AAA Triple-Threat ("Far Cry 6", "Metroid Dread", and "Guardians of the Galaxy")

Hello, and welcome to another article where I take a couple games currently in my backlog and review them all in a more concise fashion that I normally would! For pretty much the first time this year, a bunch of AAA releases have come out, so I've had my hands a bit full, and it just so happens that the three I recently completed can be discussed in this format without losing much nuance. So, strap in and let's get started!

Available for: Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Amazon Luna (whatever the hell that is), Google Stadia (haaaaa), Microsoft Windows

Reviewed for: Microsoft Windows

I'm going to save you a bit of time, dear reader. Far Cry 6 is basically just more Far Cry. I've said it, as has everybody else, because it's the truth. For that reason, I'm only going to be covering the negatives, which happen to largely be ways in which this game differs from its predecessors. As such, this review is going to make my opinion seem a lot more negative than it actually is. So if you're tired of the Far Cry formula and you were hoping that Ubisoft would innovate a bit with this one, you're not going to have a good time. For me, however, Far Cry is my jam. The formula, as repeated as it has been over the years, doesn't get old to me. Whenever a new installment comes out, I always have fun embracing the formula in whatever new gigantic playground Ubisoft has built. So if you're like me, you'll probably once again enjoy the cathartic thrill of liberating outposts without being detected or going into a firefight guns blazing to cause as much chaos as possible. With that in mind, you should know that I did like Far Cry 6, regardless of how negative the rest of this review is going to be. Let's get started!

Far Cry 6 takes place in the fictional Cuba-inspired island nation of Yara, led by the dictatorial El Presidente Anton Castillo (played excellently by Breaking Bad's Giancarlo Esposito) and his son Diego, who will be next in line for the position. You are Dani Rojas, a citizen of Yara plotting to escape to America with your friends on a night where martial law is being established in the capitol city of Esperanza. However, after one of your friends makes a stupid decision worthy of Zoe from Road 96, you find yourself down a friend and hunted by the military through the city. By utilizing underground paths set up by Libertad, the resistance movement, you and your remaining friend eventually make it to the ship you booked passage on, and after helping a young boy secure a spot as well, you're well on your way to the states. But your trip is cut short by a military vessel that boards the ship, and who should come walking down the stairs to address this group of refugees? Why, none other than El Presidente himself. As it turns out, that young boy you helped secure passage on this ship was Diego Castillo, trying to flee from his father. The Castillos leave and your ship is riddled with bullets, leaving none alive except you. As you reconnect with your friend in her last moments, she urges you to join Libertad and help end the suffering of the Yaran people. And from there, we have our narrative: a step-by-step guerilla warfare mission to liberate Yara one district at a time, and the uneasy relationship between father and son in the Castillo family. All-in-all, it's a decent story that kept me wanting to know what happened next at every turn, but with one major caveat: the ending. I'm not going to spoil what happens, but this ending left such a sour taste in my mouth that I was legitimately in disbelief about how bad it was for a few days after the credits rolled. It's so bad that I'm taking a full point off for it, I seriously haven't experienced an ending this bad since Bioshock: Infinite. But enough about that.

It couldn't have escaped your attention, dear reader, that I didn't refer to any of Dani's friends by name in that previous section. That's because, with the exception of Castillo and one mini-villain you meet in one of the plot threads, the human characters in Far Cry 6 are inoffensive, but forgettable. That mini-villain is probably going to win my "Antagonist of the Year" award, so credit where it's due, but most of the characters just kind of come and go. But this time around, Ubisoft seems to understand that, given a choice between a human follower and an animal follower, people will always choose the latter. Gone are the forgettable "guns for hire" that stood around unused in Far Cry 5 and Far Cry: New Dawn. This time around, you have "amigos," a posse of animals from which you can choose one to follow and help you. Different amigos have different uses, so which one you have follow you will depend on what you're currently trying to accomplish. For instance, if you're going to go into a fight guns blazing, you might choose Guapo the crocodile or Chicharron the rooster, as they're made for firefights and aren't very subtle. On the other hand, if you're trying to stealthily liberate an outpost, you might bring Boom-Boom the dog to mark enemies for you or Oluso the black panther to kill enemies silently and make the bodies disappear. In addition to their overarching uses in regards to your current playstyle, each amigo also has abilities that are unlocked by performing tasks. Oluso, for example, can unlock the ability to strike fear in the hearts of nearby enemies after performing a takedown if you have her kill enough enemies inside of restricted zones. I loved all of these amigos and maxed out all of their abilities over the course of my time with this game, but none of these amigos compare to the best one of them all: Chorizo the wheelchair Dachshund! If for some reason you don't know, dear reader, I own a wheelchair dog myself! A beautiful paraplegic kelpie named Lola. So maybe I'm a bit biased, but getting to see wheelchair dogs getting roles in a game like this just makes my heart feel good. When I first saw Chorizo in the marketing materials, I knew Far Cry 6 was going to be a day one buy for me, and when I got my hands on the game, I rushed through the narrative as fast as I possibly could to get him, and I loved him so much! But here's the thing: Chorizo isn't as useful as the other amigos in terms of combat or stealth. He can be used to distract enemies by asking them for love (because not even fascists can resist a wheelchair dog), but when the bullets start flying he's not gonna be able to do much because of how small he is. So if you're wanting to use the amigo system the way Ubisoft intended, chances are good you're gonna be leaving Chorizo behind. But if you're like me and the novelty of having an in-game wheelchair dog is enough.......you might end up leaving Chorizo behind anyway because you get too upset by the fact that he keeps getting hit by cars.

And why does Chorizo (and really every other amigo), in fact, keep getting hit by cars? Because Far Cry 6 has the most absolutely god-awful AI of any game I've ever played. Ever. Enemies driving trucks will just sit in there as you're shooting at them and only get out of the truck to start firing back after they've been stopped for like 10 seconds. Sometimes they'll just stand there in one spot out in the open as you fill them full of lead. I once, in a bid to be stealthy, unleashed a caged cougar inside of an outpost to let it kill as many enemies as possible so I had less herd to thin. And would you like to know what one soldier did? He got. In. A. Tank. I mean, I guess it's not a technically incorrect way to deal with a medium-sized jungle cat, but still. That borked my whole plan, so I reloaded a save and tried again, this time not utilizing the cougar. I ended up missing one of my silenced sniper shots, causing the outpost to become suspicious but not quite on high alert yet. And would you like to know what the exact same soldier from the last example did? He got. In. A. Tank. Again, not a technically incorrect way to deal with a potential nearby sniper, but the fact that this guy responded to any level of threat by hopping in a tank shows that the enemy AI isn't designed to gauge threats and respond accordingly. But I didn't specify enemy AI as the thing that was horrible, it's all the AI. Oncoming cars don't seem to acknowledge that there's something in the road until they get within 2 feet of whatever it is, so if you walk in the roads (which you will be doing from time to time) with an amigo, they're going to get hit by cars frequently, as Ubisoft didn't bother to do the programming necessary to make NPC drivers aware. You're going to start sprinting towards your next objective, then get a notification saying "Chorizo is down," then turn around, realize he got hit basically right where you started from, then sprint allllll the way back to revive him at several different points in your journey. I can already hear the argument that you're supposed to be using vehicles to get around as much as possible. Well unfortunately Ubisoft's programming took a step backwards since New Dawn. In New Dawn, you could have your followers, human or animal, get in the vehicle with you. Not so in Far Cry 6. So if I were to play the game using vehicles, the process of getting to the next objective would involve me getting in a car and watching Chorizo disappear into the distance in the rear-view mirror as he desperately tries to keep up with me with his stubby little front legs and tiny wheels. Does that sound like a fun time to you? I had to do that for story missions sometimes and it was heartbreaking every time. And frankly, the AI for your fellow guerillas isn't great either. In one early mission, me and another story character were trying to take out an outpost, but this guy didn't have a stealth mode. He just kept walking around standing tall above the grass, and that's before he made me reload a save because he followed me up a ladder and wouldn't get out of my way so I could get back down. Beyond that, these other guerillas you'll find wandering the world seem to be programmed with the exact amount of if/else statements as the enemies: 0. At one point I was walking through the forest and came across some guerillas when suddenly we were attacked by a jaguar. Would you like to know what one of these guerillas did? Sadly I can't embrace the rule of thirds here and say she got in a tank, but she did use a molotov...on a jaguar....in the middle of the forest. Again, not a technically incorrect way to deal with a mid-sized jungle cat, but it really shows how lazy the programming is. But the kicker is that even in the ways that the AI is cleverly designed, it comes with a stupidity caveat. See, soldiers don't automatically start shooting at you when they see you. You're basically just a citizen to them until you get too close or draw a weapon and don't put it away when you're told to. Well, one time I was walking down a road and passed a couple soldiers just as a group of guerillas started opening fire. I saw the "awareness" meters for the soldiers start to build up, but I was trying to get to the next thing as soon as possible, so I just started sprinting. As I did so, I noticed that the awareness meter started to die down, and I thought that was extremely clever. If I stick around during a gunfight, I'm probably a guerilla. But if I start sprinting away at the first sign of gunfire, I'm just a regular citizen trying not to die. I was legitimately impressed by that! But like all the other examples of the AI behavior I've given, this bit of functionality also lacks a sense of context. Much like how the AI doesn't have a sense of when a tank or a molotov is appropriate because combat is just combat to them, they also don't have a sense of what kind of conflict is revolutionary. See, if you happen to start being attacked by a wild animal like a crocodile, it doesn't matter if you pull out a gun to defend yourself, use your melee machete attack to defend yourself, or don't defend yourself at all. If you find yourself in that situation where enemies can see, they'll start opening fire on you because, again, they aren't programmed with any sense of context. Even the guards in Bethesda titles are programmed better than the soldiers in Far Cry 6! As a programmer/developer, I sincerely hope I've laid this all out in sufficient layman's terms, but if you play this game, I'm sure you'll be able to pick up on these clear shortcuts in AI design.

But sadly, the AI design isn't the only place where Ubisoft took shortcuts. I often hear people criticize Rockstar games such as GTAV for the fact that the open world chaos stops entirely during missions. I have my own problems with games from that publisher, but that was never one of them, and now that I've played Far Cry 6, I can say with certainty that nobody who has that complaint knows what they're talking about. In Far Cry 6, Ubisoft decided to double down on the open world chaos and not put up any restrictions on it. There's always been unpredictability that keeps things interesting in this series. After all, Yahtzee Croshaw famously described the experience as more-or-less carefully laying out an infiltration plan for an outpost only to have a tiger randomly wander into the outpost and kill everyone inside, saving him the trouble. But in Far Cry 6, there's simply too much chaos that can happen, and the game has none of the necessary restrictions to make it work. The example that most clearly comes to mind is an outpost I was trying to stealthily liberate. I had punched a hole in the enemy perimeter by taking out all the lookouts and snipers, identified a structural weakness I could walk through to enter the outpost, and tagged all the enemies in the interior so I would know how to proceed with my machete. Everything was ready to go, so I dropped down from my vantage point and proceeded to my point of entry. As I entered the restricted zone and approached this point, hidden in the flowers, I suddenly heard a voice behind me say, "hey, I've got something for you!" Startled, I turned around and saw that one of those randomly spawning guerillas who give you hints about nearby points of interest had spawned behind me, in the restricted zone, and was standing up tall. "We've got reports of an AA cannon nearby, think you could check it out?" she continued, as I mentally screamed, "WHY ARE YOU HERE? WE'RE BEHIND ENEMY LINES!!!" And sure enough, one of the nearby enemies saw her and a firefight broke out, and my carefully laid plan was ruined. Having a plan ruined by a tiger wandering into a base is one thing, but having a plan ruined because Ubisoft didn't program the hint-bots to not spawn behind enemy lines is another. This is but one example of my plans being screwed up just because of random chaos, but in case that isn't enough to convince you of the programming shortcuts Ubisoft took, let's talk about the checkpoints. One of the military targets you can take over are their checkpoints on the roads (where they would stop your car and check your papers before sending you on your way). Once you capture these checkpoints, they become absolute cesspools of chaos. From the moment you come out of the "you captured the checkpoint" victory screen, a military vehicle will pass through and have its tires popped by the spikes, then a firefight will break out resulting in the vehicle exploding 9 times out of 10, and all of this will happen multiple times in basically half-minute intervals. So every 30 seconds a new enemy vehicle will pass through and a new firefight will break out and a new exploded husk of vehicle will be added to the dog-pile of exploded vehicle husks. And it never stops. So if you want to talk to the hint-bot that resides at this checkpoint to learn about a new place to go, you're going to have to hope that you get a rare break in the loop of chaos. Would it really have been such a hard thing to have military traffic decrease because of their gradual lack of access to the roads? It's just...so...so lazy. 

That brings us to the technical side of things, always an interesting section when it comes to Ubisoft games!...though I guess most of this review has been more-or-less the technical side, huh? But I digress. I've been a console gamer for most of my lifetime in this hobby, so I've never had the many, many problems that PC gamers have had with Ubisoft PC ports. But because I still lack a next (or I guess current)-gen console, I turned to my PC for Far Cry 6, expecting the worst. To my surprise, once I turned vsync on, this game ran surprisingly well. Perhaps its because all the console versions of Far Cry games have been capped at 30fps and this was the first time I got to play one at at least 60fps, but I thought the game looked beautiful and performed well for the most part. Take that with a grain of salt because again, this is my first PC foray into Ubisoft titles, but all I can do is report what I see! In spite of that limited bit of praise, however, Far Cry 6 is far from perfect on the tech side. I had one hard crash from the main menu, and there were brief periods of time (usually upon booting the game up) where the framerate would tank to slideshow levels despite the usually good performance. In addition, there were several instances where lines of dialogue wouldn't play or subtitles would suddenly appear for exactly one line. Returning to the graphical side of things, the rendering was pretty solid for the most part, but I did notice some flat textures when looking at the capitol city of Esperanza from the banks on the opposite sides of the bodies of water separating it from the western and eastern areas. I've heard some folks complain about the texturing of the grass specifically...but for me, this was the first time the grass was existing above 30fps, so I didn't really notice any problems...that's why I say to take this all with a grain of salt. Throw in other odd things like a couple of animation glitches and a glitch where you sometimes die if you open your parachute and land in a certain position, and you have a technical package that isn't horrible, but definitely isn't good.

Folks, I have to reiterate that I liked Far Cry 6. It's just that the things I like about it, I've already said in other reviews of Far Cry titles. To me, the core gameplay experience that this series boasts is enough to carry any given title to eligibility on the GOTY list (though this one is definitely not worthy of the overall title, as none of them have been since Far Cry 3). While writing this review and more-or-less knowing what score I was going to give this game, I couldn't help but think about one of videogamedunkey's videos about game critics where he takes clips of (I believe) an IGN editor's review of a new Mario game to show just how many negative things he says about it, and then juxtaposes those clips with the final score of 8/10 that this editor gave. I'd hate to be compared to IGN, but I guess that's just the risk you have to take if you're going to center your review content on the things you didn't like. So that's why I need to reiterate that Far Cry is my jam. It just so happens that this is, in a couple ways, a weaker installment.

Let us review:

Horrible ending - 1.0

Worst AI I've seen - 1.0

Too much chaos - 0.6

Misc tech issues - 0.4

The final score for Far Cry 6 is...

7.0/10 - Good

Careful next time, Ubisoft, careful next time. 

Available for: Nintendo Switch

Reviewed for: Nintendo Switch

Like many people, my first foray into the groundbreaking Metroid series wasn't actually any of the original 2D games that defined its genre. Rather, for me, it was Metroid Prime, the first-person shooter spin-off that I hold to be the greatest Science Fiction game ever created. Really, the only experience with 2D Metroid games prior to Metroid Dread was the recent remake of the second game in the saga, Metroid: Samus Returns for the 3DS. I never finished that one not because it wasn't entertaining, but because me and Yahtzee Croshaw (boy does he seem to be making a lot of appearances in this article) seem to have something in common in that intensive, fast-paced gameplay on the 3DS hurts our hands. So suffice it to say that Metroid Dread, the long-awaited conclusion to this saga that began so long ago that its last installment was on the GBA, was my first true-blue Metroid experience. How did it fare in the mind of a more-or-less newb like myself, you may wonder? Well, dear reader, I have only one major complaint about Metroid Dread, and it happens to be the one significant way in which it evidently differs from past installments, so I'd say it fared pretty well!

Metroid Dread once again puts you into the Napoleon Dynamite-approved sleeves of Samus Aran, having tracked down what appears to be the last remnant of the X-Parasite (a type of being that can take on the form of anything it comes into contact with) to the planet ZDR. Samus' directive is clear: find whatever traces of the X remain, and eliminate them. However, upon landing on the planet, Samus is ambushed by a mysterious Chozo warrior, and their skirmish causes her to, as usual, lose all of her powers and upgrades, and she is cast down to the depths of the planet. So, upon awakening, Samus embarks on a journey to regain her powers and once again reach the surface. It's as paper-thin a moment-to-moment plot as any Metroid experience, but it's worth noting that the game's story does have some truly surprising twists in store by the end, so don't write off the plot entirely.

Gameplay in Metroid Dread is what you'll likely expect: you'll use a combination of beam shots, parries, and missiles to take out enemies and bosses while exploring a gigantic, sprawling map. Your ability to explore will be limited at first with new areas gradually opening up as you regain your abilities. All standard Metroid stuff. Let's talk about the combat side first. Regular enemies you encounter aren't going to be all that challenging and will largely serve as ways to refill your health and missiles if you happen to take a hit, so they're not really worth discussing. The bosses, on the other hand, are worth talking about! Every boss in this game demands mastery of those three aspects I mentioned at the start of this section, but each will also test your ability to pay attention. For instance, this game's battle against iconic Metroid villain Kraid forces you to master your ability to dish out damage and avoid attacks within an incredibly confined movement space. On the other hand, the various battles against robotic chozo warriors give you a large space with a lot of verticality and demand that you be able to utilize every inch of that afforded space flawlessly. There isn't even one boss fight that I was able to beat on my first try, so they all represent a significant difficulty spike, but the hardest boss in the game only took me maybe 5-6 tries. So while bosses are difficulty spikes, if you're paying attention, they're simply tough-but-fair. However, there's one brand of boss that can't be described that way, and these bosses make up that one major complaint I mentioned. In certain areas of the map, there are homicidal robots called "EMMI"s that stalk their allotted areas. Samus doesn't have any way of fighting these robots (for some reason), so when she enters an EMMI zone, it becomes a bit of a stealth/survival horror scenario. Basically, anytime an EMMI sees you, you have to sprint away until you find an exit or it loses track of you. You get a temporary invisibility mode to avoid its gaze while standing still, but this really doesn't do too much because the EMMIs move so erratically and unpredictably, and they can see so much further than is fair that 9 times out of 10 the second you turn the invisibility off and start making your way down the corridor, the EMMI will have turned and spotted you at the very tip of its vision cone. If the EMMI catches you, you have to complete an insanely difficult quicktime event or you get one-hit-killed. I succeeded in this quicktime event quite a few times, actually, but 9 times out of 10 this just results in you getting caught again and failing the event the second time. So, what can you do? Well, the only way to beat an EMMI is to reach the control room for its zone, defeat an eyeball boss, get a temporary new arm cannon specifically designed to kill EMMIs, melt its face plate off, and blast the core underneath that face plate. The hardest part of that is reaching the control room, as it's almost never a straight shot from where you enter first. Most of the time, you have to go in one side of the EMMI zone, out the other, snake around some of the map, reach a roadblock, go to an entirely different area of the world to get the necessary upgrade, then rinse and repeat all but that last step one or two more times before you reach the control room. Keeping in mind that you have to do the whole one-hit-kill survival horror thing every time you enter the zone in that process, what's usually par for the course in Metroid games becomes frustrating. I never once enjoyed a single EMMI encounter. I can, of course, applaud Nintendo of all people for daring to not just do the exact same thing they always do, but sometimes it just doesn't work. Metroid Dread is at its most fun when you aren't bothering with the EMMIs and you're just exploring and looking for items, for sure.

On that note, I 100%-ed Metroid Dread (yes, that includes that speed booster puzzle in lower Burenia, for those in the know), so clearly I enjoyed the traversal and exploration aspect of the game quite a bit! Finding missile upgrades and energy tanks is always a matter of utilizing your abilities in clever ways. For instance, you might need to drop morph ball bombs mid-fall to break specific blocks in the way of an upgrade, then quickly get back to the ledge you dropped from, drop again, then quickly grab the ledge you just unlocked and roll into the upgrade before the block reappears. In other cases, you'll need to get the timing of a jump in speed booster mode just right before unleashing a carefully directed shinespark (I've seen soooo many different spellings of that ability, so I'm just going with that). These puzzles are almost always, like the bosses, tough-but-fair, and there's always-always an awesome feeling when you finally pull a difficult maneuver off. However, I do have to levy a bit of criticism in this area. See, you may have noticed that I didn't explain what I meant by "shinespark." Well, for all the impact the tutorial Metroid Dread gives you has on your ability to solve the more difficult puzzles, I explained it about as well! Essentially, when you use Samus' speed booster ability, if you flick the left stick down, the speed boost ends and Samus gains a super jump/dash ability that must be used within 5 seconds or it will wear off. This super jump/dash is the shinespark. Once you have it charged up, you can use it by pressing B on the joy con, then pushing the left stick in the direction you want to go, and nothing short of the hard boundaries of the level will stand in your way. Most speed booster puzzles in this game rely on waiting for the right time to unleash your shinespark. For example, one of my personal favorites (after figuring it out, of course) involved using the speed booster in the exact opposite direction of the upgrade I was after, charging up the shinespark, shooting a hidden block in a nearby ledge, climbing into that narrow crawlspace, turning into the morph ball, then activating the shinespark as the morph ball and pointing it in the general direction of the upgrade and watching as I blasted across more-or-less two separate gigantic rooms and into the teeny tiny morph ball crawl space in the room with the upgrade and having the momentum from that send me flying up into the upgrade up a ramp that was impossible to roll up without that momentum. All sorts of creative stuff like that happens with these speed booster puzzles. But there's a crucial piece of information that the game doesn't tell you that you would be hard pressed to figure out yourself: if you fling yourself into a slanted surface with the shinespark, you continue your speed boost and can activate another shinespark if you wish. This ability is required for 100% completion, especially in that one puzzle in lower Burenia that I parenthetically alluded to earlier, but the game doesn't tell you it, and you're not likely to think of it without looking up solutions first. This has been a long, long bit of rambling to describe a negative I'm taking off miniscule points for, but it would be hypocritical to take points off for the game poorly explaining something if I poorly explained it myself. 

This being a Nintendo game, there's no need to do a technical section, because it's all perfect, so on to the conclusion! Folks, you probably didn't need my opinion before considering Metroid Dread. If you were going to get it, you likely already did. But for those who were on the fence, let me just say that you should definitely give it a shot. For your money, you'll be getting a fast-paced puzzle and combat experience that always tests you and always feels rewarding when you pass! If you're like me, you'll likely be frustrated by the EMMI sections, but you'll also be going into this game knowing that shinespark fact that the game doesn't tell you, so you'll endure less frustration overall than I did. Whether you're a veteran Metroid fan or even more of a newbie than I am, I don't think you'll regret going through Metroid Dread.

Let us review:

EMMI sections - 1.0

Poor tutorial for shinespark - 0.2

The final score for Metroid Dread is...

8.8/10 - Fantastic

Excellent work, Mercury Steam, excellent work!

Available for: Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch

Reviewed for: Microsoft Windows

To say that I had no interest in Guardians of the Galaxy leading up to its release would be a colossal understatement. I think I'm not alone in that sentiment, given the result of the last Square Enix-published Marvel game, Avengers. But amidst a lot of people I trust saying it was good, feeling the need to show the suits at Square Enix that people will buy single-player, narrative-driven Marvel experiences, and finding myself finished with Metroid Dread earlier than I was expecting, I caved and decided to give it a shot. And dear reader, let me tell you, Guardians of the Galaxy is more than a little rough around the edges. But in spite of that, I mean it 100% when I say that this game is something quite special. It's not going to light the world on fire or anything, but if all Marvel-licensed games going forward are as good as this one, the future looks bright!

In Guardians of the Galaxy, you play as Peter Quill, A.K.A Star-Lord, this time played excellently by Jon McLaren instead of Chris Pratt (he's so cool). Star-Lord leads the titular Guardians: a crew of space-faring anti-heroes consisting of Gamora (adopted daughter of Thanos), Rocket (a sentient raccoon), Drax the Destroyer (who allegedly killed Thanos), and Groot (who is Groot). At the start of the game, the Guardians are infiltrating a quarantine zone in search of a rare monster that they hope to sell to a collector, and as you might expect, things go terribly wrong. As the dominoes of this team's mistakes fall, they eventually find themselves up against a cult that started as a minuscule entity after the galactic war: the "Church of Universal Truth," who offer prospective followers "the promise": a rearranging of the mind that allows them to live with loved ones they've lost forever, or whatever else their heart desires. Story is the main draw of this title, so that's all I'll say on the plot. Suffice it to say that this is a surprisingly compelling, surprisingly heartfelt story that had me captivated all the way through.

Part of what makes the story so compelling here is the characters. We all know the Guardians from the MCU, but I'm going to die on this hill: this game's version of the characters are objectively superior, and they make their MCU counterparts look like bad cosplay. Every one of the guardians is explored in-depth throughout the game's runtime: their desires, their faults, their traumas, all of it. I wouldn't have believed that Drax could be both a story's best comedic aspect and one of its greatest emotional pillars, but GotG manages to pull that off! On the other hand, from the MCU, you'd never know that big, lovable Groot is a criminal wanted for crimes such as murder and blackmail, but you'll learn that kind of thing in this game! This game just gives these characters so much more depth than they're afforded on the silver screen, and it really goes a long way in selling the stakes of the story. Also helping the stakes is the game's main villain. No, not the leader of the cult. He's not a strong villain by any stretch of the imagination (no cult leader is after Joseph Seed from Far Cry 5 showed us how it's done). But the church itself, as a force, is an excellent and terrifying villain. It's been hard to put my finger on why, but whatever the reason may be, Eidos Montreal paced the church's rise to power and gradual increase in use of force in such a way that it's a believable, credible threat, and I have to commend them for that. Part of this is largely the reality of the Guardians' struggle against the church. Given the nature of "the promise," this cult is the perfect villain to have the Guardians go up against in a story that seeks to explore each of them on a personal level, as it provides each of these ultimately selfish people a choice: live a lie that heals their pain and gives them what they desire most, or live with the traumas they carry for the greater good of the galaxy. It's such a smart storytelling decision, especially since this is our first outing with these particular versions of these characters. But I've already said more about this story than I wanted to, so in the interest of helping you go in as blind as possible, this is where I'll stop.

With all that praise about GotG's story and characters out of the way, it's time for those aforementioned rough edges. Gameplay, while not bad, is fairly weak. The reason is simple: you more or less play a support role in combat. As Star-Lord, you use two laser pistols that gradually gain the ability to unleash elemental shots as the story progresses. Even if you have your damage up at maximum in the difficulty menu, your shots do so little damage that it's almost comical. And your elemental shots aren't much better, as they mainly serve to deal "stagger" damage to enemies so that they get stunned and take more damage as a result. So your role in combat is basically to deal chip damage and create openings for the other Guardians to do the heavy lifting. Like I said, a mainly support role. As such, the moment-to-moment gameplay largely feels underwhelming, as you only deal significant damage by commanding the other Guardians to use one of their four special abilities. It's not all bad, though. This is a game that is fast-paced enough that you need to dodge a lot, and the dodging actually feels quite satisfying to do. In addition, there's an active reload mechanic where once your blasters overheat, pressing the R2 button at the right time results in a faster reload followed by an uber-powerful (albeit by this game's standards) super blast at whoever you're targeting, and active reloads have been fun since Gears of War way back in the day. Furthermore, in late-game fights where the difficulty ramps up, you'll be calling on the other Guardians so frequently and in such rapid succession that it doesn't really feel like a support role. But those silver linings are ultimately just a few warm chocolate chips in a cookie made from somewhat stale dough.

That stale dough cookie analogy sadly also extends to the technical side of things. I haven't seen any other reviewer point out the technical state of this game, so my assumption is that this is just a bad PC port and none of the reviewers I watched played on PC. If you can name a technical shortcoming, Guardians of the Galaxy has it. There were several instances where, for example, Groot's lines simply wouldn't play...which perhaps is a bit of a nitpick considering you aren't actually missing anything if you experience that glitch, but still. Another common glitch I came across was the triangle button prompt remaining on screen long after it was used to start an elevator/open a door/talk to somebody. Sometimes this would go away with time or by coming across another triangle button prompt, but other times I would need to restart the game. Yet another frequent glitch was flashing that would begin in a cutscene and continue to happen every few seconds once the cutscene ended, and this required a full restart every time it occurred. As a result of that, I was always wary of starting optional conversations with the other Guardians, which was a shame, because I always wanted to have those interactions. There was one point where a first-person cutscene had the camera spawn just inside of Star-Lord's head so there was a small bit of face interior covering some of the scene. This only happened once, but this and all the previous points I've made aren't even the worst technical glitches I came across. I had two hard crashes at exactly the same point: the start of the final assault. After doing some googling, I was able to fix the problem by lowering one or two of my graphical settings (or at least, I think that's what fixed the issue), but I shouldn't need to explain why this is a bit of a worrying issue. The worst technical flaw, though, has to be the inconsistent input registration while using a PS4 controller. With that setup, the only buttons that reliably register your input 100% of the time are the trigger and bumper buttons. With x, square, circle, and triangle, it's a gamble if the game is going to recognize your presses. That would be annoying enough on its own, but when you take into account that there's a lot of jumping over gaps with x in this game, it becomes even worse. I can already hear people arguing that maybe it's a problem with the controller itself, not the game. But I've played 3 games since GotG, all on PC with a PS4 controller (one of them being a 3D platformer, which would definitely be impacted if it were a controller issue) and this inconsistency in input registration has been nowhere to be found across all 3 of them, not to mention it wasn't present in Far Cry 6 either. So it's 100% a problem with GotG, and it was such a problem that it's getting its own bullet point in the final breakdown! [POST-PUBLISHING UPDATE: About a week after publishing, my controller started to have inconsistent input registration in the middle of a game that had no issues before, and after some trial and error, I found that the connecting cable had gone slightly defective. Therefore, I'll be refunding the point I took off for this issue, as it was a cable problem] The kicker here is that I'm sure I'm forgetting some technical issues, but even what little I can remember is pretty damning. But like with the gameplay, it's not all bad. This is one of the most gorgeous games I've seen this year, for reasons other than the bare-bones graphical quality. The art design and direction is also exceptional, as is the creativity that came alongside those things. The alien life you fight, the look of the environments, the design of the planetary circumstances (if you tell me that a planet with a ring of giant rectangular stone slabs that constantly fall to the planet's surface with explosive impact isn't cool, I'll tell you you're a liar), all of it is top tier Science with a capital S Fiction. It's just such a shame that, like with the silver linings of combat, this clear effort is naught but a warm chocolate chip in somewhat stale dough.

Folks, it's like I said in the intro: Guardians of the Galaxy isn't going to light the world on fire, but it is something special. It's a well-written narrative that lends a great deal of depth, humanity, and of course, humor to what might on the surface appear to be a one-note cast of characters. It isn't afraid to be a comic book game, nor is it ashamed of the corniness that comes with the territory. It has to be said that the gameplay is on the weak side, so it isn't quite up to par with superhero games such as 2018's Spider-Man or the Arkham series (though it might be up to par with Arkham Knight on the technical side), but coming from the same publisher that will answer for Marvel's Avengers at the pearly gates, it's still an example of how good a superhero game can be...just next time a bit more polish would be great.

Let us review:

Mostly weak gameplay - 0.8

Technical deficiencies - 1.0

Inconsistent input registration - 1.0 [Redacted after further investigation]

The final score for Guardians of the Galaxy is...

8.2/10 - Great

Good work, Eidos Montreal, good work.