Suicide Squad is testing the world's tolerance for bloated loot games, and I think I'm finally done with them after "Poison Ivy's iconic ice elemental fire axe"

It's been a week since all those Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League previews dropped, and I can't stop thinking about them. I wish it was because I was legitimately excited about the next project from the Arkham devs, but no. I'm obsessed with Suicide Squad because it looks almost like a self-parody in a gaming world that's growing increasingly overloaded with loot.

I've tried to get into loot games in the past - repeatedly, even. Every third Destiny 2 expansion has me going 'maybe this time it'll stick.' Heck, I even briefly got into Marvel's Avengers. But whatever gamer gene gives you the capacity to care about elemental damage boosts and stat buffs and build synergies just passed me right by. Every single one of these games fizzles out for me in the end because I just can't get wrapped up in item stats.

A tweet about "Poison Ivy's iconic ice elemental fire axe" has proven to be a lightning rod for everybody who's tired of this kind of thing, myself included. In Suicide Squad, Poison Ivy is a vendor who sells elemental upgrades for your weapons, and IGN's (mostly pretty negative) video preview includes a shot of that upgrade screen. Folks, I hate it. 

The numbers just won't stop going up

Here we see an axe that, per the garish in-game tooltip, deals 1,623 - 1,795 damage with "+6 melee damage to grunt enemies" and "+11 affliction resource from melee hits," plus those melee hits "give you 4x combo and you can use your suicide strike only when your at or above 20x combo. However, it costs 20x combo per use." I'm already just so, so tired, and it seems I'm not alone.

This exact formula has worked for numerous other games, from the original Diablo up through Destiny 2, but Suicide Squad has drawn the gaming world's ire like nothing before. Part of it is that this is a live-service follow-up to a beloved single-player series. Part of it is that Poison Ivy handing over an ice-buffed fire axe is patently ridiculous. And part of it is that 'loot' has become the backbone of triple-A games across genres. I have picked up purples in Assassin's Creed. I have weighed damage numbers in God of War. I have considered enough critical bonus chances to last me eternity.

Loot games are as oversaturated now as dull, brown WW2 games were 20 years ago, or as half-baked platformers were a decade before that. But those games at least had the good sense to waste very little of your time. Picking up a new loot game can feel like starting a new job; you've got to be prepared to spend hours staring at spreadsheets and making numbers go up. I work in online media - I already do that eight hours a day.

The part that completely broke me is the currency counter. Suicide Squad appears to have six separate currencies, five of which are required for a simple upgrade like this ice axe enhancement. I can already imagine the tedium necessary to plan out which activities to grind at what intervals in order to keep all those coins, tokens, and crystals rolling in.

The actual in-game action might be great - our own Suicide Squad hands-on was quite positive. But I think it's time for me to finally admit to myself that these games, no matter what they might have to offer in terms of action or storytelling, just aren't going to get me invested the way they're meant to. It's freeing not trying to convince yourself to enjoy games you don't care about.

The punchline of all this is the fine print of that deep freeze ability, which notes that "frozen enemies take greatly reduced damage from melee." This buff is being applied to an axe. A melee weapon. One that will do greatly reduced melee damage as soon as its own buff is applied. I think I'm going to start quoting the 'stop doing RPG elements' meme unironically. They have, indeed, played us for absolute fools.

If you're looking for more new games in 2024, not all of them will have items with +6% damage to grunt enemies.