Rocksteady aims to rescue Suicide Squad from middling reviews by lifting closed alpha NDA

In Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, the iconic band of bad guys have to save the world from corrupted versions of Earth’s greatest heroes. But Rocksteady is already trying to save its newest release from underwhelming reviews.

In the wake of at best mixed reviews and previews of the open-world action shooter from critics, the game’s developers are hoping that positive word-of-mouth can come from its early-access players. Rocksteady announced today it is lifting “a portion” of the closed alpha non-disclosure agreement to allow those who participated to “talk or write” about the gameplay experience.

As noted by Forbes games writer Paul Tassi, who has collected a ton of gameplay impressions from supposed closed alpha players, those impressions are noticeably more positive than the ones from larger outlets. Many say the combat and movement are fun, with one user comparing it to Sunset Overdrive while playing “better than Gotham Knights.”

But these players are not allowed to post images or video from their closed alpha experiences, meaning their words still have to compete against already published preview footage from major outlets, which includes both footage recorded by the outlets themselves or footage provided to them by the developers.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League‘s gameplay has been one of the most criticized aspects among early reviews from outlets. IGN called the combat uninspired, and in its video preview said that boss battles like the one against The Flash were more tedious than challenging. IGN, Gamespot, and others were also not fans of the aspects inspired by live-service games.

While not all critical reviews have been negative, the majority of them have been. Getting to the finish line that is the Feb. 2 release date has been a major struggle for Rocksteady after multiple delays during the development cycle.