Am I the only one playing?
I’ve made it to Nowhere and I’m about to meet Cosmo. This game is pretty fantastic. The visual design is fantastic. The creatures, environments and characters all look amazing. The faces in the game are especially lifelike. Really impressive shading and animation.
The combat is also very exciting and frantic. Efficiently using everyone’s abilities while trying to stay safe and contribute as Starlord is nicely challenging and the enemy variety does a good job of pushing you around.
And the writing is really good! The character interplay is so well done, and there is just so much banter it makes this a really poor podcast game, even between cutscenes. The side characters also steal the show in a lot of ways. The 12 year old Nova cadet, the game’s take on Mantis, and Lady Hellbender are all stellar.
It’s just a delight all around, even before you mention the DMCA nightmare soundtrack. It’s funny, a lot of people in the industry talked about this game being something Eidos Montreal was “saddled with” when they could have been making more Deus Ex. Those people seem to forget the Deus Ex IP was something they were also “saddled with”, and was never their own creation. The game I’m playing now suggests Guardians was exactly what that studio needed to really get their creative juices flowing.
It’s an absolute feast for the eyes, brimming with clever ideas, mechanics and sharp writing. I hope more of you will give the game a look!