Guardians of the Galaxy | The Completionist

in 2014 marvel studios was writing a wave of success having proved with 2012's avengers that this whole cinematic universe thing might actually have something to it but when they announced guardians of the galaxy it looks to be the first real test of how far the audience was willing to follow them marvel had turned captain america iron man and thor into household names but could they really do the same for a talking raccoon or a tree or chris pratt the answer was yes obviously the guardians of the galaxy films rule we all kind of know this and it honestly seems kind of quaint now that we've ever thought their specific brand of wacky cosmic space adventure would be too weird but when it comes to video games marvel's track record is a lot spottier recently from the crazy success of the spider-man franchise to the unfortunate results of marvel vs capcom infinite the lows and highs have been drastically setting a weird bar for all of us to even get remotely comfortable with just ask anyone who takes a substantial amount of time and or money into the black hole that is the recent avengers title me you can ask me oh hey everyone and welcome to an all-new episode of the completionist where we don't just beat the games we complete them when guardians of the galaxy was announced i was intrigued specifically because it was a single-player story-driven experience and when that's the case in my opinion things tend to go a lot better just ask either of the spider-mans spider-mans look i already really enjoyed the guardian films and the characters from those movies so the game doesn't have to start from scratch when it comes to building affection for any of them even though these are different versions it's hard for me to imagine hating any iteration of drax for instance so put those characters in a decent story and about a third of the work is done right there the next third is making sure it looks and sounds great which i feel pretty confident about on top of all the trippy cosmic visuals i played this game on the xbox series x using dolby atmos for headphones largely so i could get my face rocked off by the game devs over at idos montreal and their classic soundtrack for this title guardians of the galaxy was created with dolby atmos in mind and i can't believe i'm saying this it's my honor to announce that for this video i have partnered with the good folks at dolby so i can experience the audio in the best way possible so thank you to dolby for sponsoring today's video as an aside as a massive film nerd this is a huge honor so once again thank you dolby for sponsoring us today so if the game looks great sounds great and even has a chance at pulling out my heartstrings then the last ingredient is well you know having good gameplay that's the easy part right right i'm sure things will be fine we'll be fine i'm i'm ready yes all glory goes to the winner game over wake up last one standing twins [Music] so the version of the guardian to the galaxy that everyone fell in love with when the movie came out back in 2014 was far from the first and was actually a pretty recent introduction in the comics at least when considered in the grand scope of the marvel universe that is in fact for a long time the name guardians of the galaxy belonged to a totally different group of characters the movies even gave us a glimpse of them in the post-credits scenes of volume 2. the team everyone knows and loves formed out of two major cosmic marvel events annihilation and annihilation conquest in which the universe faced such dire circumstances that peter quill decided to round up all of the weirdest and most powerful space heroes he knows and form a reluctant team this spun into a relaunched version of the guardians featuring the main guardians we know from the films and a couple of others and also tied into other cosmic books that were happening at the same time with characters that are now a staple of marvel's far space setting across multiple mediums i'm telling you all of this because it's this very specific and fairly recent era that the guardians of the galaxy game pulls from to create its world and story and although it's accessible to those who only know these characters from the films it also feels very much like a love letter to this particular corner of marvel's comic book universe in this version of the guardians of the galaxy the story is told across 16 chapters picking up after star-lord and his buddies have been a team for a bit longer than we're used to seeing in the films at least 17 missions worth our story starts off with the guardians trying to capture a rare monster to sell to the queen of monsters lady hellbender in order to get some credits in the middle of the space adventure they found the soul stone but held within it was a shadowy space entity and that is awoken and tries to attack the guardians they flee as quickly as possible but very soon afterwards learn that high concept space adventures don't always pay the bills enter the nova corps the galaxy's helmet-headed space cops who find the guardians of the galaxy for a legal contraband our guardians need cash to pay the fine to the nova corps one of whom corel is even an ex of peter quills with the daughter nikki that she implies might be his after trying to con lady hellbender and adopting a llama named kami the team tries to pay their fine only to discover that the nova corps has been taken over by the universal church of truth via the gross shadow entity released from the soul stone the church of truth essentially becomes a crew of creepy space fanatics who are sweeping through the galaxy and taking over people's minds with something called the promise now this gives me huge dead space vibes and i am all here for it this all leads to of course our guardians coming to the rescue to save nikki defeat the church and save the whole flark in galaxy oh and work out all of their on going into personal drama because that's kind of their whole deal alright so going forward i want to avoid giving away too many of the late game character reveals because while i don't know the comics all that well one of my writers assured me that some of them were truly mind-blowing in the game so if you're a big marvel fan you're gonna have a great time in fact i think he's the one who's been dropping those comment boxes in the corner on the screen you can see here because he wants to show that off that said though i think a lot of the locations and supporting characters stand out even if you're not a big comic book nerd like nowhere which is also in the movies and is the severed head of a colossal celestial or its security chief cosmo a russian space dog who is the galaxy's very best boy but as good of a boy as he may be the main draw here is obviously the guardians themselves it's the same core team from the first film star-lord drax gamora rocket and groot and as much fun as it is spotting all the references and easter eggs in this game the success of the story was always going to come down to whether or not it nailed these particular characters and i honestly think it does really well this version of the guardians has been together longer and certain relationships are different like having star-lord and gamora's relationship be totally platonic and that's fine when it comes to their core attributes they feel decidedly like themselves the writing doesn't necessarily have the exact same sharpness and specificity as james guns and fewer of the jokes land but enough of them still do i'd say these jokes land different or more effectively because this is a video game and you can kind of tell these characters know that too these aren't the versions of the characters that everyone knows but at the very end of the day they're both similar and different enough to ride that wave of affection while doing their own thing a story about literally any version of the guardian is always going to be about a rag tag group of learning how to be a family and that's definitely still the case here so thankfully the voice acting and character models are all super solid because the story draws out a shocking amount of emotion and everyone seems to be up for it the characters don't even feel like impressions of the movie versions the possible exception of drax who still feels very batista but i was cool with it because who doesn't love dave batista the movie version is one of the only costumes i really ever used for drax because anything else just felt weird just chatting with the team and working through their personal issues is a big chunk of the game and since a video game has the luxury of spending more time with the characters than the movie gets to it felt like i really got to dive deep into their heads quite literally in the case of one of the team members an outside knowledge of these characters might help the story connect slightly more but even for someone like me who really only knows them from the films it was very impactful for instance take this game's version of gamora having been part of the team for longer means that she softened a little but she's still carrying around a ton of baggage from you know having thanos as a dad or drax who gets more time dedicated to the loss of his family than the movie version while still being hilarious and wholesome it was awesome to see the characters that i know from the movies and still feel like i got to spend the game getting to know them all over again because sure they're all kind of but they're who are worth hanging around with that mixing of the familiar and unfamiliar also expresses itself through all the designs which are instantly recognizable to anyone who knows who the guardians of the galaxy are while hinting at a more game specific backstory and there's nowhere in the game that the balance is more apparent than in the visuals and the audio all the designs here are really gorgeous and cool from the core members of the team out of the supporting cast and the surfaces of the various deadly planets the universal church of truth especially has a very unsettling cube-centric aesthetic that is highly ominous and otherworldly just like an evil space church should be same goes for all of lady hellbender's monsters which are appropriately gross each character has a variety of costumes adding up to a total of 45 super cool outfits for your crew to wear everyone has a novacore outfit in the movie outfit and then a bunch more pulled from specific storyline throughout comic book history most of which look pretty dang dope the cosmic corners for both the movie and comic versions of the marvel universe are known for being bright and colorful so it makes a lot of sense that the visuals in this game keep that trend going it feels like they pulled visual reference points from the movies the recent abnet and laning comics and the older cosmic jack kirby stuff to arrive at something that is constantly cool to look at give or take some bugs here or there it's also cool to listen to which brings me once again to what the folks at idos montreal have done with this game using dolby atmos technology because not only is this a game with a lot of dialogue it also borrows the movie's penchant for needle drops with the soundtrack of classic rock jams meant to get both the guardians and the player pumped for battle which means that the sound basically has to be good in order to get the intended impact across the music choices are a bit more obvious than the ones from the movies but who doesn't love don't fear the reaper or take on me you can truly tell they went absolutely wild with the licensing and i'm here for it wham is on the soundtrack wham and you don't get to hear any of this in the video because of copyright stuff unfortunately however thoughtfully there is a streamer mode to disable that stuff for when all of you at home want to stream for your friends or whatnot but i obviously wanted to hear all 28 of the game's licensed tracks there's also an entire album's worth of music by lord a fictional band formed entirely for this game which is just incredibly dope having a badass song kick in during a boss fight is amazing and the only potential issue is the fact that the characters in this game essentially never stop talking even during fights and puzzles they're either dropping hints or bantering with each other pretty much constantly and sometimes i just want to jam out and hear the music my friends it was way less of an issue when i played on headphones with dopey atmos though because it suddenly felt less like the music and the dialogue were competing with each other and more like i was actually in the middle of a fight hearing the cacophony of battle going on all around me including from above while the music also came through on star lord's walkman headphones it's a lot to take in all at once but the atmos capability took what could have been a distraction and instead turned the overlapping audio into a feature like when the universal church of truth's colossal ship would appear overhead the audio would really help convey the ship's scale by making it sound like it was in the same space that i was in if you've ever seen a movie in a dolby atmos enabled theater you know how enveloping and immersive it all can be and the fact that the technology is available for me to use at home on my headphones is honestly kind of mind-blowing it's also the most affordable way to get the atmos experience since it's just a one-time purchase on the dolby access app and can be used on your xbox one series x series s and pc which is a small price to pay to have every part of your ear targeted with laser like precision also on that note i said laser like as far as i know dolby atmos for headphones does not blast your ears with actual lasers although honestly that does sound pretty dang cool in fact movies and games set in outer space seem like prime candidates for something just like this right on top of this game's dialogue and kick-ass soundtrack it also really highlights all the classic sci-fi sounds your whooshes your swooshes your bleeps your bloops they're all here projected through your headphone speakers in a way that really feels like you've been blasted into space alongside the guardians themselves the only thing that was occasionally able to ruin the immersion created by the game's audio visuals story writing and overall pacing was a couple of bugs that i'm hesitant to even mention because i was playing this game in my own little reviewer bubble and i know there was some type of day one patch for most consoles so the problems i had may not even be there anymore sometimes i'd be chatting with one of the other guardians on the milano having a heartfelt talk that may have enlisted tears if it weren't suddenly for some random pixels popping in and out of the wall behind them it speaks to how immersive the story of this game really is because i really noticed when a technical issue would suddenly yank me out of the moment and have me thinking about the game instead of thinking about whatever my team was going through and again this may have all been fixed now but it was very jarring to see the contrast between how incredibly polished the game is in certain moments compared to moments where it suddenly wasn't quite where it needed to be as a result my involvement sometimes felt very hot and cold where i'd totally be wrapped up in one scene and then pulled out into the next i can relate this whole experience to watching a film that may not be 100 ready for the public eye unfinished shots and weird audio cues can take you right out of the experience guarding to the galaxy didn't have that much of it but when it did it really pulled me out in the moments where i was most caught up in this game it was always because of the thoughtful character development visceral sound design and high concept sci-fi visuals happening all around me just like the movies which created a corner of the marvel universe that i'm always excited to go back to so i definitely mean it as a compliment when i say that this game ended up being a very good guardians of the galaxy movie but games also have well you know gameplay because they're games so you play them i don't need to explain this to you guys you know what's up it probably sounds like i'm chewing up to dunk on the combat and gameplay of guardians of the galaxy but that's not really the case here the gameplay is fine but this is a linear incredible story and character-driven game and it's clear that that's where a huge amount of the love and attention went it's an experience that makes you want to make you feel things which means that completion and gameplay element can sometimes feel secondary however for me the true sticking point can be why not both you can tell a super compelling story and have succinct gameplay while also encouraging players to complete your product it sounds like i'm demanding this game be completionist encouraging but it's not mean it's doing that the game already does that it does that all on its own the balance between gameplay and completion are very off it's especially clear that the pacing and gameplay run into each other a ton the very early parts of the game felt very stop and start to me as soon as i felt like i was getting the hang of things or i was excited about a new mechanic or upgrade the game would stop to explain it in great detail and the story stuff is awesome like i mentioned but i would get taken right out of it in the hand-holding moments like that or when the guardians would instantly give me clues during combat and during puzzles and exploration and there seems to be a toggle for this but the default setting is instant which i wish i would have noticed earlier because it was truly instant sometimes the game places an emphasis on choice but not leading to like multiple endings or anything like that instead the choices are all about forming connections between the characters and it's in those moments where the gameplay works best this is executed super well when you realize that different choices affect not only the narrative for progression but for skipping certain tedious sections in the game because you answered correctly so for example in chapter 2 if you form a great relationship with nikki she'll slip you her key card so that later on in the game you don't need to figure out what the password is because you have her key card another fun example of this is that in the beginning of the game you'll have to choose to sell either groot or rocket to lady hellbender to make some money whoever you choose the next chapter will be drastically different in terms of story beats gameplay collectibles even level layouts the game does encourage multiple playthroughs and luckily it doesn't get stuck in the small minutia of making sure you experience every single choice at least once or twice david cage so when it's forced to stand on its own way though i could feel myself getting yoyoed in and out of the game drawn in at one moment and yanked out of the next in guarding to the galaxy the player plays as star-lord and only star-lord the rest of the team can be issued commands during combat with each of them having a specialty groot helps with crowd control drax targets an enemy stagger meter etc star-lord himself fights with the signature twin blasters which can be modified with one of four elements ice lightning plasma and wind each of which can also be used for the purpose of solving environmental puzzles but if i can just speak my truth here i would have liked the combat to be a little more fleshed out here it felt very basic that by the time they introduced another element i already knew what i was doing hands down and the info prompts once again just got in my way combat gameplay here is all pretty straightforward which isn't automatically a bad thing but never drew me in a way that the audio visuals and story did even on the hardest difficulty setting it felt like i was mostly able to blast my way through the combat without thinking too strategically spamming the other guardians moves as often as possible and even the puzzles and exploration seemed very simple but that just might be because of my default settings were programmed to have my team shout the solution at me right away that said i really appreciated how much the combat and exploration is all geared towards the game's main theme which is team cohesion it's just that that doesn't necessarily add up to something that's super thrilling to you know play take the huddle mechanic for example in which star-lord can gather up the team to give them a pep talk and by choosing the right motivational approach gives everyone a buff in combat now that is a very fun idea in fact it's actually my favorite thing to come out of this game especially because after you buff up it randomly picks one of the many awesome licensed tracks to blast through outside fights it's very fun to rick roll your enemies via rick astley after a great group pep talk but in practice it's just kind of fine there are words floating above the team's heads and they really tip you off as to which option you're supposed to choose here i think i only got it wrong one time and that was mostly because i got distracted by my dogs that was kind of sitting around me it feels like there was one clue too many or maybe slightly less interaction than i wanted in those moments also it almost felt like every single time the right choice was literally almost always on the right side of the screen for me which makes sense linguistically speaking but isn't very thrilling on a gameplay level there are times where the characters move sets combine in a way that's really satisfying and unique to their personalities like drax kept straight up dropping wrestling moves on enemies and i was on the edge of my seat waiting for a batista bomb that never arrived using the various guardians moves to defeat enemies is also the primary method for unlocking the game's 58 achievements over half of them are unlocked just by simply playing to the story but most of the others involve killing a certain number of enemies with specific moves there are a couple around collectibles like the aforementioned outbits logs left behind by different characters in the universe or the guardian collectibles that can lead to great conversations with your team the only other thing it's really necessary to collect are two types of resources which are used to purchase the perks at a workbench and these are permanent upgrades there are about total of 15 of them some of them which are more useful than others the one that allows star-lord to scan for resources made sure that i had all 15 perks relatively early on in the game and never really worried about falling short by any means so if you're really looking around it's not all that difficult to find all the collectibles because this isn't a open world game that's all about tracking stuff down quest markers and whatnot most of completing guardians of the galaxy is just playing through the story getting as many achievements and collectibles as possible in a run and then using chapter select or new game plus to clean up the stuff you missed the first time which is a reasonable amount of content for a game like this don't get me wrong i'll take something like that over a 300 hour completion process any day of the week but the fact of the matter is guardians of the galaxy is not well optimized for completionists despite its cleanly labeled menus and achievements and thus began one of many headaches for myself when it came to completing guardians of the galaxy let's start with somewhere that we all can relate to bugs [Music] now i'm talking specifically about one bug where after i'd finished the story let the character moments and story beats wash over me and then tried to start up new game plus to finish things up only to find that somehow the game erased my entire save file the whole thing gone as though my copy of the game was brand new which meant adding a whole other playthrough on top of everything else and no matter how good a game story is having to do an extra playthrough because of a bug is a really great way to suck at least some of the joy out of it and that's where my story should end but unfortunately it does not my friends this game breaking bug ended up really showing me how this game is not optimized at all for completion and how some of the bugs in the game end up holding back my interest as a completionist first and foremost skipping through cutscenes is exhausting because there really isn't a skip button that works well due to the nature of how often choice becomes apparent you can't skip a cutscene because you have to make a decision which means you have to mash the buttons to skip moments sentence by sentence and not all moments are skippable so if you've experienced something and you don't want to relive it again too bad you will have to second chapter select is a lie chapter select is only to relive the game chapter by chapter which means that it disables all progress for your entire file and account levels guardians collectibles logs and costumes all remain stagnant when you play the game via chapter select so in my case because my game got completely wiped chapter select was meaningless and things were so bugged i had to go back and delete both my local and cloud saves for guardians on my xbox to ensure that i would get everything without things breaking third since there's no chapter select you have to start over from the beginning of the game in case you missed something or just finish out that playthrough and start new game plus and hope your game doesn't break you see the problem here right this game casually and narratively speaking can take up from 12 to 20 hours so if you're actively trying to complete the game without having any idea as to where everything is it's going to be a massive time sync fourth and i can't believe i'm still going we have to have the ongoing discussion as to what constitutes as completion right all the achievements and trophies in this game are a pretty standard example of how easy street this game is a great beacon of how to encourage your audience to explore every nook and cranny without making it too difficult getting the platinum trophy and guarding to the galaxy is very easy nothing here will make you feel bad or hate life by any means but there's two achievements that i do need to point out because it kind of contradicts the whole point of having compendiums that log your progress in order to get 100 completion in this game guarding to the galaxy has a compendium that keeps track of everything both account and save wide there's two achievements associated with collecting items logs outfits and data points for the compendium one for doing it all for at least one character and another for earning at least 65 percent in all category types normally this would be fine and i wouldn't complain especially because i know that getting a hundred percent doesn't do anything but getting 65 of the items logs outfits and data points doesn't seem like completion and that's where theoretically speaking this can get bad because you all know for if not for science for all of you at home watching the show i have to complete it which leads me to 5. there's a set of plushy collectibles you can get from a crane game in chapter 6 of guardians while you're visiting nowhere there's three plushies total you can only get one plushie per playthrough at a time you cannot use chapter select to earn side plushies you cannot use multiple save files to do so you have to literally boot up new game plus get to chapter six get that plushie finish that current run start a new game plus for a second time get up to chapter six again and then you're done so for those of you at home doing the math that means that for me personally and for this video to ensure 100 completion i had to do four full playthroughs to make sure i earned everything in this game and of course i got nothing for my efforts for going that extra mile welcome to the show welcome to the completionist where i just go crazy for things that no one cares about all told across multiple playthroughs and some extra cleanup i sink roughly 70 to 80 hours of my playtime into guardians of the galaxy and i really enjoyed at least 20 percent of that time the game constantly lost me then won me over again then lost me then won me over again ad nauseum the stuff that really works really works and i found myself highly invested in this version of the guardians but the gameplay has a stop and start quality that never really challenged me or sucked me in which isn't to say that it's bad at all just that it's not quite as good as the game's presentation deserves but even with those caveats guardians of the galaxy is definitely worth at least experiencing one time through especially if you're already a massive fan of these characters from the films or the comics which frankly you should be because they're great and the fact that we live in a world where even most grandmas probably know who rocket raccoon is today is just pretty magical almost as magical as the fact that we have an opportunity for the very same raccoon to make us cry not just in one medium but in two plus i'm hard-pressed to think of any other game where you have to fight an evil space church while the final countdown plays that should be enough all on its own right i know i may not have been quite as crazy about guardians of the galaxy of the game as most of the other people i know would be but there's a lot here to like even if i never quite settled into the groove of loving the game non-stop but the story has plenty of emotional impactful moments with characters that are a blast to spend time with even if they talk a little bit too much at times plus tons and tons of easter eggs for comic fans you know if you're into that sort of thing and if that's not enough it looks great and sounds great thanks to the magic of dolby atmos for headphones which is definitely way better than starlord's walkman it folds all the game's various songs and sound effects into a soundscape that's truly worth exploring as for exploring every inch of the game itself i say don't worry about it the gameplay is just good enough that it never gets in the way of the story or the presentation but experiencing the story from the beginning to end should be your priority and then if you want to play it again you totally can but the game puts no pressure on you to do so so with that in mind guys i give this game my completionist rating of finish it finish it [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 283,382

Keywords: guardians of the galaxy game, guardians of the galaxy review, guardians of the galaxy gameplay, guardians of the galaxy trailer, guardians of the galaxy 3, marvel, gameplay, review, game review, game reviews, completionist, g4, g4tv, attack of the show, ign, gameclips, guardians of the galaxy game review, groot, rocket raccoon, square enix, gotg, guardians game, MCU, gameranx, PS5, rpg, xbox, switch, gotg game, marvel games, star lord, chris pratt, chris pratt mario, chris pratt garfield

Id: qXA56RU2-54

Length: 30min 40sec (1840 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 06 2021