I’ll be the first to admit that I often overwork myself and that I am not great about scheduling regular days off (or often, days off at all), and so the time off that posting issues of Starcaster provides amounts to the only real break that I get. And it’s important to take a step away once in a while to recharge.

I wish I could say this vacation was all rest and relaxation, but it ended up being rather the opposite; a week up on scaffolding siding a portion of my house, renovating one of our bathrooms, driving a state away to help my buddy take out a wall in his kitchen. Though, in a way, that sort of stuff provides its own sort of peace, in that having projects handing over my head is a constant source of stress, and getting them done clears that away.

And there were lots of fun projects, too. Overnight campouts, driving to see friends, doing Halloween pumpkin crawls/haunted houses with the kids, building a bunch of proton packs for our family costumes, etc. While I wouldn’t say I’m well-rested, it certainly did a lot for my mental wellbeing.

I did find a few days in there solely for me, to just completely veg out and play some games. Got into the new Guardians of the Galaxy game, which proved to be incredibly entertaining. Not particularly deep; the combat had just enough to prevent it from getting too stale, but wasn’t necessarily complex. But the story, voice acting, tone of the whole game was a really nice surprise.

Moreover it was proof that you don’t need to tack on a ton of multiplayer or ongoing service features to a game like this; you can simply create a fun, contained experience and that’s enough.

I still love the combat in The Avengers, and I enjoy playing through all of the story/campaign additions they bring to the game every couple of months. But over a year out, there is still little compelling reason to grind that game in a regular basis. The loot/gear aspect of the game isn’t very engaging, and while I hoped they’d make some strides in that department, for every step forward they make, they take one or two backwards or sideways.

Spider-man is finally coming at the end of the month (apparently), and I will happily fire up The Avengers once again to play through his story content. But more and more I feel like that game would have gone over much better if the story stuff is all they’d done. Tacking on all of the extra stuff and then fumbling it clouded what could have been exactly what Guardians is: a fun, contained super-hero story that you play through and move on from.

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