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Guardians of the Galaxy


one-armed dwarf
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I played through the opening of this, so far better than Avengers I think. The tutorial, which is extremely pink and blue, is a fairly lengthy thing which introduces you to characters which of course you already know about because of all the movies and stuff init. It's mostly a slightly adjusted take on those movie characters, I say that as if I know what the other versions of the characters from the comic are like. Anyway it reminds me of the movie is what I mean, except the guy who plays Mario isn't in it which is a bummer.

 

But I think it's good, not incredible cause it's hard to get a read of whether the fighting turns into something more than what you see at first. I'll say being able to run a game that looks good at 4k dlss and runs at 60 presents a much better impression than watching a stream that runs at 640p and runs at 15fps. I dunno about the console experience, but I do know my experience right here is pretty good *discreetly flexes*

 

As filler tutorials go I thought it was pretty well paced and I was pretty engaged by it, which is saying something cause it really does feel like a 360 game. But it gets away with feeling like a 360 games cause they don't make 360 games anymore, and 360 games didn't run at 4k with ray tracing *dabs*. One screenshot I wanted to get is the little bear guy standing on tree man's back cause I thought damn I like that, but it was in a really dark room and I didn't get the chance. Anyway the rabbit stands on the tree man's back, that is good.

 

I tried to take screenshots but unfortunately they are all super dark cause of weird HDR nonsense. So imagine these screenshots not looking shit, this is what the game looks like (good, not shit)

 

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy 26_10_2021 20_50_45.png

 

I can't say that this is like game X with a bit of game Y or anything like that cause it's too early to say. One thing I'll say is that it has a stagger meter for certain boss type enemies. Drax (who destroys) has an ability that induces heavy stagger damage. Gamora (the deadliest) has an ability which deals heavy raw damage. Groot (therefore he is) does stuff with branches, uh traps enemies I think, I dunno. Racoon (not a racoon) does ranged attacks. But to translate it in terms I do understand, Drax is Focus Strike from FFVII Remake, Gamora and Racoon are the big attacks that you do when stagger is put on them.

 

Peter Quill (middle name Joseph), he flies around and shoots stuff. The melee part of his combat feels like shit, but this is the level 1 experience. Very early on he unlocks an ability to do a timed powerful charge shot while his guns recover from their Mass Effect cooldown. Kind of a reload that's active, or something like that. I think another game did a thing like this before, I forget. I can't easily follow the flow of fights but I would say having this run at a high framerate is a must for that reason. It's so messy, the way you queue up the skills is a bit clunky. But that's the level 1 experience. It's a very air dashy type game, like a B tier Platinum games joint or something like that maybe. Anyway I'm engaged by the sum of the parts rather than the constituent ones so I will stick with it. Better than Avengers anyway, well the opening is.

 

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy 26_10_2021 20_38_10.png

 

Also trust me the game looks a lot better than these screenshots, thank Windows HDR for fucking these captures up. Or maybe the brightness adjustment in the game itself, I might try and look into seeing if I can fix that.

 

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It's pretty and there's things I like and things I dislike. I'm at chapter 3 and was about to make a much stronger recommendation and say people should play it and I think most people would have a good time. But I dunno where I will land on it with some of these gameplay sections. I'm at the bit from the first gameplay showcase where they fight jelly, that's not a spoiler cause I think a lot of people saw that. It sucks as hard as it appeared to suck then in that demo. That trailer was the reason I think a lot of us were a bit sniffy looking at this in the news thread, it didn't look good and this particular part definitely isn't.

 

On the other hand, the other elements it's got going for it. It's sorta got this lite telltale games thing where the dialogue choices pop up little 'X will remember that' notices. I dunno how dynamic any of that stuff will really get, or if it's mostly flavour to make you feel more involved with these stories. Tbh, Telltale games were largely the latter so it's fine either way I think. All that stuff is very endearing and fun. I'm inclined to sort of role play it a bit and avoid 'optimal' choices which would get me on people's good sides. Sometimes I pick the 'correct' choice but if a chance appears to make things awkward in a family squabble how can I not pick that option? I live for the cringe, and yes I bet I miss an achievement or sidequest or something but who cares. I think given I mostly ignore most of the movies because they are generally the same thing over and over I'm not as burnt out on these characters maybe. By which I'm speaking to some of the lukewarm reception this game has gotten.

 

I guess you can't really talk about the game much without referencing the film, but at least unlike Avengers this one doesn't have that looming over it as a negative all the time. I think games are a better medium to tell stories like this than films which have to hew to a repetitive formula, cause it's not a quip-per-second fest. Games are long and slowly paced so the banter can be more natural, even if the individual performances aren't quite at the level of the films (but they are still very good)

 

(This is not me trying to start a MCU argument, I mean I don't care if ppl do it but I bet there's a thread for that on here already. It's just my own opinion anyway, my mind won't be changed lol)

 

The combat tho, yuck. Just a spam of cooldowns with you jumping around the place while people shout a lot. I might need to drop it to easy I think, just to get through those parts faster. Cause the parts that aren't combat are worth sticking around with, but again the gameplay just fucking sucks ass. But you want to know what happens with the characters so there's that.

 

So either the combat turns around, or the game turns into one of those things where I tell people they should play it in spite of it, or it's frontloaded with the positive stuff. Thinking it will turn out to be like the 2nd case, for me anyway. Onto easy mode.

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Made a start on this last night. Only put just over a hour in but it’s a very strong opener. 
 

It doesn’t feel anywhere near as stiff to play as I was worried it was going to from the trailers. I’m enjoying how they’re approaching the combat in it too, especially now I’ve got that active reload ability, really satisfying. Although it’s already mega chaotic & kind of confusing thats only with 1 ability per Guardian too. I bet it’s ridiculous later when you’ve got 4 per Guardian. 
 

It looks incredible, the first planet I’m on has wowed me a few times already and the detail on the environment is pretty mad. It’s a trick of having high resolution but still find it really impressive being able to read all the text on a small leaflet as shown in the opening. The facial animations are top notch too, getting up there with TLoU2 if not quite there yet. 

I’m also enjoying the constant dialogue. I’ve heard it can get a bit much but so far it’s really adding to the experience for me & helping pull me into the game world. Drax is particularly good. Having him be really literal still but a lot smarter and not as shouty as in the films is definitely a improvement. The range on Groot is also impressive. Made me chuckle a couple of times.

 

Very impressed so far. 

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I'm on chapter 5, there's a moment where a bunch of big stuff happens and they frame it as being due to a bunch of decisions I made. Personally, I strongly doubt that this elaborate set piece they had me do is something optional that they would swap out if I chose X instead of Y. But I'd be interested to compare notes with someone at some point to see what is different at least

 

Chapter 4 spoilers

Spoiler

I submitted Racoon as my terrible beast to Lady Hellbender and made a bunch of jokes about how cute he is and then Racoon got right pissed and went murdering people for no reason. I mean he is cute, it's a fucking compliment why you got to be like this. Then we got chased around and fought a big boss monster. But surely this had to happen if I picked Groot instead. 

 

What I think it must be is the dialogue choices affect the tone of dialogue you have with the cast, but wouldn't it be something if it actually changed gameplay sections too. No way am I playing this twice to find out but I will watch someone else do it maybe

 

I'm very surprised by this game but also I still do think it's as clunky to play as the trailers, the combat is very weird. What I'm starting to realise tho is they want it to be like Quill is this like this ringleader character who controls the violence from afar. His own abilities aren't the point it's how you weave the crowd control from Groot, ranged damage from Rocket, and then the heavy damage and stagger damage of the other two as well as using his special ammo and occasionally melee. But it is still kind of a big clunk fest even as I start to piece it together. The issue of it being cooldown based wont stop annoying me as I feel obliged to use cooldowns on cooldown to avoid overcapping on resources, the MMO brain I have. Your team members will also teleport from one side of the room to the other in order to do a command you give them, which IMO is a symptom of this game being rushed out. I think SE looked at Avengers and drew a line under this thing quick. Which is sad because this is a much better game than Avengers and a 'mid'-list goty contender with another 6 months of polish (well, then it would be a 2022 goty contender but you get what I'm saying). Like it feels like all of the pieces are there, in some respects it feels like a greatest hits album of the 2000s to early 10s of gaming (telltale, mass effect, gears of war, uncharted) and none of it is in conflict with the thing they're going for

 

Again this is like the caveat to the game, everything else makes up for it. Though the technical issues become more present I'm finding as I go. I did notice a very weird visual bug on PC during a cutscene with birthday candles, I wonder if it happens on console too?

 

Anyway I lolled at the deep lore here, not major spoilers or anything just a detail you see on the Milano. Again super dark screenshot, I just use the default brightness for HDR cause you can see everything in HDR even when it's dark. But then in SDR it's just a black void

 

Spoiler

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy 01_11_2021 22_03_10.png

 

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DF talk a little more about it here (a very small amount)

 

Spoiler

 

 

 


And Danny talks about it here, like me a guy who doesn't like MCU but way into what they're doing with this

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

But Jeff G hates it lmao

 

 

These videos aren't spoilers just making the post height smaller

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Chapter 7 now, I'm very confused why the trailer for this seemed to settle on showing the absolute worst mission in the game fighting the most uninteresting enemy type imaginable, a literal cube. One would suspect it was a ploy by Nova Corps to destroy the reputation of the Guardians even in the real world, cause there's so much more diversity in locales than what they showed. Even the combat is improving, though it still kinda sucks a lot (visually unreadable, gives me FFXV vibes unfortunately).

 

There's a whole section of this game that's way more like Mass Effect than I expected. Granted it's very surface level and not particularly interactive. It's not quite the Citadel, but It's a sort of hub area. It's very Mos Eisley, so much creativity in all the different alien species you see. Maybe you can return to it I dunno. But it's hella impressive and makes FFVII Remake's wall market look mid as fuck. More comparable to some of the sections in Ratchet and Clank but I would put this above it. I know the game is linear but it wouldn't be a terrible thing if they put some more optional content in this section, but I think they probably won't.

 

There was very little direct gameplay here, it gets very walking sim at times. Very 'oh fuck look at these graphics on OLED' sim. I find HDR a fairly underwhelming thing most of the time but it's specially made to bring out the neons in some of these places they have you gawk at. Characters tone down the snark at times as well, if there's one bugbear I have it's that snark seems always set to 11. Who I'm not enjoying atm is Rocket Racoon who has maybe the most annoying arc in this thing. I'm not sure if it's due to my dialogue choices. I think it isn't, cause the game actually tells you when something happens that's a direct consequence of a dialogue choice (in my case it was a locked door). Blast that flarking rodent out the airlock please. But Drax is not just the cartoon character he is in the one or two films I saw. I want to know more about this dude now which I can't say about the Dave Bautista representation

 

Anyway this is what you're missing right here, very minor visual spoilers for chapter 6.

 

Spoiler

 

 

This game does the thing where Geralt flicks fire in people's faces but made it better.

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People talking good shit about the game makes me want to try. But considering most of the good things being said about it are the writing and the story cools my interest down a lot. I ain’t buy no game to read no book. I think it will be what you said in the news thread where it’s a Christmas sale thing. 

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It's kinda a Nier thing where the game is carried by the stuff that isn't gameplay, yes.

 

Tho the gameplay is at least better than Nier.

 

But it's not the writing specifically it just throws a hodgepodge of different stuff at the audience and does a mostly good job of making it fairly cohesive, and it is a well paced adventure. It's managed to be entertaining* in a way that I think Spiderman sort of didn't manage, where I played it and was mostly into the characterisations but the game as a whole was pretty mid I thought. On all levels I would put this above Spidey except you don't have a mechanic in it that quite compares to web slinging, but web slinging gets really old after a while anyway. At the same time I don't want to overhype, it's still like an 8/10 kinda game (maybe 7.5 at times) and expectations factor in a lot here. I'd be bemused tho if people who actually like the Macdonald's Cinematic Universe wouldn't take to this tho considering how indebted it is to MCU.

 

*Except the rocket raccoon stuff, who I hope gets turned into a bathmat soon. 

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The first movie is amazing but mostly because of the use of soundtrack. The second movie is decent but a massive step down mainly because it didn’t have as good as a soundtrack. If it’s anything like the movies it better have a baller soundtrack.

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You don't hear the music that much at all, the way they implement that stuff is very jarring.

 

They just needed to look at dmc5 to do it the right way, if you get a high style rank then play the killer 80s music (tho the selection isn't that killer imo). Don't do this weird 'huddle' thing. I forgot to talk about this part actually, cause it sucks. But when you're getting your ass beat if you accidentally press l1 and r1 (buttons you need to shoot dudes and issue instructions) you get this cringe huddle thing and you say some stuff and tears for fears plays while you have super power moves. 

 

It doesn't quite achieve the thing they are trying to go for. Something like that should feel empowering and get you in a flow of kicking ass, like Devil Trigger does. Not to bring it back to that game but I feel like this was a solved problem for action games. The fact that it kicks in cause you're playing like shit feels like it misses the point a bit. Just give Quill a devil trigger called '80s music powers', players will know to use it when the going gets rough. And take out the flarking huddle cutscene

 

The music on the ship itself as you talk to your crew is the one part where I find it's welcome though, as well as the parts where they have it scripted (Quill says 'I need someone to play some tunes to do some gameplay sections, it's quite cool and fun). 

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I’m part way through chapter 3 myself. I’m absolutely loving it. As has been said it’s a Mass Effect lite in a lot of ways mixed with a sprinkling of Uncharted. 
 

There’s loads of little

options you can change too. I’ve quickly realised, along with what I’ve read, that it’s more about managing your team than actually fighting yourself. I’ve changed the options so it pauses while selecting abilities and reduced the cool downs to the lowest value. Now I’m basically hovering over the battles, pausing the action and selecting team attacks and having a great time with it playing it this way. 
 

Can’t stress enough how great it looks too, the use of colour is just eye popping in the best possible way. The areas where you’re just looking at space are just incredibly beautiful too, the sheer amount of stars and the way it contrasts with the dark blue/purple background, I genuinely can’t believe how spectacular that looks. 

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I'm on chapter 9 and I've almost fully turned around on the combat. It still reads like shit and has lots of Mass Effect 1 style jank, but I have now learned the flow of cooldowns they expect you to do. In fact the entire combat system is just about cooldowns, using your special ammo in tandem with the cooldowns. Pin down with groot, use electric ammo to bounce between people or use AOE. Use ice to freeze and melee to smash frozen enemies. Bounce between single target and multi hitting AOE depending on the situation. Quill's hover cooldown is bad for damage but great for surveying the battle, which is the whole point as it turns out. It's all told pretty neat, but takes way too long to get to that point.

 

Other than that nothing new to say just the game is flarking great is all.

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3 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Quill's hover cooldown is bad for damage but great for surveying the battle, which is the whole point as it turns out.

Yea that’s how I’m playing and enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would as I normally dislike that type of combat system. 

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I mean it looked like shit so yeah.

 

An alternate universe exists where this came out before Marvel Avengers and the trailers for this came out when the game was ready to look good and it becomes the springboard for a universe of Marvel games and GOTG sequels by Square. So you end up with Marvel's Mass Effect.

 

But the other universe is the one we live in, where this game followed a shit one, looked like shit in trailers and by all reports sold like shit and will never get a follow up.

 

(OTOH what if we could live in a universe where Joss Whedon's Avengers was offensively terrible like the Avengers game? Sign me up)

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Nearing the end I think, on chapter 12. I will say that this also feels like a 360 game in that the back sections feel more phoned in and sort of throw waves of enemies at you with the excuse of 'you got all these skills now', but the combat is kind of too easy with all those skills.

 

The story heads in a weird direction in that I expected the stakes to be a lot lower but they're sort of like 

Spoiler

Infinity War scale stakes. Or Mass Effect actually, cause indoctrination is the big threat in this thing. 

 

I do appreciate that they just throw you in the deep end with all these characters, races, galactic and celestial entities and keep explanations to a minimum. Let the player figure it out through osmosis. I kinda figure it's a game that takes for granted either some decent comic book knowledge where people will go 'oh flark, it's 

Spoiler

Adam Warlock. Who is this guy? Maybe he's a big deal to people I dunno

and enjoy the way they're represented here. As someone with no comic knowledge I appreciate that they do it like that, don't dumb the thing down for me I can get into it on my own kind of level.

 

Drax is sort of character of the year territory for me. As mentioned Rocket Racoon is like the opposite, a piece of scut I never want to think about again. Parts of the story hit a very Mass Effect kinda tone but sometimes I think the game struggles to keep a decent balance between the wise cracks and the somber bits. Or maybe it's just a symptom of the way a game is built or my own expectations. But I wonder now if the Dave Bautista version of the character is even doing justice to the original one, I kinda bet it isn't cause there's way more going on with this version of this dude in this game than in that film. 

 

I really would like a sequel, I think it deserves it. But, well. But I wouldn't be placing the later sections of the game as high on the enjoyment as earlier to middle, cause I think it needs a bit of trimming. I think mostly it's kinda bit more slapdash but not in a way that's ruining the experience or anything. Just has that typical Xbox 360-ness about it

 

Spoiler

?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Lett

 

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