Warner Bros. Discovery’s comic book adaptation controversies continue with the upcoming release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The Rocksteady Studios title is one of the most delayed games in recent years, now only coming out on February 2 following the negative reception to its earlier trailers from last year. But while the public opinion has taken a positive turn following the most recent gameplay reveals, the chaotic third-person shooter action is attracting the wrong kind of attention for a couple of controversial reasons.
Normally, with only days to go ahead of a game’s early access release – those who pre-ordered Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will have access on January 30 – people will be talking about the game’s reviews. Instead, fans are busy discussing why a particular website isn’t getting a review copy of the game ahead of its launch. If you dig deeper and you’ll find out that Warner Bros. isn’t targeting anyone. Rather, no one has a review copy of the game.
Thus, this leads to the question, when will the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League review embargo lift if no one has a copy of the game?
No one seems to know the answer to this question. The consensus is that reviewers will get access to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League the same time as everyone else. This means reviews will likely be out later this week or over the weekend, depending on how much time a publication’s reviewers have to check the game out.
Why exactly is Warner Bros. asking reviewers to shell out their own money to pay for access to the chaotic third-person shooter action game is beyond us, but there are theories. The most prevalent is that Warner Bros. is worried about the potential reception to the game. Since major outlets aired out their concerns about the game following a preview event, the company has been on a massive apology tour, shadow dropping the Alpha NDA to “reveal” the more positive feedback from players.
Now that it has denied reviewers codes, Warner Bros. is putting out videos on a near-daily basis, selling audiences on a new version of a Joker with Mark Hamill refusing to reprise the role after Kevin Conroy’s untimely passing.
By carefully curating its marketing, Warner Bros. is hoping to control the narrative of the game when it comes out later this week, except, it seems to have forgotten one thing: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is the first game by Rocksteady Studios in nearly a decade.
It shouldn’t have surprised Warner Bros. that some of the early comments about it is basically a variation of the phrase, “Rocksteady gave up Batman for this?” Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham trilogy is one of the most beloved video game trilogies. On the other hand, Suicide Squad is a property that hasn’t translated well outside comic books. Its latest outing, James Gunn’s Suicide Squad film, was a critical success that flamed out at the global box office.
Subjecting a game by a beloved studio based on such a property to one of the worst pre-launch marketing campaigns isn’t going to endear fans to it at all, regardless of its quality.
The only consolation is we all won’t have to wait too long to find out if Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is worthy of being Kevin Conroy’s final video game project ever.
Until then, we’re curious to see how Warner Bros. will try and salvage the situation and make it less of a mess.
