168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Guardians of the Galaxy seems to have split opinion since it appeared at the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Square Enix E3 Showcase, and I can’t quite understand why. Obviously, it’s a new IP rather than news on Final Fantasy 14 or something like that, but didn’t Final Fantasy 14 just basically have an E3 of its own with Fan Fest? Guardians is a b♛rand new game, arriving later this year, with bags of gameplay footage to show off, and it’s based on one of the biggest grossing movies of all-time. Granted, that last point isn’t always a signifier of popularity - just look at Avatar’s place in pop culture - but this is the MCU. Guardians and the other Marvel movies are at the apex of modern popular culture, yet the biggest reaction to the game seems to be ‘meh’ and I just don’t understand it.
Perhaps being a riff on the MCU is a curse, especially with Square Enix involved. Marvel’s Avengers is one of the biggest fumbles in video game history when you consider how it missed the peak Avengers window, how ill suited it is to the live service model with a paltry selection of heroes, the lack of Spider-Man, the double Hawkeye, and the fact it just will not stop dropping Ls. But Guardians seems different - it’s single-player, will have 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:no DLC or microtransactions, and therefore none of the issues that weigh Av🍬engers down. In fact, it seems very conscious of this compari🃏son, and is making all the right noises to distance itself.
I’m a huge MCU nerd, and I’m holding out hope that Nebula will appear in the Guardians game, but the more I see of it, the more I can see why people a🧔ren’t on board with it. After rewatching the 15-minute gameplay debut, I’m getting some Anthem vibes from it - but I mean that as a compliment.
Get ready to never listen to my opinion on anything ever again, but I liked Anthem. I can appreciate that it wasn’t good, and what I liked about it had nothing to do with the game’s model and everything to do with those nifty Javelins, because I felt more like Iron Man in Anthem than I did in Marvel’s Avengers. I don’t remember too much about the gunplay, which is telling in itself, and the characters felt like they were crying out for a more interesting story, but still - I enjoyed it. The ca🍌mpaign had a weird grinding section right in the middle of it that eviscerated the game’s pacing, and again, literally the only thing I remember is soaring through the skies, but I remain convinced that there was a more enjoyable experience buried in there somewhere, and if BioWare had been allowed to run at the development unbridled, a much better (though perhaps less monetised) version would have emerged out the other side of it.
Anthem’s biggest asset was its sense of motion, and there's so much motion in Guardians of the Galaxy. The story seems a lot more interesting, even if the decisions and "Gamora didn't like that" mechanic don't seem like they will be particularly interesting or impactful, but even though I'm here for the characters, I'm staying for the gameplay. Too many games are becoming especially serious in their game design, with weighty mechanics, realistic gunplay, or slow and heavy combat that mimics real life warfare. Resident Evil Village has a surreal, unintentionally funny narrative, but it takes its gun design particularly seriously. Guardians has much more freedom - it's based on an unpopular comic it has no need to stay loyal to and an MCU action-comedy that is able to laugh at itself. The first Guardians movie ends with a dance off - extra realistic blasters just don't fit the bill here. It's a game about funky alien doofuses and their zany schemes, all it needs is energy and chaos and motion to succeed.
Anthem had that. Whatever else you think about Anthem, I'm yet to find a single person whose complaint is "the flying was shit." The map was unhelpful at times, the world was a bit dull to explore, and the flying could have been better integrated into combat, but just flying? Just soaring through the skies, barrel rolling your way through stone arches and plunging below the lakes to cool your suit down? That was a stellar part of the game and it's baffling that Square Enix ignored its potential when designing Iron Man. Weirdly, while Avengers and Anthem are obviously comparable as disappointing live service games, Guardians feels like it has more of Anthem's DNA, and it seems like it has trimmed away all the disappointing elements and replaced them with frogs a la Dr Henry Wu. Hopefully Groot won't overthrow mankind.
Comparing a game to Anthem is like a death knell, but I stand by the fact that I had a decent enough time with the doomed RPG, even if I didn't necessarily enjoy it in the way that was intended. Guardians looks like it's bringing that kinetic carnage but in a much more rounded and less monetised package, and that’s more than enough for me. "It's like Anthem!" will never be seen as a compliment in this medium, but I really do mean it as one here.