The Riddler is not a complicated guy. Oh sure, he seems like he is - difficult to figure out, always says one thing and means another. A fun time not a long time guy, you know? But underneath it all, everything is very simple. It’s all just one big puzzle. Unfortunately, video games (the most obvious place for puzzles) don’t seem to understand this, andSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leagueis the latest in a long line.
Early in the game, you’ll get a radio message from one Edward Nigma. Everything in Suicide Squad feels early in the game when you consider it can be beaten in under ten hours, but once you’re through the prologue and into Metropolis proper, you’ll be contacted by Riddler, with a riddle for you. Only - get this! - it’s not a riddle. It’s an obstacle course. But he’s not called The Obstacle Courser.
We saw this inArkham Knight, too. Riddler and his puzzling trophies and fiendish conundrums became a race track. This was ‘Riddlerfied’ by the fact you controlled a switch that moved parts of the track around, and I will admit those races were fun, at least. The game was pretty focused ongetting the best out of the Batmobile. I still don’t think it was a good use of the Riddler, but it was at least a good use of something. In Kill the Justice League, we don’t even get that.
Instead, there are green rings that conjure awful memories ofSuperman 64in us oldest of gamers. We take our chosen character through them, and are rewarded with new outfits for the crew. Not only are these not riddles, we have no control over them as we do the Arkham tracks, and there’s no variance or thinking required. It’s literally jumping through hoops for rewards we don’t really want. Add to that how ropey and inconsistent traversal is, and you’ve got one of the least enjoyable Riddler challenges ever conceived.
Imagine you’ve been captured by John Kramer. Okay, first of all imagine you’re into the movies and you know John Kramer is the guy from Saw. Now, imagine you’ve been captured by John Kramer, and Billy the Puppet rolls up to you on his tricycle and asks “Do you want to play a game?”. Then it turns out that game is ‘can you run 100m in 12 seconds’.
No puzzle, no thought, no mechanical genius. Just a fitness test. Being John Kramer there would be a chainsaw following you set to finish in 13 seconds, but if that’s how you were sawed you’d feel hard done by. At least the woman who cut her arm off for a pound of flesh stood a chance.
Amanda Waller calls Riddler a “greasy crossword jockey”, and that’s exactly what Riddler should be. Racetrack aside, it’s what he was throughout Arkham. There are Riddler trophies hidden around Metropolis, but the open world system and shallow environment (there are very few buildings you can enter) means most are a question of bothering to look for rather than being difficult to get to. You’ll need to figure out where to go based on clues, and that’s kind of a riddle, but there should be layers. Instead what most people are going to see of Riddler in this game is his obstacle course where the biggest obstacle is the game’s own traversal system.
Riddler should be the perfect villain for a video game. Though less showy and impressive than someone like Joker, the Riddler challenges our minds and is supposed to put clever conundrums in our path, even if the threat of physical violence is a mainstay. He thinks he’s smarter than you, but flies too close to the sun in testing that theory. He’s intelligent, yet arrogant, and this is how to defeat him. Or, to hear Suicide Squad tell it, you just fly through 12 green circles in 35 seconds so Harley can wear her hair in pigtails.
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League
WHERE TO PLAY
An open-world action-adventure from Arkham creators Rocksteady, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League puts you in the roles of the antihero squad. You must take on the aforementioned Justice League, either in solo play or online co-op.
