Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League - Should Be A Horror Game
For those of you who don't know, Where the Wild Things Are is a 2009 fantasy movie based on the children's book of the same name. In it, a young boy named Max escapes to an imaginary island after trying to eat his mom. The island was full of monsters that wanted to eat him, but they let him live after he convinced them that he was their king.
It's ruthlessly sad and also the scariest movie I've ever seen. If you don't understand why you see that little white cat creature getting tossed around by all those terrifying monsters, well, that's actually a little boy. I know that's a pretty convincing weasel disguise, but he's actually a small child with very crushable bones, and yeah, I get it, it's a metaphor.
You know, my two biggest fears are clowns and drowning. You think I'm a rational person. This movie is tense as hell from beginning to end because of the massive difference in power between the monsters and Max. The monsters are super powerful, and their emotions are all over the place. You're just terrified that they're going to find out that Max isn't a real king and go back to trying to eat them because the second they decide they want to eat them, they'll just shit eat them and there's not a damn thing he can do about it because he's just a regular.
I'm not a weasel little boy. Do you see where I'm going with this? Superheroes are terrifying. The gameplay trailer for Suicide Squad Kills! The Justice League just dropped, and let me just say, who the hell thought this was an okay title for a article game? You killed the justice league. Do you know how many kids are going to be institutionalized?
next december if a parent sees suicide squad, kill the justice league on their kids christmas list they're gonna send his ass to therapy anyway the trailer dropped and the whole time I was just like, holy shit, this is tense. I think it opens with Captain Boomerang dissing the Flash on some live stream and, you know, they're setting it up for the Flash to zip in and kick his ass when I think of the Justice League.
I think of Wonder Woman, Superman, and you. Barry you're just the team mascot, aren't you, mate? But the whole time he was doing it, I was just like, "What the shit are you doing, man?" Take it easy. It's like when you're 10 years old and you're hanging out with your friend and he starts mouthing off to his mom and you're just like, It's cool.
I didn't want any dessert anyway, let's drop it. I know it's supposed to be funny and it is, but it's like, uncomfortably so. It's super tense because of how comically outmatched these guys are. Like in the upcoming Suicide Squad game, you play against a man who can create anything he imagines, a man who can run at the speed of light, an invincible woman, and an invincible man who can fly, shoot lasers out of his eyes, and also run at the speed of sound.
You play as a woman with a bat, a man with a boomerang, a man with guns, or a man who is a shark. These are terrifying, and I get that's the joke, but hear me out. What if Rocksteady really leaned into the horror of this situation? The suicide squad has always been scary. I shit myself, I shit myself, and I didn't stop shitting myself until the credits rolled.
It was a medical catastrophe. I lost 13 pounds worth of shit in that theater, and it was because the scope of what they were dealing with was so far beyond their capabilities. How was this group of misfits supposed to defeat a giant starfish monster, let alone one with an army of mind-controlled civilians?
It was truly harrowing, and I loved that about this movie. I actually wish they'd gone farther with it. Put all the characters in increasingly desperate situations, bringing them seconds from death, have the zombies overwhelm them, and then just before they're all killed, have Superman fly through Staro's eye and out the other side of them, like you wouldn't even have to show Superman, just have a red blur tear through sorrow, killing him instantly.
I think that would be the perfect ending because, one, it's funny, but two, more importantly, it shows how this can be catastrophic, An unbeatable foe is like barely an obstacle for Superman. I think it shows that this team is nowhere near capable of taking down a member of the Justice League and makes Superman all the more intimidating from their perspective.
I'm not saying we take away Harley's weapons, give her a camcorder and set the whole thing in Arkham, but it would be a huge missed opportunity if Rockstar didn't play into the inherent horror of the suicide squad situation. At least where the bosses are concerned, the suicide squad is a task force built around the fear of superheroes.
The government assembled this team because they know that if Superman turned evil, it would probably only take him an afternoon to genocide the human race, provided that he doesn't stop for frozen yogurt along the way. There is nothing humanity could do to stop him if he one day decided he didn't want to be stopped, and that's terrifying.
A lot of other superhero properties have been playing around with this idea too, and I am so glad that they have. Recently, on fire Where's Mark William? You were supposed to drop him off an hour ago. Of course I'm going to save you. You betcha, I'm going to save everyone here. But this trope hasn't really been explored yet in article games, which is why I'm super excited to see that it's the main premise of Rocksteady's next game.
From what we've seen, the gameplay looks really energetic, chaotic, and colorful and good. It should be. This is exactly what this kind of game should look like. A mix between Arkham City and Sunset Overdrive. That totally works for the general gameplay. But when I enter a boss's room, I want any sense of fun I was having to be replaced with dread.
And not the kind of dread where you're like, "damn it, another boss battle." These suck. I want them to be fun, but I want to feel intimidated. This game has the potential to have the best lineup of bosses since God of War 3. I want each one of them to feel just as big of a spectacle as they did in that game, and here's the thing: they wouldn't even need to sacrifice the humor to make these encounters feel tense.
For example, the Flash is genuinely scary in this trailer, and no, not just because he looks like a praying mantis. He's scary because he's funny. There's something so intimidating, so unnerving about a villain just shitting on you. Did you get him? Really why don't you just mail me the bullet like the flash knows he's so out of your league that he doesn't even take you seriously?
