4/5 ★ – vr_'s review of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy.

I went into this expecting a stereotypical third person cover shooter, which this definitely is not. even though the gameplay is completely different, the game I coild best compare this to in feel, atmosphere and story delivery is that of jedi fallen order, however this game severely overshadows that game in essentially every aspect. Even with combat that is pretty surface level, it was more enjoyable than Jedi: Fallen Order Occasionally the platforming and puzzling was a bit frustrating (namely finding unmarked narrow passages to fit through) however these moments were few and far between I put off playing this game out of assuming it would be a total cringe fest, and while yes the constant pg fake swearing was pretty annoying, the overall narrative and moment to moment character interactions were actually very enjoyable. Unlike star wars, or other games with a group of people who may not like eachother at first teaming up, this game had a lot of heart and rewarding character development. A minor critique is that the ambient dialogue of team members during combat would occasionally repeat, however the ambient dialogue outside of combat was some of the best scripting in the games. While I never had a laugh out loud moment, I did have internal chuckles at silly jokes and interesting lore bits that made these characters feel real. Drax, The character who I was most skeptical on (as he could easily be written to be too over the too literal) turned out to be the best written character in the game. Lots of his dialogue trily was entertaining, whether as a joke or when giving serious commentary. Gamora also felt very human, which made me actually like her character much more than in any marvel movie I have watched. Gameplay is odd at first, but once you get the hang of it around 1/3 of the way in, it gets pretty fun and pretty “flow state.” very rarely was Iannoyed at how many combat encounters there were or how long they took. Overall the combatnto story / exploration balance was essentially perfect Game length was also really well done where the game came and went without feeling bloated but also not feeling lacking I genuinely think these are the best versions of the characters, and I think if I watched the films, id find their movie counterparts annoying. Overall, extremely shocked at how good this was, especially considering I went in expecting it to be annoying and cringey. Also the game looks and runs extremely well, so bonus there