This Game Shocked Everyone - Guardians of the Galaxy - Luke Stephens

let's be honest superhero games are really hard to pull off many studios have attempted it but only a select few have stood out as genuine quality experiences worth most people's time i think this is often a result of conflicted goals executives and writers think that most people enjoy superhero flicks because of the large set pieces action sequences scantily clad women or some combination thereof and while that's certainly true for some small percentage of superhero fans it certainly isn't reflective of the overwhelming majority most superhero fans enjoy the stories because they scratch the same itch that the old myths and legends satisfied for our ancestors where they used to tell stories of thor zeus or osiris we now tell stories of captain america iron man and superman the stories are meant to explore human emotions and conflicts on a more dramatic scale and in that pursuit they are very successful but even this can be misconstrued because not all superheroes are made to fulfill the same purpose some are much more dramatic and magnanimous others might exist purely for comedic effect and a select few may exist to provide commentary on just how overly dramatic broader superhero culture is in effect offering viewers a much more relatable hero that they can follow as they explore the galaxy and interact with these larger-than-life personalities all of this is very hard to sift through and i think often management will only understand which of these archetypes applies to a given superhero if they understand their character and the appeal that they have to the audience inevitably when studio executives are trying to decide what to turn into the next big video game they often choose the most widely recognized characters they decide to put them into an engine that's flashy and allows for a lot of big explosions and thinking that they've done all they need to do they then slap a bunch of microtransactions on top and call it a day only to act utterly surprised when the reaction to the game's release is negative but every once in a while a game will come along that surprises players it seems as though it's just another cash grab but it manages to pull out a player experience that's memorable charming and even genuinely fun and today we are talking about one such game one that totally surpassed all of my expectations and that without a doubt is one of the best games that's released this year and i truly mean that we're talking about marvel's guardians of the galaxy in this video we're going to go through everything the game does well and discuss why it's so exceptional be warned that i will be covering pretty much everything in this title so if you're adverse to spoilers consider yourself warned if you're looking for my quick and dirty recommendation i would say without a doubt you should play this game if you have any interest at all in the style the subject matter or even if you're just bored and looking for something to play this weekend give this game a shot i really think you'll enjoy it as always like the video and subscribe if you enjoy it we're gonna jump into it but first a quick thank you to the sponsor of this video nordvpn nordvpn is the virtual private network provider that offers one of the easiest to use solutions for safe web browsing on the market today they have over 5100 servers in 60 countries and with their high quality server infrastructure you can watch videos browse the web and do whatever else you need to while retaining anonymity and security their service is easy to use extremely robust and they empower you to browse the web securely and safely with complete peace of mind check them out today at nordvpn.com forward slash luke stevens and make sure to use promo code luke stevens to check out to save 73 off of a two-year plan and get an additional month absolutely for free going into the release of this game i was highly skeptical as were most people i think it's not to say that these types of games can never be good but it is to say that 99 of the time they're awful i mean the last time we had a major release like this pitched much in the same way was with marvel's avengers a title which was forgotten just as quickly as it released that game was bland boring and a blatant cash grab so when most of us pessimistic gamers saw that they had licensed another game in the guardians of the galaxy franchise we were highly skeptical and i think the game's publisher knew this as well which is why there wasn't an overwhelming marketing campaign on the scale of the avengers title it's like they had learned last time that over advertising a game like this can actually do more harm than good and i absolutely understand that hesitance to market this game but it really hurts your chances at the game finding overwhelming success if it happens to be good it's almost like they were betting that the game would be mediocre and so they were trying very hard not to over promise which is good they learned from last time and i also grant you that i don't have a lot of data to support this point that they didn't advertise it as heavily because the only data i have are some google trends data that shows the extreme delta between these two games at the peak of their launch and the amount of interest on google that people had for them assuming of course that this interest is primarily driven by advertising campaigns and word of mouth driven by those advertising campaigns but that being said the game launched seemingly out of nowhere for most people i saw it pop up on my steam recommendation list so i decided to give it a try after all this is sort of my job i had seen some of the trailers background e3 and at that time i thought it looked pretty interesting though i wasn't sold on the combat or how well the game would actually be written something that's incredibly important in a title about a group of superheroes working together to save the galaxy constantly bantering back and forth to put it simply i went into the game with an open mind but expecting very little and boy was i surprised marvel's guardians of the galaxy is comprised of a few basic elements there's exploration of the levels engagement with the main story through conversations with characters in interaction with lore items in the world and the staple gameplay mechanisms such as combat and dialogue choices which alter the path you take somewhat each of these are accomplished fantastically well and realized in a creative way furthermore there's an immense amount of attention to detail that sprinkled throughout the entire campaign in more ways than one for example peter's hand shaking while he's aiming at meredith in this dream state it's a really good touch it's understandable that this would put him in an emotional state where his hand would be shaky it's understandable why aiming a gun at your mother might actually cause you a fair amount of emotional distress causing your hand to shake again it's just a good detail it makes sense with the character and this is something you would normally only see in a movie a medium where they have the time and resources to pay this immense attention to detail or this point where gamora starts freaking out after seeing the doll that's left behind which is a good tie-in to the conversation earlier with quinn when she says that the only gift that thanos ever got her was a doll which was done only to teach her a lesson and not out of any sort of admiration or love i mean sure you could say it's a twisted love but that's beside the point sure of course some of these narrative details have been established in the guardians of the galaxy lore for years and years and years at this point thanks to the work of comic authors and others over at marvel but it is important to note that those details are carefully executed here as well this wasn't a rushed job of creating a basic action game with popular characters slapped on rather it was a project built from the ground up around these characters and the things that make them so unique and lovable their stories motivations and even something as detailed as the trembling of their hands have all been realized with a care and devotion to the source material that can only be described as obsessive now as far as the gameplay is concerned there's also a lot of tricks that they pull off here which you usually only see in games crafted by our industry's best developers specifically look at this example with regards to training the player in a system passively what i mean by this is that the developers are able to train the player to better engage with a given system without them even realizing it it's the same thing that from software has become so good at in the soulsborne games where they can build a level teaching the player how to deal with a particular type of enemy with all of those newfound skills being put to the test in the culminating boss fight which ties it all together and i know this sounds relatively simple but it's actually quite complicated because you have to drill certain motions and techniques into the player without them realizing it otherwise the level just becomes a tutorial sequence instead of a valid addition of levels to the game one of the best things about bloodborne is that it's able to prepare you for major boss fights without you realizing you're being prepared you don't feel like you're going through tutorial levels when in reality you are in a sort of distant passive way you don't feel as though you're going through tutorial levels because the training is taking place in a much lower level the enemies hiding behind corners walls crates and boxes are all jumping out at you causing you to build up reaction times and speeds for basic move sets that will be implemented by the boss at the end of the level they train you how to parry how to perfect the timing based on certain signaling moves it's all carefully carefully arranged and it requires expertise on the part of the developer to avoid it becoming monotonous and clear that you're being led through the motions in the case of guardians of the galaxy this is done all throughout the game but probably the easiest example to point to would be in the form of these destructible walls which require the player to accurately hit the cooldown prompt on quill's guns in order to fully destroy them so you can progress through the level it may initially seem like this is just an artifact of these walls having high enough damage absorption that it takes two clips to blow them up but that is by design in sprinkling these walls all throughout the early levels the player will passively learn the timing for this cooldown timer which prepares them for the late game battles which require perfect timing for this cooldown almost every time to ensure maximal damage output on the part of the player without these walls training the player they would be left frantically trying to nail this timing down in combat encounters alone something which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing but that could grow frustrating for players who feel like they're being thrown into the lion's den without being properly prepared but what they will know is that they are frustrated because the timing just isn't sitting right with them they haven't had the chance to drill it and make it part of muscle memory now the developers could have taken the road more traveled and just not bothered with this allowing you to just quickly blow up the walls with a single shot or not having the walls at all but they took the extra step to do it because they knew that it would improve combat encounters by making them feel more natural on the whole players are getting better at combat without having to engage in combat again i can't stress enough just how uncommon these tricks really are you only usually see them in titles developed by the industry's elite such as from software or nintendo i was so thoroughly impressed to see these things being implemented here that i have to pause and offer the team the praise they deserve seeing this here made me very happy or another example would be this little game that you can play with rocket in the opening sequence of the game it's just a competition between the player and rocket to see who can shoot more of these little bug hive nest things whoever shoots and destroys more wins and at the outset it may seem like this is just a small mini-game meant to occupy your time as you navigate the level but it's actually very tactical this was put here in the opening moments of the game to teach the player how to use their visor to discover these points of interest and objects and also condition them to look around investigating every nook and cranny to try and discover new objects of interest and it's in this opening sequence as well when you'll discover your first optional costume for some of the characters these costumes can only be discovered if you're looking around in these hidden areas something that the game wants to train you to do early on but perhaps the most impressive element of the game's design is with the writing between the main characters guardians of the galaxy is a franchise that's built upon these interpersonal relationships the way this disjointed family works together with each other to solve problems and well save the galaxy that they're guarding this is easy enough to pull off in a movie especially because you can edit reshoot and rewrite almost anything until it works simply they can control the experience of the audience down to the smallest detail but in a video game it's much more difficult some players may not be paying attention to dialogue when you're exploring levels others may be skipping through the dialogue some may only be watching cutscenes some may be listening to the dialogue while exploring levels but skipping the cutscenes others will listen to all of it very intently and i'm sure there's many other combinations that i haven't mentioned the writing staff doesn't know which of these categories their audience is going to fit into and we could say of course that they should just write assuming everybody will pay perfect attention but i think that's a recipe for disaster especially after listening to several of the keynote speeches at the games developer conference on this very topic don't worry i'll have a few of them linked below in the description box if you're interested and want to hear actual video game writers talk about the struggle they have with not knowing what their audience is going to be doing at any given moment the general consensus though seems to be that it's incredibly difficult to write for video games because of these varying degrees of attention that players will pay it's a tightrope that you're walking and i guess the point of all of this is simply to say that it's really freaking hard to write dialogue and stories for video games and that doesn't even take into consideration situations when games have companions that want to talk to the player character but can only do so in certain situations to make these characters feel alive they have to respond to the actions of the player commenting on things they're doing and offering unique and genuine insight into the world making them valuable additions to your party they also need to be personable a lot of the time charismatic and if there's humor involved their timing needs to be extremely precise if the punch line to a joke doesn't play out at exactly the right moment it'll come off as cringy and awkward instead of witty and that makes what's been achieved here all the more impressive rocket drax gamora peter and groot all bicker and banter back and forth in conversations that feel so genuine you can't help but feel as though you're tagging along on a journey between a group of true friends these characters are funny they care about each other and they even comment on tiny little things that the player might do making them feel all the more alive and real for example i used my visor to check a terminal in this big room in the nova core ship and rocket actually got upset with me because he thought i used my visor to make sure he wasn't lying about what he was doing and this moment made their relationship feel so much more real and made rocket seem like he was a character who was real and actually responding to my actions or this moment which has stuck in my memory since i finished the game where rocket has a confession to make to quill i'll just let it play but just a warning it's a bit of a roller coaster i really need to talk to you all right man what's up look there's no easy way to say this so i'll just say it i think i'm dying well even with all these freaking augmentations trunk knows what else i i just i need to know that you'll take care of groot for me i uh i had no idea man does groot know no no no no and uh you can't tell him did it destroy him if the day comes that i just promise me you'll take care of a group i promise and uh are you in that uh are you messing with me um you know say you'll bury me in the in the milano [Laughter] oh i can't believe your face it was like i i can't even describe your freaking face genuinely setting aside all of the bloat and fluff of youtube commentary videos and the asinine tendencies of youtubers to hop on hype trains and hate trains when convenient speaking from the heart this game offered one of the most fantastically personal and engaging stories i've had the pleasure of experiencing in recent memory it's not to say that other games haven't had interesting narratives but it is to say that very rarely do we see a game come along that can present so many characters in such a believable way that's so engrossing and sympathetic are there issues with the game though or is it utterly perfect after all the only thing i've done so far in this video is complement it incessantly to which i would reply of course there are issues the combat can grow repetitive by the end of the story it also falls victim to some of the particle effect fetishism that's a mainstay of many japanese-inspired titles where the screen fills up with so many effects and post-processing things that it can become increasingly difficult to determine what the hell is actually going on at any given moment and towards the end of the game the team seems to have run out of ideas for huge set pieces save for a few extraordinary exceptions that i won't show here in case you give the game a chance and play through it yourself but if you've seen the end of the game you probably know what i'm talking about instead they chose to use many countless arenas stitched together by hallways to pat out gameplay time especially in the second act of the game but in my view these sins pale in comparison to the accomplishments that we have here it's like we're discussing a wagyu steak wagyu wagyu i i think it's wago i'm going with wagyu wagyu it's a phenomenal cut of meat fantastic marbling and unmatched in its tenderness but it has a little bit of fat around the edges that needs to be trimmed off as a result it may not be the perfect steak since it needs a little bit of refinement but it's still absolutely fantastic and if you're wondering whether or not this analogy is the best one i could have gone with to make this point i would probably agree with you i honestly shouldn't have written this script while so very hungry but in conclusion marvel's guardians of the galaxy is one of the most surprising games of this year i can't praise it enough honestly what they've managed to pull off here is very impressive the writing the characters the graphics the combat systems all of it is fantastically well executed and has me salivating for more i don't know if they'll get a chance to make a sequel turning all of these knobs up to 11 but i sincerely hope they get the chance this game is fantastic and you should absolutely play it

Channel: Luke Stephens

Views: 70,123

Keywords: luke stephens

Id: B4U8clq-3-4

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021