@LtSarge@JudgeDredd Yeah, I’m currently in the section where I think people start to get annoyed at Peter and Rocket. Mostly it’s Rocket being whiney, but if Peter says “Come On, Guys…” one more time I’m going to snap. I wish the writers gave him a little more variety in his phraseology.
I also ran into a few glitches and bugs today. The game locked up when I went into a huddle during battle and just hung there unresponsive, so I had to restart from the last checkpoint. Didn’t lose more than a couple minutes of progress, but still disappointing. Then I’ve had a few clipping and small visual blips. And now I have a bug where the text screen for a kiosk prompt in Nowhere pops up overlaying the text box when ever I pick up an Archive collectible. Really weird. I’m going to reboot to see if it fixes it. If I have to play the whole rest of the game not being able to read the Archive items when I pick them up, I’m going to pull my hair out.
Still love the game. It needed a little more time in the oven though. These glitches are starting to happen too commonly to be ignored.
@Th3solution That's one of the reasons why I'm glad I played it on a current-gen system. I was planning on playing it on either PS4 or Xbox One and I can't imagine how bad the experience must've been on those systems when I was still experiencing a few hiccups here and there on Series X. The two common issues I faced were clipping through the ground and the game dropping frames in the second half of the story. But other than that it was a smooth experience.
I managed to finish up last night! I don't have any familiarity with the source material and have only seen the MCU movies but I think I like the cast of the game more than the movies. The story is up there with the best of the MCU movies (which to be fair, isnt maybe that hard). Their interactions are well crafted and the writing is sharp. It's a good sign for the next mass effect that they have one of the lead writers from this team on the next ME game. I'm still not sold on the gameplay, which always felt floaty and lacking in either heft, strategy or pacing. There are some sections in the middle of the game that drag a little and even as someone who is a huge naughty dog and Rockstar fan, there are sections where cut scenes just seem to keep going!! Nonetheless, it's one of the better licenced games I've played. Performance wise, the game looked and ran well, I did have a game breaking bug at the final boss though, which wasn't great. What's everyone's thoughts on the huddle mechanic? I was always disappointed that the narrative blurb never related to anything I was doing and felt so generic. It always took away from the epic tune that would follow.
I'm sorry, I think I've made the difficulty decision to pass on this month despite having every intention to play GotG and wanting to share the experience with you all.
The reason is that my Game Pass sub runs out in 18 days and while I will likely renew it, I might just sorta live sub free for a few weeks, maybe months. But yeah, I want to play Marvel Avengers and maybe finish Halo Infinite (I haven't touched it since January) in that time which will be tough to fit in around work.
I own Guardians on disc so I may play it in my sub-free period! Among other games that aren't restricted to a sub!
@LtSarge I’m playing it on PS5 and have settled in with Ray Tracing mode, but I’m wondering if I should switch to Performance mode. I just love all the pretty reflections though.
@JudgeDredd So far for me the high praise is fitting, although I’d take points away for the little technical shortcomings.
I’m in Ch 9 now and I found the story segments so far have actually surpassed my expectations. I was quite touched at the reveals in the previous chapter, and some of the moments are legitimately quite touching. Not quite on level with the best emotional storytelling in games yet, but I was surprised how invested I’ve become in Nikki and in Drax’s back story. So far the jokes land 75% of the time, and the dialogue choices add a little spice to the parts between battles.
Here’s hoping it doesn’t fall apart at the end. 🤞🏼
@R1spam Glad to hear you enjoyed it and I agree about the surprisingly solid narrative. The huddle mechanic is definitely underdeveloped. It’s usually easy enough to figure out the correct speech to give to rally the team, but I haven’t felt it makes that much of a difference in the battle. I see what they are trying to do there, but I would have liked to see a larger power up come from a successful huddle. Like an all-out attack that Persona does which will typically devastate the battlefield.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Out of the bunch of games that I have played post Elden Ring, this was the one that I seem to sticking with. It is good fun so far but I'm not totally over blown by it yet. That is ok though as I shouldn't expect evey game to knock my socks off, sometimes being a fun enjoyable experience is all you need from a game.
Think the characters are quite well written and acted, and surprised to see no well known names amongst the cast. I wouldn’t say there is a massive difference to the way the characters are portrayed to the films, they feel pretty much the same to me.
Playing in quality mode and it seems to be fine to me so far, think I might resist the temptation to try the other modes, as that is usually when I notice it more.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
@JohnnyShoulder I’ve bounced between all three modes, as I’m apt to do when a PS5 game has options, but I’m settled into performance mode. Usually I love me some good ray tracing, but the effects in this game weren’t quite as mind blowing as I’ve seen in others (Like Control and Miles Morales). I think the very bright and varied color palette in GotG makes the effects of light reflections less prominent than in game worlds that include more dark contrast. There’s plenty of reflective surfaces in this game, but they are so intensely colored in HDR that they look wonderful without RT and the combat and platforming really benefit from 60 fps.
I’m still loving the game. I’m finishing off chapter 12, and it’s scratching an itch that I’ve had and didn’t know it. It’s mostly an Uncharted itch, I think.
I was able to finish off Guardians this weekend and just thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
I don’t know if I have much to add to the discussion that hasn’t been already said, but I’m really bummed that the game didn’t perform better commercially to warrant a sequel, or at least enough to encourage more story-driven single player games from Square-Enix. (Of course with the recent failure of Avengers and Babylon’s Fall, I’m not sure that Square-Enix has any genre outside of their mainstay JRPGs that they feel confident in). The industry is saturated with Marvel content, so I don’t know that a second GotG is what the industry needs, but I wish that we’d get more games like this — ie AAA quality where there’s team based gameplay, character and narratively driven, linear with mild exploration, etc. Unfortunately I feel that soft sales will send a message that this style of game is not in demand.
As far as critique of the game, I think I’ve given plenty of praise but some more detailed observations include the following:
I think the visuals are fabulous, the HDR is a particular highlight (no pun intended). The facial animation leaves something to be desired though. Not nearly as consistent in the facial capture and virtual acting as games from Naughty Dog or Quantic Dream. Some of the character interactions were quite good but a lot of the facial close ups were wooden and uncanny. Several times the characters’ eyes would dart around quite creepily.
Performance was likewise a mixed bag — despite playing most of the game in performance mode, I noticed dropped frames from time to time. And audio cuts were actually quite common. I can excuse some of the audio quirks due to the unique nature of the game’s constant chatter from characters, so to have a side conversation cut off by a timed and scripted dialogue event should be expected. It doesn’t change the awkwardness of when it happens though. I guess I’m spoiled by God of War’s deft treatment of that issue when characters would seamlessly return to their conversation when gameplay would interrupt it. GotG had a lot of recycled dialogue too which, again, is to be expected with such a large amount of constant chatter. Amazingly the repetition only seemed noticeable during battle, and I don’t recall much during exploration. The worst offender was there was only so many “huddle” speeches, and so I was seeing those repeat by mid-game.
Without spoiling anything, I liked how the game ended. There was some frustration and a little trial and error which made it tedious, but the overall direction of the game was really well handled and consistent with the tone of the movie (and presumably the comics, I would guess).
Overall, I’d put it up there with my favorite games I’ve played this year, which is some esteemed company (sitting alongside Miles Morales, The Last of Us Part II, Demon’s Souls, and Kena). With a little more polish it could have been outstanding, but in a way I’m glad it didn’t have extra time and resources put into the small details since it already lost money as it stands.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Glad to see you enjoyed it! I did love just how complete an experience it was, it was a full linear game without any bloat. I think that might be everybody done now so I’ll get the list of games together as soon as possible!
I think guardians of the galaxy is an excellent game, excellent story better than most marvel films and great characters. the non stop banter is the real highlight of the game.
Its one for my collection and thats high praise indeed as im very fussy
@trev666 yeah, I know what you mean… I definitely thought the story and characters were to a higher quality than the two GotG movies. They did a great job and the game should’ve sold gang-busters.
@LN78 I do get you but I think it’s an awkward comparison when putting film run-times up against game run-times. I say this as a film’s action scenes would take up less of a run-times’ percentage than a games gameplay sections.
What I will say though, I think my expectations probably contributed to my rating. I had pretty high expectations for the movies being a massive fan of the Abnett and Lanning runs but fairly low expectations of the game. Maybe that caused me to enjoy it so much more.
@LN78 yeah I generally like Gunn’s movies too, I only go as far back as Slither and Super but I pretty much like everything he’s done (I think his Suicide Squad movie is the best DCEU movie to date… I’m not counting Nolan’s Batman movies as DCEU).
I have to be honest, I really didn’t enjoy the first Guardians… movie on first viewing. I think it was partly just how different it was from the comics and partly to do with the fact that we were moving that weekend and I was very stressed. I’ve watched it since many times and enjoyed it immensely. I also really liked what the Russo’s did with them in Infinity War.
@LN78 yeah I waited for Peacemaker to hit Sky tv with baited breath. And yeah, I’d say that was the best DC TV show too tbh.
We’ve had D+ since it started, so have watched all of the Marvel D+ stuff (including I am Groot just this week) and I’ve found it all a little (only a little mind you) under par so far. I’m looking forward to the Guardians Xmas special though… and even more to GotG3. The raw emotion on stage at Marvel’s recent Hall H presentation at Comic Con when Gunn and the crew walked out was something to behold.
@LN78 yeah there is a definite Endgame hang over in Phase 4… and even more worrying, there seems to be less care involved in regards to simply adding stuff that fans would think cool.
I’m hoping that now we have a ‘direction’ for Phase 5 & 6 (Kang and Doom) that it’ll all start to come together as with Phases 2 & 3 once we knew Thanos was on the horizon.
@LN78 fair enough… I mean for me, Feige has enough credit in the bank that I’ll probably catch all of phase 5 in the cinema at least. I do think the quippy humour is now in need of a rethink though, I wonder how long that sentiment will take to filter through to the scripts though.
Votes are open for the next game! I’ve added a couple that were suggested to the usual unlucky suspects as well as a few from the PS Plus lot.
Sonic Mania
The Last Guardian
Star Wars Squadrons
Ghostrunner
Crash 4
Metro Exodus
Bugsnax
Assassin’s Creed II (included as part of Ezio Collection)
Batman Arkham Asylum
Little Nightmares
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