Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League on Steam Deck - First Impressions

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is now out for those with the Deluxe Edition, and I have to say, it is way more fun than I expected. With all the previews and press saying it wasn't great, I had my reservations, but the game looks great, the writing and humor are on point, and the gameplay loop is pretty satisfying. I am really enjoying my time with it, and I think others will, too, but it may be a bit harder if you are playing on the Steam Deck.

In the beginning tutorial area, I was a bit excited. The game was able to hold 40 FPS without a TDP limit, and the FSR upscaler looked fabulous. It did end up draining 23W at almost all times, but it was able to hold the framerate in traversal and in battle. Unfortunately, as soon as you get to the open world, the 40 FPS dream dies almost immediately when you are able to go around the city as you please.

The biggest issues I have seen are traversal and the amount of effects on screen. In smaller, more contained battles, Suicide Squad performs admirably, but as soon as you get into bigger battles with 10-15 enemies all throwing grenades, there will be some slowdown. I have also seen this happen when going through the open city quickly, which can have these same drops.

I do want to give some praise to the developers, though. The game is very well optimized, and their utilization of FSR is fantastic. In some cutscenes, you can clearly see a lower resolution and some weird aliasing happening, but as soon as you get into gameplay, everything smoothes out and looks incredible while also stabilizing the framerate. The models end up looking great for the most important parts, and that's awesome.

I expect a lot more to change as the game progresses, and I have heard the second act is harder to run than the first, so I will make sure to account for that in our review. For now, I would say playing at 30 FPS with low graphics and FSR on Balanced will be your best bet. You will still see some drops, but in battles, it is largely playable. We could see some help from the shader cache on Steam in a couple of days to.

I did encounter one big issue, though: constant disconnections. Whenever I try to get past the part where you find Penguin, it will say I have disconnected and endlessly reconnect. Hopefully, this is something that will be fixed in a patch towards the official release date, but it does stop progress. I can go away and just kill random enemies and explore the city, but not progress the story.

So, would I recommend playing on the Steam Deck? I would maybe wait for a little to see if it will be patched if the shader cache helps more, and if the disconnection issues are fixed. If you already own the game, you can play it on the Steam Deck, and it will look alright, but be prepared for some drops and larger fights when running around the city.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is available on Steam for $69.99, and you can get the Deluxe Version for immediate access ahead of its February 2nd release date for $99.99.

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