u/vruchtenhagel

An ice-cold beverage, a piping-hot cup of joe, comfortable clothing, the TV volume low and the podcast volume high—what an experience!

As I’m playing Splatoon Raiders on my Nintendo Switch 2, my immediate first impression was: I’ve played this before. The game it reminded me of was Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League—a game I defended when it launched and one that I’ve put hundreds of hours into.

Splatoon Raiders is a looter shooter with a surprisingly similar gameplay loop. You level up, equip trinkets that boost your stats, upgrade gear to improve your health, damage, or special abilities, complete raids (incursions), defeat bosses, and play online co-op. Obviously the settings, characters, and overall tone are completely different, but the core mechanics feel remarkably alike.

The reason I’m making this post is because Suicide Squad has a Metacritic critic score of around 60 and a user score of 3.5, while Splatoon Raiders launched with an 81 critic score (and, at the time of writing, no user score yet).
It makes me wonder whether Suicide Squad was judged more harshly because people expected another Arkham-style game. Instead, they got a live-service looter shooter, and many dismissed it before evaluating it on its own merits. It’s interesting that Splatoon Raiders seems to be receiving praise despite sharing so many of the same gameplay systems.

For those of you who’ve played—or are planning to play—Splatoon Raiders, do you see the similarities?

And has Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League perhaps become a better game than its reputation suggests, or do you think it deserved the criticism it received?

View Poll

I've been doing a countdown for the past two weeks leading up to the upcoming Star Fox release. You can see the graphics over on r/starfox, but here's today's.