Game #1131: Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

 Something good, something bad... or maybe a bit of both?

 Back when Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy was first announced most people were wary about it. Not me. I thought it looked really good from the getgo. I started reading the GotG a few months before the movie launched and I loved them. The movie was really good too, despite how much they changed, but I could live with having two different interpretations of the same characters.... until Marvel decided to reboot the comics to better align with their movie counterparts...

 ...and then I read that this game hit a happy medium between comics and movies.... except that they don't, not really. Peter Quill is another take on Spider-man but dumber, not sarcastic and cynical like he was in the original comic books. Rocket is super abrasive, very much unlike his original GotG version. And Drax is 'comically serious' like his movie counterpart. Yeah, I wasn't impressed. On the other and, despite the game featuring the movie line-up... Mantis and even Adam Warlock join up briefly with the guardians, who were part of my favorite line up of guardians, and even Moon Dragon makes a cameo.

 I wasn't a fan of the starting set-up either. This version of Rocket Raccoon is very unlikeable at first. We are supposed to believe that these guardians have been on a few missions together, and yet... they can't stand each other. I could've understood them being so aggressive and rough with each other if they just met... but that's not the set-up we are given. They wanted to skip the introductions YET make a 'they learn to work together' story and I don't think it quite works like that since I can't believe that this group of people managed to stay together for so many missions before the game started. Mind you, overall, I liked the story. I liked how much depth characters are given thanks to optional dialogue bits inside the Milano, the Guardians' ship, however, I think the premise needed some more ironing out. Also, I don't like kids in movies and games when they take a central part of the story.... and this game's story involves a young girl.

 One of the strengths of the game's narrative is how many dialogue choices you get. Some are negligible, some change very little... but others can have a big impact in how some scenes and battles will play out later down the line. This means that there's a decent amount of replayability and variables that can change in every playthrough. On the other hand, the game is prone to QTEs, and I hate QTEs. At least there weren't too many of them.

 As for the game... you could say it's a narrative-driven third person shooter that plays like a beat'em up. You only get to play as Star-Lord, you lock-on with L2, shoot your main guns with R2, your elemental guns with R1, you get a dash and a melee punch. Every guardian, Peter included, has four super moves that run on cooldown, so can't just spam abilities. Groot's abilities are related to trapping enemies, Gamora's dealing damage to single targets, Rocket's dealing damage in an area and Drax building the Stagger gauge, and once an enemy's stagger gauge is full they get stunned for a while. As for Peter, since he is the one you play as, has more variety. His ultimate makes him invincible for a short while, he has an AoE explosive, a targeted barrage of shots and the ability to hover for a while.

 What bothered me the most about combat... is how slow paced it can be. Your main guns overheat after a while, but if you hit the shot button at the right time you can bypass the cooldown moment... miss it in the heat of battle, however, and you'll have to wait. After you make every character use an ability.... they have a cooldown you must wait for. Your elemental guns have their own shared cooldown gauge. There's a Super ability, the Huddle. After dealing enough damage you can press R1+L1 which will engage a needlessly long cutscene in which the Guardians get together and complain about something.... and you must pick the appropriate response, failing to do so will grant the buff only to Star-Lord. You can make it so that you can't fail this in the options menu... but you still have to sit through it. And even if you change the difficulty setting so that you deal the most damage possible... enemies can still tank a ton of damage, making encounters somewhat boring. It's not a hard game, not at all, but too many enemies, too much health and too much waiting. In the game's defense, it takes a while before the combat starts getting boring, but near the end of the game I was hating it. Replaying levels on the easiest difficulty setting, in order to hunt down trophies(I got the Plat!) was such a bore, I just wanted fights to be over faster.

 Exploration is highly encouraged. Not only can you find scavenge to get upgrades for Star-Lord, not only can you find collectibles that will unlock conversations with your teammates... but you can also unlock a ton of alternate costumes. Every Guardian gets 7 costumes, except for Peter who gets a ton. Getting so many in-game costumes is such a treat in this day and age. As for the exploring itself, there are some light puzzle elements here and there. Sometimes it's as easy as telling a teammate to interact with the environment, other times you might have to scan the environment for the poisonous leaks and cover them up with Star-Lord's icegun. Nothing too crazy, but it keeps things interesting.

 Well then... as I usually do, at first, I play my games unpatched because I want to make sure that my games can be finished without patches. GotG can be finished without patching, its quality however.... These are just a few bugs I came across:

 - Mantis was on the Milano from Chapter 1. Before I realized it was a bug I didn't understand why I couldn't interact with her.

 - Numerous bugs that forced me to reload a checkpoint because I couldn't progress because something got bugged.

 - Crashes.

 - Knowhere has a ton of cutscenes with bugged audio. Tons of audio bugs

 - One time, button prompts go stuck on the HUD. Another time the Windshot tutorial messages got stuck on the HUD for the duration of the chapter.

 - Costumes HUD is bugged, sometimes unlocked costumes won't appear until you select a costume in the costume select screen. The GOLD costumes won't unlock.

 - There's a very emotional scene with Pete's mother... shame she was cloned in that scene.

- Chapter 9 or 12, the one with the Ship boss, murdered my framerate since he kept spawning mines. It seriously entered the single digits, I figured my PS4 would explode.

 I.. I enjoyed my time with Guardians of the Galaxy, but man if it wasn't a bit rough. The game needed more bug fixing before releasing, no doubt about it. As many gripes as I had with the narrative, mainly with how characters are depicted and the set-up, it was still an enjoyable tale and I liked how many things you can change depending on your choices. The combat definitely could've used more touching up, less waiting and more ways for the player to do stuff on the battlefield, also, reducing enemy's health bars across the bar could help. Regardless, it was a pretty decent game, but I think I expected a bit more. 

 7.5