PvtSmith

I'm not familiar with the franchise except for the first movie, and I did not play the (supposedly) god aweful Avengers game, so I am reviewing this game purely on its own merit. Summary: The game is painfully mediocre. While it features a solid movie-worthy pl0ot, a good villain and great graphics, it lacks the polish needed to being it above the mediocrity. Only recommended for low price, and if you got nothing else to do. Pros: - Good plot and a villain that's actually a threat. - Great visuals. Not just in terms of what UE4 can render, but the models. They follow the design language from MCU movies, but designs are still their own and do not repeat the movies much. - Music is great, as is tradition for the GOTG movies. - Some characters are well written, like Drax who had the spot light in a few points in the story (negotiation scene). - Interesting take on non-linearity. Some minor elements of the plot are up to the player to decide. Based on your decisions, you may not get the access to the optimal progression through a level. Cons: - Lacks polish I would expect for a game sold for $60 on release date. There are a lot of minor issues that accumulate over time. The animations bug out in a few places. You get stuck in walls. Sometimes UI elements don't render properly. Peter's helmet materializes without a sound. Many many others. - The dialogues, they are absolutely horrendous and never stop. The characters never stop talking. The background chatter happens non-stop, and without the same fight the party will start repeating their own lines. There's not a single quiet moment in the game, even when characters want to be alone the game finds a way to dump dialogue onto the player. - Peter Quill's character makes no sense is one of the most annoying video game characters I've seen in a game. StarLord? More like CringeLord. He's supposed to be at the very least 30 years old, most likely mid to late 30s when you do the math. Yet, he talks, looks and behaves like a 22 year old hipster from 2016 who works as a barista and listens to podcasts. This is by far, the most cringe character in the game. His dialogues are so bad and cringe, in places it reaches the levels of Borderlands 3, Rage 2 and Wolfenstein Youngblood. I find this very ironic, since he's literally modelled after the chad from the chad vs soyjack memes. He's supposed to be a leader, but SpongeBob is more threatening than this guy. I actually found that if you choose for Peter to be silent completely during crew arguments, the dialogues feel more natural. - The timeline of the game makes little sense. If the Guardians of the Galaxy existed for at least a decade, then why are they still fighting and bickering because of any minor issue? Forced conflict, that's why. - Fighting becomes tedious and annoying. Essentially, until you research all the area of attack perks for your party (there's only a couple), the fastest way to dispatch the enemies is melee. The melee combat is 1 button. That's it. Occasionally there's a quick time even, but it's mostly 1 button. Once you do research the area of attack skills, you will use them, and only them. Additionally, the fighting mechanic was not polished, and there are a few glaring problems. For example, the enemies actually have the ability to break your weapons lock, so in the heat of the battle as you try to evade the lock breaks and throws your aim all over the place. Another one, and the biggest issue with fighting, is the so called "huddle mechanic". In the heat of a battle, you can enable it to provide attack and hp bonuses for your team. Except, this often happens near the end of the fight where it makes no difference, because it is very easy to enable one accidently. When enabled, the fight randomly stops and the game cuts to a the crew talking together. It's all the same animation but with different, but equally cringe dialogues. There's also no way of skipping it. So to summarize, it randomly breaks the fight, it has no benefit, and there's no way to skip or disable it. What a feature!

7/10. Gameplay is mediocre. Very average compared to other modern games, but the story is still great. in fact some things were improved over the original with important side characters given more story time. People criticize the dead open world as if the original was completely insane simulation. It's true that the original had more minor details like more realistic car damage, the airport mission had a lot of NPCs reacting to the gun fire in a realistic way and hugging the floor. But let's face it, those aren't the things that affect the story or people pay attention to. The open world in the original was just as dead as in this one. At the same time this game improves on the enemy spam and bs insta-kills by enemies you cannot even see or aim at. The ability to skip driving is also a very welcome change. I am giving it a 6/10 however, because the controls are designed to be played on a console, not PC. The key layout is very strange, and you cannot double bind keys.

Summary: 8/10 only because of at version 1.52 there are still regular crashes and few bugs. Otherwise would be a 9 or a 10. If you are looking for that GTA5 gameplay, where you basically mow down pedestrians for fun, get infinite respawns and deal with barely developed characters - look elsewhere. If you are looking for that Deus Ex gameplay with open-world elements and character development, this is it. Goods: - Great gun play, albeit gun selection isn't as large as I was hoping for, but all the basics are covered with a few options. - The game does offer a lot of approaches to mission completion, stealth is almost always an option. - Absolutely amazing characters, first time I wanted to sit through the final credits just to listen to them some more. - The in-world tasks are easy enough to complete them quickly, and offer a lot of incentive to complete them through unique item finds. - Overall, first game I completed 100%, all side missions and all. Bads: - A few bugs, which are rather funny, and semi-regular crashes on new computer which is rather frustrating. - Not a big one, but some models look like previous generation or almost Crysis-era. Just compare someone like Judy or Claire models with Johnny Silverhand who doesn't have any shadows on his face (with Ultra Graphics settings). - Last few River missions are incredibly lazily done. Not just buggy, but the game assets are botched. River's nephew looks older than River, and the picture River sends you over phone looks like something made by a 3rd grader in photoshop.

Plot is a 1000x better than the sequel movies, albeit not very challenging overall. Graphics are pretty good. Had some bugs, nothing major. Accessible if you don't enjoy self punishment games like Dark Souls, just play on minimum difficulty. I would give 7.5, but there's no microtransactions or forced co-op/multiplayer or over the top SWJ rhetoric. I will give 8.5 and round off to 9.

Overall pretty good game. Not as good as 1st, but very good. Pros: - Well polished graphics with no bugs (unlike part 3). Interesting Slavic and Byzantium mythology. - Good puzzles. Some of the puzzles in the DLC actually made me look up walkthroughs for the first time in the franchise. - Some stuff to do on the map (not a dead window dressing like in part 3) - Lara redesigned from a supermodel into a cute girl Cons: -A bit predictable plot twist -Goofy things like Lara looking at the Soviet coat of arms as it was an ancient relic, and somehow translating "Glory to Soviet Workers" written on it into "ah yes, this ancient monument tells me there's a cave over there" - Jonah redesigned for some reason from Samoan into black (afro and all)

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]