Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League reminds me of the discourse surrounding the release of Forspoken last year. Like then, here is a game that made such a terrible first impression that it was panned by audiences and critics alike, months before it even came out. It doesn’t help that Suicide Squad adheres to the much-maligned live service model of online games. Many already made up their minds that this was bound to be a forgettable title like Marvel’s Avengers, Anthem, or the contextually similar Gotham Knights. While the game does invite those comparisons, it tries to elevate its live service model in interesting ways, and for the most part, succeeds. Taking the DNA – and lore – from the Batman Arkham games that preceded it, Suicide Squad brings satisfying gunplay, one of Rocksteady’s best open worlds, and a gripping story, though there are some obvious growing pains at launch.

The game takes a fantastic premise and builds on it: the alien Brainiac has turned Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern evil, with no hope of turning them back. They rule over Metropolis like tyrants, slowly turning the population into alien stormtroopers, soon to colonise the world. Though they were not turned, Wonder Woman and the Flash are missing. To stop Brainiac’s lieutenants, the ruthless Amanda Waller forms Task Force X, consisting of Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang and King Shark to – as the subtitle says – Kill the Justice League. The four of them are dumped in Metropolis to obey Waller’s every command. Being villains themselves, they don’t care about saving the world, but they don’t have a choice.

I was surprised by how much Suicide Squad prioritises its narrative. The opening hours are slowly paced, much more eager to set up the major beats than to throw loot boxes at you. There is an excellent early mission where you are hunted by Batman, exactly how a stealth segment would play out in the Arkham games, replete with the same sound effects when he manages to catch one of you. The Squad shares a rich rapport with each other, and all feel differently about Waller and the members of the League. The character writing and performances are all stellar, particularly the late Kevin Conroy returning as Batman and Debra Wilson as Waller (one of the few video game actors you can recognise by their face in-game.)

When the game eventually introduces the repeatable type of missions common in live service games, it does a good job of avoiding repetition by introducing modifiers to keep things varied. Most modifiers are “enemies can only be killed by X damage types” (such as grenades or Harvest kills which grant shields, like Glory kills in Doom), which achieve their aim for the most part. These missions can turn dull if you’re, say, out of grenades and struggling to gain more, but they’re still able to be completed. Side missions are also generally not filler, most of them unlocking new gameplay elements like effects to be randomised into future loot.

But I encountered a mission where enemies only take damage from critical attacks, and other attacks heal them. Headshots aren’t a guaranteed critical, so I didn’t know how to get through it other than shooting at an enemy and hoping it’d randomly die. I eventually got a grenade mod that deals critical damage by default, but it shouldn’t require a randomised loot effect to get through a basic side mission. Some timed missions asking to kill specific enemies might have random enemies spawn in the middle of it, so you no longer know who the right enemies to kill are before time runs out. I hope frustrations like this will be updated and clarified in future updates, because currently, the missions are not on par with the expertly crafted story around them.

Other than the mission design, the live service elements mostly keep to themselves. There is an in-game store where you can spend real money to get “LuthorCoins”, but you can only spend them on outfits and emotes (for now at least). Loot boxes are only received as mission rewards, and while future seasons will add more loot, there is currently no way to pay to get better weapons (which I personally think is a good thing). The biggest problem for me was the requirement to always be online, even in single-player mode. My crappy suburban wi-fi kept cutting out on hot summer days, and I found it a struggle to log back in even when it was restored. But Rocksteady has stated that the ability to remove this will arrive in a future update. Time will also tell how the game evolves as Season 1 begins in March, introducing a new location to explore, new bosses and story content, and a new playable character in the Joker.