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Oh yeah the writing was phenomenal. I still remember my favorite bit of dialogue in the whole game that sticks with me even now.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Okay, this one actually surprised the hell out of me. I had heard good things around the time it came out but, unlike Jedi: Fallen Order, there wasn't really anything about it that especially appealed to me. I heard the writing was good and GotG is probably my favorite subseries within the MCU but that's about it. The initial reveal was pretty meh to me and, while I didn't have any issues with the character designs (they sure as hell seemed better to me than Avengers), making it a third-person shooter where you only control Star-Lord seemed like a disappointing choice. I wanted to give it a shot anyway, though, but I was waiting for a deep discount and even 30 bucks is more than I was planning to pay for it. This was a total impulse purchase because "hey this would be a perfect game to play while I wait for the Spider-Man port!" Early on it was more or less what I expected. Kinda fun and the writing and characters seemed good but the combat wasn't really that interesting. I kept playing but it seemed like one of those games that's fine but that I end up being distracted from and never coming back to. Then I kept playing, got deeper into the story, unlocked more abilities for the Guardians and... holy fuck, how did this game get so fucking good?! The third-person shooter combat looks deceptively boring because in reality controlling all the Guardians as a team is key. I knew you could give them orders but what I didn't realize was that you're really controlling the entire team as if it were a party. In a way, it reminded me of Brutal Legend: Star-Lord is more like a cursor that just happens to have guns and his own move set. Once you unlock more abilities for the team, things get way more interesting and finding ways to combine the Guardian's various moves to take down strong enemies super quickly is just a ton of fun. The writing is also shockingly good. I'd honestly put it up there with the Gunn films. Hell, in some aspects I think it even surpasses them. The plot itself is really solid and surprisingly long for this kind of game. There's so many twists and turns and basically all of it is set up perfectly. What seems like a throwaway line early in the game can turn into a major plot point later on. I don't remember the last time I played a linear, story-driven, single-player game with this meaty of a campaign. My one complaint about the story would be that it feels like there's a missing cutscene at the end. Without spoiling anything, it seemed like just a short bit showing things going back to normal would've gone a long way towards making the ending feel more "complete". As it is, it comes off a little artificial and sudden how you beat that one boss and then it's like "Yay, you won!" without really acknowledging everything going on outside the boss room. Like, think in Guardians 2 where you see these quick cutaways that show what Ego is doing on various planets throughout the galaxy. It seems like something like that was missing. It didn't even need to be completely new locations, just show things going back to normal in a few places you've already visited over the course of the game. I imagine it was probably a budget thing, though. So it's a minor complaint, it just really stood out to me. Then there's the characters, which is the main area where I find the game surpassed its MCU counterpart. I found both Drax and Gamora way more likeable in this. I feel like the game showed me a side of them that the movies didn't. Drax in particular felt like more of a full character instead of being relegated to more of a comic relief sidekick role. Rocket came across as an even bigger asshole to the point where I actively disliked him at times, which allowed moments later in the game have a bigger impact. Groot is, well, Groot. But the biggest difference for me was Star-Lord. Keep in mind I've never read the comics, so I didn't really know anything about the characters other than what's in the MCU movies. So I don't know which version is more "true to the character" and, frankly, I don't really give a shit. All I know is that I found Game-Quill to be massively more likeable than Movie-Quill. And it's not like I hate Chris Pratt's Star-Lord or anything. The game just makes him seem like a self-centered, juvenile asshole in comparison. Like, he is a juvenile asshole, even in the game. That's part of his character. But if you go out of your way to go through all the optional conversations with the Guardians, Game-Quill is also a dude that seems to genuinely care about the Guardians and has the ability to be thoughtful towards them and even help them on a more personal level. The movies tell you the Guardians are a family but the game shows you that they are. That's not a knock against the Gunn movies, though. Obviously the game had way more room to develop the characters and a big part of me liking the game versions more likely has to do with the fact that I got to spend like 20+ hours with them as opposed to just a couple of 2 hour long movies. One point where the Gunn films are better is the music choices. There's some really fun licensed tracks in the game but overall I still think Gunn handled that aspect better. That being said, props to Eidos Montreal for going above and beyond and outdoing even Remedy here. Alan Wake and Control had a few Old Gods of Asgards songs but Guardians of the Galaxy has an actual full album for Star-Lord and it honestly fucking slaps. I'm starting to think that putting a fictional heavy metal band in your game is a surefire way to ensure I'll fall in love with both the game and the band. About halfway through the game I found myself humming some of the songs because they were stuck in my head and I started listening to them outside the game. Zero to Hero in particular is my fucking jam! Also, another one with no hassle: I had heard this game was janky in how chapter select works and how collectibles are tracked, so I was using a guide early on but I found that to be a miserable way to play the game so I stopped after a few chapters. Fortunately, it gave me enough of a sense of how the collectibles were hidden that I found enough of them on my own to get the 65% you need for the achievement. Late in the game I also paid attention to combat achievements and got most of them before I was done. So at the end I only needed to use chapter select for two combat achievements and a handful of outfits I had missed. Thank fuck the outfits save as soon as you collect them, though, because having to replay the whole game would've been painful. It's great but it's also very story-driven so even just doing partial replays of a few chapters was annoying as hell in how many unskippable cutscenes or slow sections there were. Having to do a second full playthrough immediately after would've probably soured me on the game a bit. I'd definitely love to replay it eventually, though, if only to see some of the alternate scenarios your choices can lead to. So yeah, this one was a massively pleasant surprise. I was disappointed that Eidos Montreal made this over another Deus Ex but now I'm honestly a little sad this one probably won't get a sequel. At the very least, now I'll be willing to give the benefit of doubt to anything they make. I still need a new Deus Ex, though...

Yeah, by that point I already felt like I was seeing a completely different Quill than in the movies but that moment really cemented it. I honestly cannot imagine Chris Pratt's version saying that line and it coming across as sincere or in-character.

TIS-100 That was neat. It wasn't nearly as involved as Exapunks, but it also didn't cost as much so can't really complain. I only beat the main game, not all the optional puzzles (I will probably dive into those now), and I left one puzzle unsolved, but I solved the main mystery of the computer, so I'm still counting it as beat. Also, I only skipped the one because when I googled it I found several people saying "I am a professional programmer and could not solve this puzzle" so I don't feel bad about that. I definitely think Exapunks is the better game, both the setup and the constraints you're working with are more interesting, but I would still recommend this to anyone who likes Exapunks and wants more of that kind of thing. Grade: B

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 Got this in the last Steam sale. It's a good bit longer than the first game, and while it's been a while since I played the first one it also felt harder, sometimes to an annoying degree. The later boss battles in the game are pretty brutal and the checkpoints are pretty far back, which is faithful to the days of the NES, sure, but that doesn't stop it from being annoying as shit to have to redo several screens of punishing enemies and platforming every time you lose a life before you can tackle the boss again. You also have to beat the game three times to get the true ending, and I'm never a fan of this kind of padding, but to be fair each playthrough does have some slight differences so that replaying the same levels isn't EXACTLY the same. Despite these complaints I'd still say it's a pretty good game. The playable characters all feel unique and useful in their own ways (although Zangetsu feels underpowered), the levels are well designed with branching paths and shortcuts to explore, the bosses are challenging, and the music is good. A nice throwback for fans of classic Castlevania.