Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy - 8.5/10
18 hours to roll credits; 22 hours to plat
Guardians of the Galaxy is a flarkin good time. It has beautiful worlds, fun combat, great banter, and a top notch story. I played the game on hard but it wasn't a difficult game to get through. The worlds boast beautiful landscapes and intriguing creatures while jetting around and sliding with blasters blazing. You control Star-Lord primarily, but with the L1 button you can pull up a character diamond and select different moves to attack your enemies with using the other Guardians. Each guardian, including Star Lord, has 4 unlockable abilities that you can spend skill points on to unlock. Peter has 15 additional unlocks that range from health upgrades, to fast reload, or extended flight when using your jet boots. While the combat is fun and the banter is fantastic throughout the game, the combat also suffers a bit in the fact that it is a bit basic and needs fleshing out. The moves themselves are great to combo with depending on what you are using with each guardian, but I feel that it could benefit from more selections and variations of the moves themselves. I wish that you could switch to other guardians and use them in combat, hopefully if they do a sequel they open that up. The story is also very well written. My biggest problem with the game is that I thought the story felt bloated in comparison to the gameplay. They should have either made the gameplay segments longer or shortened some of the cutscenes. They didn't do a bad job in either area, but the balancing was somewhat off kilter to me. I would get into a groove of burning through enemies and areas and boom, cutscene. The cutscenes weren't bad, but it slowed the momentum down to a crawl and lasted longer than you would like them to at points when you just want to keep bustin' enemies' heads. it has a really good ending and culminates in a great end boss fight...but it's Marvel so expect more after the end. The mixture of banter and dialogue was on point for me. You rarely find a time when someone isn't talking, but it isn't repetitive and doesn't get old, (There must have been pages and pages of dialogue that was recorded for this game), I found myself laughing more than I expected to. If you are a Marvel fan it is a no brainer. The cameos that they have pop up are intricate to the what is going on and a great edition to the story as there are not too many characters that just show up for a brief moment. Once they show up you will most likely see them throughout at different times in the game. It's great being a Marvel fan and seeing not only what characters pop up but who and how they weave them into the story. The licensed soundtrack is PHENOMONAL. You have a special meter that fills up and you can use to If you select the correct dialogue that corresponds to what the team is saying to amp up your stats in combat. And it plays a great song from the soundtrack while in combat. With how the game ends and the positive feedback the game has been receiving the possibilities to flesh out the combat and build on what they laid down with this first game are endless. And don't get it mistaken, you don't have to be a hardcore Marvel fan to have a flarkin good time. It's a whole lotta fun.

GhostWire: Tokyo - 5/10

GhostWire: Tokyo
Ghostwire: Collectibles

(Spoiler-Free Review)
If you like an over-abundance of collectibles and detective vision, this one is for you!
Ghostwire: Tokyo is a game driven by collectibles...Seriously. Everything you do is tied to collecting something, XP, skills, Magatama, Music Tracks, Voice Logs, Jizo Statues, Landmarks, Food & Drink, Tanuki, Outfit Items, Prayer Beads, Relics, Torii Gates, and Visitors. 566, yes, 566 total collectibles throughout the game, and this doesn't include the 240,300 spirits (groups of 100 and 300). I didn't feel like I was playing the game to just play the game, everything you need is tied to a collectible. Jizo statues upgrade your ammo capacity, XP levels up your character for skills, and Magatama are collected to unlock more skill tree branches. Prayer Beads give bonuses, etc. Too many collectibles. Ok, now that the meat and potatoes have been talked about, let's get into actual gameplay. The world is awesome. The art direction in this game has been master crafted. The world is reminiscent of Control with the way the world comes alive, but with Japanese Yokai in the forefront (Nioh and Nioh 2 do Yokai 100 times better IMO, PLAY NIOH 1 & 2!). Side missions boast eye candy in the form of animated areas, chairs shift in to place to block areas, newspaper clippings shift to make a bridge to walk over. I can't say enough about the world and how great it felt to explore side missions. Main missions felt lackluster overall, but boss fights were done quite well, and the enemies overall have a great horror vibe to them. That being said, the encounters themselves, including boss fights, were held back due to the lack of optimized combat. Fighting a group of enemies is reduced to backing up and shooting until they die, or, better yet, throwing down one of two talismans that, IMO, make the combat trivial at best, and then obliterating said enemies. Movement and traversal leave something to be desired as it is stiff and cumbersome to move around, especially during combat. Playing on the "Hard" difficulty doesn't really feel like a true hard difficulty, due in part to the lacking combat. I feel what made this setting difficult wasn't the enemies, or challenge of an encounter, but rather the hinderance of combat and fleshing out of these systems. I dropped it down to normal due to not wanting to feel like I was fighting with one hand tied behind my back. I felt like I was always hitting objects for ammo 90% of the time, something I don't want to feel the need to do while trying to progress through and get to more encounters. This weighs down the pacing of the game heavily IMO, and something that I feel could have been implemented better, especially considering ammo is available all over the place, you just need to hit something (quite frequently) in order to obtain your ammo. The story is forgettable. After about an 1/8 of the way in I just skipped all dialogue everywhere possible just to get back to progressing through the game, which is unfortunate due to how well they designed this world and the inhabitants (dead or alive) within it. This was a typical open world, but, with a bit more love and care to the combat and story, could have been a great experience. I had a similar feeling about Ghost of Tsushima or Watch Dogs, in regard to it being a typical open-world game, however, GoT is a very well-made game with fleshed out combat and gameplay, and I can definitely recommend it to people when discussing it. This game, unfortunately, I cannot recommend. To end on a high note, you can pet dogs...and, you can also feed them. Nuff' said. Overall, I give this game a 5/10.