision was made to not give out early copies because the servers wouldn’t be up, it seems strange that people were not told that ahead of time, and could plan accordingly. Now, it’s just too late anyway. I could get a code this morning and I simply don’t have the time to blaze through a massive game in two days for some sort of Monday embargo, and again, it doesn’t look like press can even play until launch anyway. I’m probably just going to end up buying the early edition myself at this rate.

There is also the not-wholly-unthinkable possibility that codes are just not going out because WB is worried about reception to the game. This would be after a technically marred preview event where a lot of major outlets got their hands on the game for at least a couple hours, but the results were mixed-to-bad, overall. This led to an emergency release of the Alpha NDA where player feedback was more positive. But the idea may be if press didn’t like the preview, WB would rather do a day one launch with no reviews than potentially low ones. Can’t prove that, but given what happened with the preview, who knows.

Even if it’s the server thing, this has not been handled well. It is extremely unusual to go into an “early access” launch that costs $100 with zero reviews of the game out. It is even weirder this is happening with Rocksteady, a beloved studio, and their first massive new game in nine years.

So for me, my coverage will probably just be running commentary as I play the game starting Tuesday. And this will end what I would say is one of the worst pre-launch marketing campaigns I have ever seen for a major video game, regardless of its eventual quality.

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