Overall Gameplay (8.5 / 13 points)

• Player Experience: 5.5/10
• Mechanical Polish: 3/3

Comments: This arcade-style Guardians of the Galaxy game plays pretty well! The gameplay was solid and complete. The pacing and difficulty overall was a bit disappointing - you're thrown right into the thick of it when you start, but the enemy waves and patterns hardly change at all for the next ~5 minutes. This meant that, once I got the hang of the mechanics and smart bombs, the game quickly became really easy. Just circle around, collect bombs, and don't ever release the spacebar. After the quite lengthy main section of normal enemies, I unfortunately found the boss to be equally dull. The attack pattern was basic and easy to dodge. Even something simple like spawning in enemies occasionally would've made that fight a lot more engaging. From a technical standpoint, gameplay was rock solid and felt like a commercial product - nice work!

Theme Inclusion (4 / 6 points)

Comments: It's an acceptable use of the theme, but it did feel slightly like an afterthought. You could redesign the art for the smart bombs and there would no longer be any perceivable theme connection.

Overall Presentation (9.5 / 10 points)

• General Presentation: 3.5/4
• Quality of Graphics: 4/4
• Quality of Audio: 2/2

Comments: The presentation overall was pretty stellar. Graphics, animations, effects, interfaces, menus all looked great and adhered to a consistent and effective theme. Music and sound effects were also extremely well done. The only real advice I have here is to find a more elegant way to deliver the messaging on controls to the player, rather than dumping them all on the main menu. Only showing the gamepad controls when a gamepad is connected would've been a nice enhancement, for example.