Last night I finished Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
Let me preface this that I love the MCU's Guardians of the Galaxy films with the first one still being my favorite of the MCU. With that said, these Guardians certainly took inspiration, but remain comic faithful in other aspects and are, undoubtedly, all the better for it. As y'all have discerned, Marvel's Avengers felt like Diet MCU; as if we got imposters to fulfill the roles that the movies built up.
With Guardians, these are my favorite interpretation of the group. They're a rowdy, hilarious, and chaotic bunch that will save the galaxy even if they're the only ones to do it. They've got their hang-ups and there's friction between members, but the whole time it's engaging. I would only put down the controller out of needing to go to sleep for the next day. The story takes you on these varied missions and environments that you're never quite certain if the end is near or what the group can possibly do next.
Really, I could gush about so much in this game. Even the ending is a wild ride and can have minor differences depending on how you made your choices. The only downsides are the sometimes buggy nature of the game and the combat. There aren't any major bugs to worry about, but I've had some that required me to load the last checkpoint. Thankfully there are many autosave checkpoints, so you'll never be that far behind. The combat can be dynamic, but half the time I felt I wasn't doing a lot of damage as Star-Lord where the bulk of damage and stagger effects had to come from my teammates. But then they're on a cooldown and so I go back to whittling health as Star-Lord.
The hardest trophy to get in the game is finishing off staggered enemies with a Charged Shot 15 times. Your Charged Shot is both finicky to use and does pitiful damage that you'll easily forget about it. Even when you're actively seeking out the trophy, the situations where you can stagger and then do just enough damage with the Charged Shot are rare. (Not to mention your teammates might finish them off too.)
Still, that's a mole hill of a gripe and this is truly a fun single player game. Takes me back to the mid-2000s when we had tons of fun superhero action games. It is linear, but like Dan said, that's perfectly find and sometimes you can go off the beaten trail to find a secret and get yourself a cool new skin for the team.
8.5/10