Few games really make me actually laugh out loud or just smile to myself whilst I'm playing them but Guardians of the Galaxy had that effect on me almost constantly during its 20 hour playtime.

There are so many things I want to say, lines I want to quote, characters I want to discuss but it's nearly all spoilers so I will just say that Guardians nails character interactions like almost no game I've ever played. The crew talk amongst themselves constantly and in such a way they really feels like a real dysfunctional team through a movie or show and I flarking loved that. Eidos Montreal absolutely nailed almost every character from hilarious insults and comments to the more poignant moments it just felt so good, so right. (Mantis is easily my favorite character, every line she says is just gold.) The writing is just excellent.

On the negative side though you only get to make first impressions once and when this game was initially revealed I thought the combat looked really boring and unfortunately that just holds true. When not on ship or exploring locales you are in combat but despite having 5 Guardians at your disposal you can only play as Star-Lord. That in itself wouldn't be so bad but they just made him painfully dull to play, he can barely use his rocket boots, his blasters just feel like toy guns etc. To compensate you can order your team to do special attacks with cool downs on enemies which just means most the time you are micro managing them rather than really doing a lot and all of their moves are far more interesting then a single thing Star-Guy can do. It would have been far more fun to simply be able to change character during combat and use those moves yourself when you want to. It all results in some what clunky feeling gameplay and terrible lock on to boot. I almost inwardly groaned at every battle that began.

Presentation wise Guardians is a slam. The character designs are brilliant, they are close enough movie, close enough their own thing that they feel familiar and different all at once. I really liked the art generally and playing it on PS5 in performance mode it was very smooth. The game has a great attention to detail especially on The Milano (their ship) and Nowhere when exploring around I looked at everything and their are Easter eggs everywhere. That said I ran into quite a few little bugs getting stuck in some scenery or glitches forcing me to checkpoint restart.

The sound design to this game is a 10/10. The game wouldn't be Guardians without amazing 80's music and there are over 30 licensed tracks you can listen to from then plus some original tracks by the band Star-Lord and it all couldn't be more perfect though I wish during battles you could manually choose to listen rather than do this cringey huddle first the game has. On the voice acting front it's absolute perfection. Each characters voice fits them perfectly. Rocket's angry sarcasm, Drax's oblivious warrior front, Star-Lord's quippy pirate leader, I am Groot? I am Groot. I can't fault it at all.

To sum up I think guardians of the Galaxy is a wonderful experience, but it's kind of a bad game. The voice acting, dialogue, music, atmosphere and visuals are absolutely nailed but the actual gameplay is so mediocre. Still, I desperately hope they get a chance to make a sequel and improve that because even with it's flaws this is still an absolutely fantastic game.

+ Character dialogue and interactions are so very good.
+ Laugh out loud funny at times.
+ Fantastic voice acting and music.
+ Great art design and atmosphere.
+ Mantis.

- Combat is just bad.
- A few minor bugs here and there.

This was a nice surprise. Very funny with a surprisingly enjoyable story. I really liked how the team felt like they were growing as the story went on and how that was even reflected in gameplay by them automatically doing things you'd have to directly ask them too earlier in the story. The gameplay is nothing incredible but its fun enough that I was never bothered by it, and the huddle mechanic was really neat (although feel like it' should of occured more often) But the game isnt perfect. For one - the amount of dialogue in this game is insane when roaming the levels especially considering how well its done and how funny it can be, the problem is that theres just so much of it in each level that characters are getting constantly cut off. Second of all- some of the levels just go on way too long and makes the game feel a bit more bloaty than needed. Other than that, this was one of the most surprising and charming games i've played in recent memory and I simply wouldn't feel right giving it any less than five stars.

96/100

Pros:
- It’s amazing how much more vast and full of content the game feels due to its verticality, essentially tripling the map size as you can now seamlessly transition from the surface, the sky and its floating islands, and deep underground in the Depths. There are full sized caves now, far more to explore and more enjoyable ways to get around with the addition of Zonai devices, more quests and lively areas, etc
- The new powers (Ultrahand/Recall/Ascend/Fuse) are brilliant and more interesting to use in general, going hand in hand with immensely impressive physics that I’m honestly unsure how they pulled off. Even enjoyed the shrines a lot here compared to what I remember in BotW
- Good story (keeping a similar structure to BotW pretty much). I adored the ending moments especially though, much improved over its predecessor there
- Towers shooting you into the air to scan instead of making you climb them is an excellent change and makes getting around the map much faster
- Actual dungeons (if fairly short and easy by the time I got to them)
- Fantastic music from start to finish

Cons:
- While visually TotK is held up by its art direction, the hardware unsurprisingly lets it down. Image quality is frankly poor, and there are numerous times where the frame rate drops from being decently stable to the 20s if not lower (mainly in denser areas). Load times are fairly quick though
- Combat is basically the same and just alright, Fuse makes it better but I’m still not a fan of durability and constantly scrolling through menus for items much
- Koroks and that guy holding the same Hudson sign everywhere