Playtime: 20 Hours
Score: 9/10
An excellent superhero game with great writing and characters! When they first announced the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, I like many others was like "Who?". Then the movies came out, and I absolutely love the trilogy by James Gunn and this game captures much of that. Obviously this came just after Avengers which Square Enix completely screwed up (I myself couldn't get passed the first hour of it), and it hurt this games momentum that I feel like it deserved. But what's this game all about?
The main reason to play this game really is its story and characters. While this game is NOT set in the MCU, they took the personalties of the characters from the films and told their own unique story with it! There is ALOT of dialogue in this game as the team is constantly bantering with each other while you play through the levels. While some will find this annoying, it didn't bother me since the dialogue is so well written and voice acted, and they so such a good job capturing the characters personalities. It did get a little annoying during combat mainly because I was trying to focus on shooting and they tend to just repeat the same lines over and over, but outside of combat, they always had something new to say to each other which I appreciated. You can also make choices during conversations which I thought was a nice touch and they will even give you notifications about how characters feel about your decisions like in a TellTale game. While I didn't mind these prompts in conversations, they do have QTEs in cutscenes which I definitely do mind. I thought we were past this in the games industry, as they don't require skill and are just there to make sure your paying attention. And if you fail these, you often have to rewatch the whole cutscene again until the prompt shows up for you to retry it which is very annoying.
Lastly the ending I thought was pretty good but they do drag it out a bit too much. Like you have: a credit scene; then surprise, another chapter; then credits; then another dialogue scene where you have to make choices; then credits; then end slides and then a book retelling of the games events. Like Eidos, I loved your game but you need to learn when its time to end!
Next up we have the combat which can feel clunky in the beginning but as you unlock more abilities it does get a lot better. Obviously some players will feel cheated that they can't play as the different guardians but I found the combat loop got better once I got the hang of it. Your meant to pretty much hang back and shoot as Starlord and command the Guardians to come in with their abillities. It can also be a little stragetic once you know the role each of them serves. Gamora and Drax are great damage dealers, where as Rocket and Groot are good for AOE abilities, such as Groot holding enemies down and Rocket using his grenades for group kills. The enemies can be bullet spongy, but towards the end it became less of an issue once I got fully into the games combat synenergy.
My one big issue though is the level design. Visually the levels look amazing and I love the artstyle they went with. But mechanically the levels are very linear and basically just one long corridor. There are side paths you can take, but these just lead to dead ends with collectables, and they don't offer any alternate routes through a level. I talked about this in my review of Control, but in that I talked about Arkanes level design (pre-Deathloop and Redfall) and how they were really good at making even the most linear levels feel fun to explore as there was always a side path to take or different ways to approach a mission. I get that this is more of an action adventure game, but even games in that genre like God Of War 2018, offered a little bit more freedom in the levels or those more open levels where you could explore at your lesiure. Here its a much more strict pathway where you will be walking through gaps in walls or sliding down slipperly slopes. The kind of thing thats very abundant in the newer Tomb Raider games, which Eidos obviously helped work on.
Lastly there are skins in the game that you can find hidden throughout the levels and not in some money grabbing cash shop, which lets take a moment to praise that! I also thought it was cool that you can get the costumes from the first movie for each of the guardians which is pretty much what I wore throughout my playthrouh. The other skins didn't look that appealing to me and aside from a couple of others, I would never play with any of them on.
Overall though, this is a great superhero game with its engaging story that I will say is on the level with the Batman Arkham trilogy in terms of the quality of writing and characters. I don't know if we will ever get a sequel but I really hope we do as I would love to play that!
All Games I have Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/
Score: 9/10
An excellent superhero game with great writing and characters! When they first announced the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, I like many others was like "Who?". Then the movies came out, and I absolutely love the trilogy by James Gunn and this game captures much of that. Obviously this came just after Avengers which Square Enix completely screwed up (I myself couldn't get passed the first hour of it), and it hurt this games momentum that I feel like it deserved. But what's this game all about?
The main reason to play this game really is its story and characters. While this game is NOT set in the MCU, they took the personalties of the characters from the films and told their own unique story with it! There is ALOT of dialogue in this game as the team is constantly bantering with each other while you play through the levels. While some will find this annoying, it didn't bother me since the dialogue is so well written and voice acted, and they so such a good job capturing the characters personalities. It did get a little annoying during combat mainly because I was trying to focus on shooting and they tend to just repeat the same lines over and over, but outside of combat, they always had something new to say to each other which I appreciated. You can also make choices during conversations which I thought was a nice touch and they will even give you notifications about how characters feel about your decisions like in a TellTale game. While I didn't mind these prompts in conversations, they do have QTEs in cutscenes which I definitely do mind. I thought we were past this in the games industry, as they don't require skill and are just there to make sure your paying attention. And if you fail these, you often have to rewatch the whole cutscene again until the prompt shows up for you to retry it which is very annoying.
Lastly the ending I thought was pretty good but they do drag it out a bit too much. Like you have: a credit scene; then surprise, another chapter; then credits; then another dialogue scene where you have to make choices; then credits; then end slides and then a book retelling of the games events. Like Eidos, I loved your game but you need to learn when its time to end!
Next up we have the combat which can feel clunky in the beginning but as you unlock more abilities it does get a lot better. Obviously some players will feel cheated that they can't play as the different guardians but I found the combat loop got better once I got the hang of it. Your meant to pretty much hang back and shoot as Starlord and command the Guardians to come in with their abillities. It can also be a little stragetic once you know the role each of them serves. Gamora and Drax are great damage dealers, where as Rocket and Groot are good for AOE abilities, such as Groot holding enemies down and Rocket using his grenades for group kills. The enemies can be bullet spongy, but towards the end it became less of an issue once I got fully into the games combat synenergy.
My one big issue though is the level design. Visually the levels look amazing and I love the artstyle they went with. But mechanically the levels are very linear and basically just one long corridor. There are side paths you can take, but these just lead to dead ends with collectables, and they don't offer any alternate routes through a level. I talked about this in my review of Control, but in that I talked about Arkanes level design (pre-Deathloop and Redfall) and how they were really good at making even the most linear levels feel fun to explore as there was always a side path to take or different ways to approach a mission. I get that this is more of an action adventure game, but even games in that genre like God Of War 2018, offered a little bit more freedom in the levels or those more open levels where you could explore at your lesiure. Here its a much more strict pathway where you will be walking through gaps in walls or sliding down slipperly slopes. The kind of thing thats very abundant in the newer Tomb Raider games, which Eidos obviously helped work on.
Lastly there are skins in the game that you can find hidden throughout the levels and not in some money grabbing cash shop, which lets take a moment to praise that! I also thought it was cool that you can get the costumes from the first movie for each of the guardians which is pretty much what I wore throughout my playthrouh. The other skins didn't look that appealing to me and aside from a couple of others, I would never play with any of them on.
Overall though, this is a great superhero game with its engaging story that I will say is on the level with the Batman Arkham trilogy in terms of the quality of writing and characters. I don't know if we will ever get a sequel but I really hope we do as I would love to play that!
All Games I have Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/
4 Comments
@SkeletonGrimm67 Thank you! I'm glad the game meant so much to you! The Guardians are easily one of my favorite superhero teams!
Yea same they are the reason why I started watching the MCU and Vol. 1 was the first MCU movie that I watched. The trilogy by James Gunn are my favorite movies of the MCU.
@SkeletonGrimm67 FACTS! I started from the beginning with Iron Man, but the Guardians films are easily some of the best. Vol 3 is easily the best MCU movie post Endgame for me.
SkeletonGrimm67
3 months ago