Players can unlock a new playable character in Deathstroke, a medieval-themed Elseworld, and new gear and weapons. Episode 8 features the final conflict with Brainiac, bringing the story to a close. Servers will remain available, and players can experience previous seasonal content while acquiring LutherCoins and spending them in the store. An offline mode is also currently available.

Other notable titles include Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered for PS4, which includes cross-play and visual improvements, and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe for PS4 and PS5. The latter is an enhanced version of the 2013 narrative adventure with tons of new content and secrets to enhance the experience.

As reported by IGN, WB Games confirmed that the looter shooter will be sticking to its announced post-launch plans, but when asked about plans beyond that, a spokesperson said, “We are not yet discussing anything that is not announced.”

This statement corresponds with rumours from back in April that the game’s fifth season might just be its last one. For context, according to the the current schedule, Season 4 might start in January 2025, which would schedule Season 5 for April 2025.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was released back in February, and has since then seen lacklustre player numbers, with even the game’s first season doing little to bring more players to the game. The game is currently available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review.

As such, it’s important to revisit these classics from time to time and try to view those games from an unbiased lens and see if they stack up to modern standards. With this feature, we will be taking a look at Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham City. Released in 2011, the game won countless awards and was showered with immense love from fans and critics alike, and it continues to be brought up in discussions as a shining example of how superhero games should be made.

But we have had more than a couple of great superhero games since then, so how does Arkham City stack up? With this feature, we will be taking a look at the game from the perspective of it being released right now – and try to decipher how it would hold up in 2024.

So, to start things off, let’s take a look at the story, which starts off with Bruce Wayne walking down a criminal-infested prison after he is imprisoned against certain false charges, and that kickstarts a chain of events that quickly morphs into a greater conflict that takes you all across Arkham City fighting different manner of evil. Arkham City manages to strike a careful balance in terms of the narrative, and what we get is a plot that’s not overly simplistic but isn’t filled with a ton of revelations to be too obtuse or difficult to follow.

But of course, any superhero story is defined by the villains that we get to fight throughout the story. Arkham City takes good advantage of the narrative to include more than a couple of iconic characters from Gotham’s Rogues Gallery, including but not limited to the Joker, and crafts a story that’s cohesive and consistently engaging. It’s a timeless blueprint that games like Spider-Man 2 continue to follow to this date, so it stands to reason that it would be more than a feasible story if Arkham City had been released in the current gaming landscape.

Moving over to the gameplay side of things, Arkham City felt like a literal breath of fresh air after Arkham Asylum since it transports players from the claustrophobic corridors of the original to the open skies of Gotham City. The shift from Metroidvania to a full-blown open-world action adventure was a radical one, but the game does an expert job of managing that transition in a beautiful way that retains the core tenets of what made it work in the first place.

You get a much bigger playground to move around in, and the movement system has been adapted to make going from point A to point B a fun activity in and of itself. Batman gracefully glides from high vantage points and is able to cover great distances, and you can chain that movement with the plentiful grapple points to zoom around the city in absolute style. It might not match its contemporaries in terms of the flexibility in terms of the moves that you can make, but that largely falls down on the character not being as acrobatic as say, Spider-Man.

Switching gears over to the combat, Batman: Arkham City builds upon the excellent foundations laid down in Arkham Asylum. Rocksteady’s combat system switches seamlessly from a stealth action game to a full-blown action brawler within moments. Encounters generally take place in large arenas lined with multiple gargoyles and other vantage points, and you must first thin the herd by making use of quick takedowns and other tools in your arsenal to hunt from the shadows.

Things would obviously go downhill at some point, and when that happens – you can switch to a more aggressive stance and pummel down your opponents with a flurry of kicks and bashes all while countering attacks in a rhythmic fashion. It’s a simple system that gives you the power fantasy of being a superhero without putting much effort. Still, there’s quite a bit to master as you try to string together 2 or 3-digit combos or execute specific kinds of finishing moves.

And who can forget the memorable boss fights that are generously peppered throughout the experience. They are definitely one of the biggest highlights of the game, and the boss fights against the likes of Mr. Freeze are spectacular sequences that challenge the player in new ways or provide a sense of spectacle to spice things up, and it’s safe to say that these fights are just as fun and memorable as they were back in 2011.

Despite its age, Arkham City’s combat system is one that continues to be extremely fun to engage with even after all these years. The parry timings are generous, attacks have a certain weight to them, and while it can feel a bit weird to see a bulky superhero dancing around the screen – those issues rarely come in the way of the innate fun that comes from punching down baddies as Gotham’s superhero.

One thing that has perhaps not aged as well as others is the open world itself, more specifically the content distributed throughout the open world. Arkham City’s suite of side quest offerings fit the game in a thematic sense, but the content itself isn’t all that engaging. There are a couple of side quests that feature interesting objectives, but more often than not – these quests are pretty simplistic and mostly serve the purpose of padding out the game. To be fair, such acts were extremely common in open worlds of the time – but judging by modern standards, the open-world activities in Arkham City could definitely use a bit of polishing.

Batman: Arkham City was a looker when it was released in 2011, and it was a game that pioneered the use of computationally taxing effects such as Nvidia PhysX, which made it one of the most graphically impressive games on the market. It doesn’t look all that impressive today, but it doesn’t look too bad either. Playing it on a PC with graphics turned too high can still make it palatable to this day, but it wouldn’t be much of a looker even with those alterations applied.

But looking at Batman: Arkham City as a whole, it’s a game that continues to be a fun open-world game that really understands the character of Batman and knows exactly how to provide the feeling of being the multi-millionaire detective hiding behind a black mask and punching dudes all night long. Everything from its effective storytelling to the rhythmic combat and stealth gameplay works perfectly in sync with one another, and what we get is a game that’s a worthy sequel in more ways than one.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Both of these were stated in the trailer, with no examples provided. Other information includes Metropolis being twice the size of Gotham City in Batman: Arkham Knight. Co-op is possible, though playing solo and switching between all four characters was reaffirmed. Interestingly, it also reportedly emphasized playing how the player wants to.

Each character has unique traversal and combat methods, but it seems Deadshot is all about gunplay, while the other characters focus more on melee combat (which would be a change from the previous reveal). Whether the always-online requirement has been removed or reworked, as rumors claimed, remains to be seen.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League launches on February 2nd, 2024, for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC.

Alleged details revealed include the Deluxe Edition, which costs £99.99 and provides three-day early access, Battle Pass Points and extra costumes. There’s also the Day One Edition, which costs £69.99 and only provides the costumes. Rocksteady is also reportedly working on a year of additional content, including new characters and missions (as mentioned earlier this year).

There were no details on microtransactions, XP or anything regarding games as a service, though that information could arrive later. It’s worth noting that the individual provided a “substantial amount of proof”, per a Reddit moderator, who eventually verified it as legit.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League launches on February 2nd 2024. Stay tuned for official details in the coming months.

It revealed in a new tweet, “More time is needed to bring players the best possible experience on Nintendo Switch. We apologize to fans who are excited to play this version of the trilogy. Thank you for your patience.”

Given the scale of the release, it’s understandable if more polish is needed. Also, considering the state of the publisher’s last major Nintendo Switch port (Mortal Kombat 1), providing more time for the development team may be for the best.

Batman: Arkham Trilogy’s port is handled by Turn Me Up Games, which also worked on It Takes Two and Borderlands Legendary Collection for the Nintendo Switch. It includes all three of Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham games, namely Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Knight, with all their downloadable content included. Stay tuned for more details and updates on the Switch version in the coming months.

https://twitter.com/BatmanArkham/status/1709029767851245954

Taking to Twitter, Rocksteady has announced that Batman: Arkham Trilogy will be launching for the Nintendo Switch on October 13- you know, because October wasn’t packed enough with major releases as it is.

As was the case with Arkham Trilogy when it launched for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, WB Games Montreal-developed Arkham Origins won’t be included, much to the dismay of the prequel’s fans- though those looking to dive into the Rocksteady trilogy on the go are going to finally have that option at long last.

https://twitter.com/RocksteadyGames/status/1691480165316952064

Suicide Squad didn’t just reduce its cast of cool superpowered villains into being very decidedly un-superpowered individuals who engage in combat with… the guns they carry. You have King Shark in there doing no King shark stuff, he’s just shooting at people with a gun like a chump. This is already bad enough, but it actually gets worse. See, Suicide Squad is by Rocksteady, a developer of such high caliber and so much prestige, that to call them among the best studios in the industry might actually be understating things a little.

Arkham Asylum was a groundbreaking game at the time, Arkham City is literally one of the highest rated games ever, and while Knight is viewed as the weakest entry in the series, it was still a great game that won rave critical acclaim and a lot of sales. To see Rocksteady to go from doing the Arkham series to doing the most uninteresting possible Destiny knock-off that doesn’t even have the decency to do justice to its own setting and characters, something even the previous nadirs of the Games as a Service looter shooter rush, such as Anthem and Marvel’s The Avengers, could have lain some claim to doing.

So, rather than the amazing interlocking design and controlled progression and hours of missable side content of Arkham City, Suicide Squad has you fight giant bullet sponge enemies with big purple highlights telling you exactly where to hit them. When you kill them, they may or may not drop loot. That loot may or may not be what you want, and to confirm, you check it in the most eye lollingly generic menu where you see whether it’s green, purple, or gold, and whether the number on it is higher than you currently have. To see Rocksteady be reduced to this is legitimately depressing. It’s as if the developers of Mass Effect 2 went on to make Anth- no, wait. Okay, it’s as if the developers of Skyrim went on to make Fallout 7– no, not that one either. Okay, I have it: its as if the developers of The Last of Us Part 1 went on to make Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Or if the developers of Breath of the Wild went on to make State of Decay. It’s such a mind bogglingly massive step down that it’s almost literally incomprehensible.

All of which is to say – yes, Suicide Squad was shown off to massive disinterest (and, to be fair, outright hostility) from players at the direction it is taking (everything from the design to the mechanics to the UI to even the always online requirement drew ire), which made it no surprise when the rumour first broke that the game was on the last track to be delayed, and even less of one when that finally ended up happening. Yes, Suicide Squad is now delayed by nine months. It’s a big delay! Especially this close to release. Whether or not they take this opportunity to remove the more obnoxious live service elements and try to inject some of that classic Rocksteady flair that made them so beloved to begin with remains to be seen. To be honest, my understanding is that that is too ambitious to do in nine months, even with inhumane amounts of crunch (which I sincerely hope do not happen). The entire game would have to be fundamentally reconceptualized and then redesigned, balanced, tested, and polished, then QA, certification (across at the very least three separate console SKUs and however many PC ones) – that’s the kind of thing that takes years, not months.

Most likely, some of the more obvious things will be fixed (they may add character specific powers and loot to differentiate them a little more, the UI may become less generic, the mission and boss design might become less banal, the always online requirement may get scrapped, the excessive monetization hooks may be pared back) – all of this would still not make it the game Rocksteady fans would want, but they can at least make it more palatable for the broader audience, and give it some chance at success.

But to be very frank, I don’t really care about Suicide Squad, and I don’t want to talk about it at all. In fact, I have already spent more time talking about it than I intended to, because the point of bringing it up to begin with at all was to use it as a segue to make a broader point: in the last few years, it has now become increasingly clearer that the mad gold rush by AAA publishers and developers to capitalize on the success of one game (Destiny) is going to have to end soon.

When Destiny hit the scene in 2014, it had its own struggles and problems (the launch was troubled, it was critically lambasted, it took Bungie a very long time to get their content pipeline for it in a good place), but it had such a huge impact on the market that most major publishers decided they wanted to get in on that. Destiny was published by Activision – but we saw EA attempt their own version with Anthem, Ubisoft attempt their own version with The Division (and become the only one to actually do it somewhat well, which they took to heart so much that they then decided to make every single game they were making into a live service game, driving all of them into the ground); Square Enix decided to get in on the action by leveraging a property no less than The Avengers as their GaaS entry; Bethesda decided to try their hand at it with Fallout 76. And Warner Bros., well, that’s what Suicide Squad was supposed to be.

The problem is, this entire endeavour was stupid and misguided to begin with, because in this very specific arena of Destiny-like looter shooter live service games, there was only ever one true success, and even that one had a lot of caveats associated with it (that one success being Destiny itself). Anthem failed. The Avengers failed. Fallout 76 face planted when it launched (though to Bethesda’s credit, unlike these other publishers, they stuck with it and kept at it until they turned it around. Today, it’s a fairly fun game with a thriving community, but it achieved that not by doubling down on the live service nonsense, rather by emphasizing traditional Fallout and Bethesda RPG strengths that happened to be framed in a multiplayer scenario – once more reiterating the point that the “Destiny-like” genre was a dead end). The Division and The Division 2 were mild successes, but then Ubisoft went crazy, and the rest of their lineup did not fare as well (or well at all); in some cases, the rest of their lineup didn’t even release (we are still waiting for Skull and Bones and Beyond Good and Evil 2, almost a decade after their announcements).

People often like to compare the situation to the MMORPG rush in the wake of World of Warcraft‘s world conquering success back in the early 2000s, and you know what? That’s absolutely correct. So many publishers and developers tried to misguidedly chase that golden goose (some outright bankrupting them in the process), because every single one thought that they could be the one to prove to players that their MMO should be the one they should invest time and money in, not realizing that World of Warcraft was insurmountable because people had already invested time in their characters, in their loot, builds, story, and the bonds they had formed with the community, none of which would transfer over to a new game. They would have to start from scratch, and why should they do that, rather than stick to what they had and liked?

World of Warcraft eventually did taper off (long after others had stopped trying to unseat it), and a new king of the hill took its place, but that absolutely did not happen because of a successful run at the genre king, it happened because after a decade, anything will eventually decline (plus the general malaise and bad decisions surrounding theme by Blizzard also can’t have helped). That’s the only way for a “live service genre king” to die off.

Am I trying to say that live service games themselves are a dead end, and developers and publishers will stop making them? Goodness no. Live service games are absolutely thriving – the biggest and most successful games in the world at the moment are all live service games. Allow me to list off some of them: Fortnite. GTA: Online. Pokemon GO. FIFA. And, yes, Destiny.

Do you see what these games have in common? It’s that they have little to nothing in common. There is absolutely room in the market for multiple live service games to thrive but you can’t do that by trying to make a different version of an already successful thing, because if you, people are just going to… want to stick to that already successful thing instead of looking at what you’re working on. All those games are successful because they offer very distinct and unique experiences. If you love GTA: Online, Fortnite and FIFA are absolutely not a replacement for it.

This is absolutely the way that live service games should be approached – don’t just try to make your own version of something that already works, try to make something unique that uses the live service format in interesting ways. Could you ever have imagined that a simple survival game would become a persistent social platform like Fortnite? Could you ever have conceived that a gacha game could become a high quality, gorgeous, addictive open world RPG with literally hundreds of hours of amazing content, like Genshin Impact?

People (at least enthusiasts) like to treat live service as a kind of pejorative, but very honestly, it does not have to be. You can absolutely do some really interesting stuff with the format, if you are actually passionate about the creative aspect of game development and not just trying to cash in on the latest fad trend. Sea of Thieves is a (successful) live service game, and it’s an incredibly interesting and unique bit of game design that simply would not have worked in any other form. Ditto Rocket League. Ditto Splatoon. Ditto No Man’s Sky. Ditto even Fallout 76 at this point. These are all successful live service games – but they are completely distinct and unique, and they all do some great stuff with the live service format.

Give players that! Rather than trying to make a lamer version of something players are already invested in, because that latter situation just ends up being a rock and hard place situation. Your project is not going to attract the attention of fans of Destiny, because they already have Destiny, and if they want to play something like Destiny, they will play Destiny. It will also not attract the attention of your traditional fanbase because you just pissed them off by not giving them what they love from you, and instead giving them something that, if they wanted to play, they would already be playing Destiny.

Why would you even do something like that? How short sighted and lacking in common sense does the decision making process at these publishers have to be for something like this to happen? And happen not just once, but over and over and over and over again? What, after seeing the failure of Anthem or Fallout 76 or even Destiny itself for the longest time, made Warner Bros. think that their game would be different, that this one would be the one to crack the market where nothing else had?

At this point though, almost every major publisher seems to have gotten the message, and most of them do not yet have any Destiny style live service games in the pipeline. This is good – again, not because I hate Destiny, but because I think using the template of a successful game and simply reskinning it is the most boring thing you can do (and also because, as we’ve discussed over the past 2,500 words, it doesn’t work).

Do I think live service games are dying? No, I don’t, and I don’t want them to either. I hope they survive and take on unique and fun new forms. Give me more No Man’s Sky and more Sea of Thieves. Give me less Marvel’s The Avengers, Anthem, or Suicide Squad.

Oh, right, Suicide Squad. Right, so that’s still going to be a Destiny-like, because, seriously, you can’t change all that in nine months. It’s too fundamental an overhaul. It will, at best, do moderately well for itself, but unfortunately, it is far likelier that it totally bombs. Whether or not it is successful is besides the point, though, for now, this trend is dead. Rejoice.

Don’t get too happy though, it’s only a matter of time before it gets replaced by the next fad everyone wants in on. I wonder what that will be…

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Of course, this is only “part of the delay.” There may be other wholesale changes to the user interface and gameplay, perhaps some polishing and balance changes. Still, as Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier noted before, don’t expect the core gameplay, that of a co-op looter shooter with live service elements, to change.

On the somewhat bright side, VGC’s Andy Robinson said that some of those working on the game “actually have a lot of positive things to say about it.” It’s apparently “not another Gotham Knights,” and he would be surprised “if they’re rebuilding it in any significant way because it sounds quite positive.”

Of course, time will tell, so stay tuned for more details. Warner Bros. Games still has another major release this year in Mortal Kombat 12, rumored to receive an announcement this week. Prematurely confirmed by Warner Bros. Discovery in an earnings call, the fighting game sequel has received no other details till now.

I've heard that part of the delay to Suicide Squad is to remove/rework the "always online" component. https://t.co/AwNB9j5HWq

— Jez (@JezCorden) April 13, 2023

Rocksteady and WB Games have announced that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is now going to launch nearly a year later than intended. Previously set to launch next month, the superhero open world shooter has now been delayed to February 2, 2024.

“We have made the tough but necessary decision to take the time needed to work on getting the game to be the best quality experience for players,” Rocksteady wrote in its announcement.

This isn’t the first time the game has been hit with a delay. Originally set to launch in 2022, the game would go on to be delayed to May 2023. By the time it launches in February next year, it will be releasing nine years on from Rocksteady’s last game, Batman: Arkham Knight.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is in development for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

https://twitter.com/suicidesquadRS/status/1646593761022038017