Cinematic Promise.
When Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was first announced at the SquareEnix Summer Showcase this past June, I likely wasn’t the only one to be somewhat hesitant about it due to the disappointment of what the Avenger’s game ended up delivering. Still, the trailer was impressive, offering slightly different takes on characters that while known in the comic books they originated from, were made insanely more popular due to their appearances in a successful series of MCU films. While the game does take some inspiration from those films, it is far more rooted in the comic books due to it constantly pulling deep cuts from all over the galaxy into an action-packed adventure with just as much heart as the amount of “I am Groot’s” you’re likely to hear.
To say this game came out of “Knowhere” is a pretty accurate take. While there were certainly rumblings about what Eidos Montreal was working on, it was still a welcome surprise regardless. The scale at which this game entails is staggering, offering a wealth of locations and characters seen largely in just the comic books throughout the team’s varied history. While several of these are certainly deep cuts, such as Lady Hellbender and Ko-Rel, not to mention one that is so late game, that I’ll refrain from even talking about them, we also see a few that are likely to appear in the team’s third movie, given how certain characters were being teased in some form or fashion.
While I knew of the team before their MCU debut, I wasn’t too crazy about a few key characters as I’ve never been a fan of Drax, and while I am an avid fan of Gamora in the comics, her cinema counterpart left a lot to be desired. Despite my indifference to these two characters, Eidos Montreal has done a remarkable job at actually making me care about them, making them, and frankly, the entire team, my favorite adaptations of the Guardians yet. Each member of the team has truly emotional arcs to work through, from feeling the pain and loss of Drax losing his family, a secret that has been eating away at Gamora, to the torture and pain that Rocket has endured. The ways in which each of the team is hurting makes the unification and eventual teamwork they display as they push throughout the story to feel organically earned at every step. I felt that each character actually ended up in a different place by the game’s end and that they had fruitful character arcs that mattered by the time the credits rolled, and well after. The team will constantly chat throughout the game, making jabs and comments at the state of the mission, or typical things we’ve seen in the movies, such as Rocket constantly referring to the Milano as “his” ship.
The central story of Marvel’s Guardians centers around the team getting caught by the Nova Corp for illegally accessing the deepest reaches of forbidden space and then charged a massive fine in order to be able to freely go about their merry way, largely due to Quill’s previous relationship with the leader of the Nova Corps. While this eventually turns into a situation where several factions want the team dead, they will need to do whatever it takes in order to stop a dangerous force that threatens to consume the galaxy. The team will also be at each other’s throats during much of this story, causing Peter to make narrative choices along the way that will come to affect the team and certain parts of the story going forward. It will be up to Peter Quill to rise up and be the leader he was always meant to be.
One of the most apparent things present with Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is just how great this game looks, how incredible most of its voice cast is, and a soundtrack so good, I want it with me every moment of every day. While you’ll get moments of some awkward animation stitching, or moveable objects in the environment having a bit of shaky transition here and there, I don’t know of a better-looking comic book game apart from maybe Marvel’s Spider-Man or its partial sequel in Miles Morales. Even then, I found the facial animations here to be exceedingly better, not to mention some of the voice acting, especially when it came to Lady Hellbender and Ko-Rel, who each have unbelievably well-acted performances, despite their smaller roles. Honestly, the whole team is solid, and while I wasn’t on board with Peter’s voice initially, it eventually found its footing when the game dives into a bit more of a dramatic role for him. But, to be honest, I pretty much hated his voice for the game’s opening few hours.
The visual look of the cast is also something I really have to give them praise on. While there are movie outfits to unlock, and some resemblance to certain traits more known from the films, such as the more slim build of Rocket. The looks given to the rest of the cast really excel at making them own much of their comic book origins, especially Gamora, who has her trademarked facial features not present in the films. And honestly, it almost looks like they modeled some of her look off Mary Elizabeth Winstead, especially with her take on Huntress in the Harley Quinn film as even her face seems very similar in its structure. There is a variety of costumes to unlock from the team’s history, even if I feel Groot didn’t get the same love in his variety. I’m still not sold on Peter Quill’s hair, however, I did love the joke made about it, but I do like the overall look they gave him. I mentioned it already, but the facial animation here is some of the best I’ve seen across any game, period. Seriously, it is bizarre how good it is, coming damn close to what Naughty Dog has done with The Last of Us: Part II, and in some cases, I feel they top even that.
Guardians of the Galaxy is played solely from Peter’s perspective, as the game is structured where Peter is the only character present at every moment in the game. You’ll give combat commands to your teammates and unlock special attacks and costumes for them, but in combat, you are only ever controlling Star Lord himself. While I was initially turned off from the idea of not being able to switch characters when I first saw the trailer, here, it makes total sense why you are not playing as the additional Guardians. Instead, Peter is here to bring the team together, to be their leader and set the example. You’ll pump up the team with a combat huddle, listening to them moan and bicker about the current state of the conflict or the bloodlust in their eyes, eager to return to the slaughter. And, as you end the pep talk with the correct tone to match theirs, your response will be a line of the song that will play immediately afterward during the duration of the buff granted by the combat huddle. Though launching into “Don’t worry, be happy” wasn’t exactly an adrenaline-boosting tune I was expecting to play during a very intense battle, but here we are.
Each Guardian has 3 skills to unlock through skill points, which are earned by leveling up and performing well in battle, as well as a fourth attack that will be rolled out when each character reaches a certain narrative milestone in their arc. Their skills range from frantic sword slashes from foe to foe, raising massive roots from the ground, to pulling out a massive artillery gun and having Rocket just going all berserk on anything that gets in his way. Groot eventually brings a healing ability to the team, though, it’s a shame it takes quite a long time to get it. Each attack comes with a cooldown, which is pretty quick, thankfully. Each Guardian is represented by a face button, and each attack within is then represented by the whole arrangement of face buttons again, accessed first by holding down LB. So, for example, if you want to use Gamora’s Shadow Strike attack, then you would press LB to bring up each of the Guardians, press Y to select Gamora, then X to select the attack. When you get the handle of which attacks are where, you can pop them off incredibly quick as the tabs to do so have zero lag or input delay, making combat incredibly brisk even when you are selecting attacks for the entire cast to pull off.
While sometimes a bit too chaotic at times, combat is damn fun especially as you start to unlock more attacks that are very situational. Rocket’s bomb blast is fantastic for clearing out waves that are tightly formed together, and you will eventually unlock the ability to hold foes in the air, almost frozen in time, which is damn perfect when you combine it with Peter’s Fan the Hammer attack where he fires off a succession of rapid-fire blasts. This allows a lot of combat to feel applicable to the teamwork the group is constantly improving on. Combat is filled to the brim with team-focused chatter, sometimes even about a discussion that just happened prior. However, for as good as the combat chatter is, you’ll find some conversations to repeat a lot, especially Gamora’s “I still find it surprising they made all these outfits so fast” line that I heard four times in a single battle. Battles also contain big team attacks, where Drax may punch an enemy into Gamora’s range, who then sets them up for Groot to slam them down to the ground below. Seeing these attacks happen, especially as the team is starting to rely on one another, just makes them that much more satisfying to pull off.
Peter Quill’s combat is largely gun-focused, and he will also have access throughout the game to additional weapon types, each granted to him when the story demands it. These allow you to not only affect things in combat like hurling an enemy from afar to right in your face, perfect for dealing with snipers, but also in melting ice-covered passageways or powering electrical circuits to open doors, and more. These weapon types also aid in breaking down the defenses of certain enemy types that are vulnerable to cold, hot, wind, or electrical attacks. Peter can also jump into the air with his rocket boots, flying around during combat and issuing out orders with a wider scope on the field, and as I’ve mentioned previously, summoning the team into a group huddle to grant a perk to aid in combat, not to mention rock out to the soundtrack as you wipe up the floor with your opposition.
As you progress throughout each environment, you’ll look to rely on characters to perform certain tasks. These range from Gamora launching herself up a wall to give you a much-needed boost up, Drax bashing down walls or tipping things over to make a bridge, to Groot literally making root bridges to traverse small gaps. These tasks are decent enough to show the importance of each member, but what really sold me on it was seeing the team do these things on their own in the late game as the team is building itself up more to rely on everyone. Gamora would automatically cut down debris over the doorway, to Drax smashing down that blockage all on his own. Sure, the use of issuing out these instructions often saw them heading to the targeted zone well before Quill can even speak the full line, but it’s a small oddity that is easily overlooked.
A good portion of the game is also centered around platforming, whether it is making simple jumps with a good running start or via the use of your rocket boots. I will say that sometimes, it feels like you are not going to make the jump until he grabs the ledge at the last possible moment. There are several QTE’s as well during many of the more intensive platforming moments, but the timing of these simply felt off just enough to make them rather annoying, and thankfully in the accessibility settings, you can turn them off if you’d rather just not deal with them at all. The platforming itself also comes in the form of shooting objects to make paths, to using your freeze blasts to cause water to form climbable platforms, pushing you past. The platforming isn’t revolutionary or pushing the genre forward, but it is just satisfying enough to make its inclusion feel decent enough to perform time and time again.
During almost every conversation the team has, Peter will have to make dialogue choices to favor one team member over the other or simply stay silent and let them bicker it out. These can cause new dialogue moments to spring up, or some interesting late-game twists that are rather enjoyable to see play out. You won’t get drastically different encounters, or enough of a shift in the story to change the ending significantly, but it allows you to give Peter some choices to have him take on more of a leadership role and deal with the consequences. You can chat aboard the Milano, either through some basic dialogue beats or by collecting certain character-specific relics you’ll find throughout the game. You can also use the workbench aboard the ship, and those you find strewn about, to have Rocket create some upgrades that can cause some passive buffs to your offensive or defensive capabilities, all built from collecting components along the way.
While I’ve heard of some outlets having glitches, crashes, or a variety of annoying bugs, I never experienced any of these on Series X. Granted, I likely played with a patched version as I purchased my copy at release, so it’s more or less that being the reason for my overall solid experience with the game. That said, the major open area during the game’s final moments, before the credits, ran incredibly poor as the entire time I was outside, it ran at 15-20 frames, if that. While I am expecting a patch to iron that out, it was damn near unplayable for minutes at a time. I also wasn’t too keen on one moment of controlling the Milano in a winter-themed area, but the overall space dogfighting that took place elsewhere in the game was super fun, and really wished there were more moments like that here.
Guardians of the Galaxy was not the game I expected it to be. I half expected a throwaway story alongside a decent to good combat system, but instead was pleasantly surprised at just how heartfelt and memorable the story ended up being. While several other comic book games like Insomniac’s Spider-man or Rocksteady’s Batman have a wealth of well-known characters to pull from, Guardians brings a lot of unknown characters into the spotlight in truly engaging performances, and some boss battles with characters I’ve wanted to see in games for years. The story, characters, and visuals are damn near superb and allow Guardians to reach into the same overall tier that I find some of the best comic book games to reside, making for one of the best game’s I’ve played this year, and the best adaption of the team by a galactic mile.
Developer - Eidos-Montreal. Publisher - Square Enix. Released - October 26th, 2021. Available On - Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PS4, PS5, Windows, Nintendo Switch (Cloud) Rated - (T) Language, Mild Blood, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence.
Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was purchased by the reviewer.