Marvel has been having quite a rough time as of lately. I’m not gonna dive any further into what kind of trouble they are facing and why their fans possibly hate, because genuinely I don’t really care. I don’t really look into comic book drama, nor do I really care about DC or Marvel. We already discussed this during my binge of the Batman: Arkham series earlier this year, but things are looking rough out there. With recent films in the MCU anthology not doing as well as they hoped, and the comics having these bizarre unsatisfying storylines. That doesn’t mean there has not been any good comic book superhero content as of lately. The new Spiderverse film is going to come out soon and I’m really excited for it as I heavily enjoyed the first film. Last year’s well acclaimed The Batman proved you could still make an entertaining Batman film without going against his core staples and outfitting him with a ton of guns. As of recently, the third and final entry to the Guardians of The Galaxy film series came out and is being considered one of the best MCU films Marvel has put out as of lately. I haven’t watched the third film yet, but I like Guardians of The Galaxy. It’s one of the few Marvel properties I like besides Spider-Man. What isn’t there to love about a ragtag team of weirdos embarking on epic space adventures, learning to work together, and not cheese every problem using superpower wizardry or whatever? I like the first two films quite a bit, and James Gunn should keep doing what James Gunn does.
Anyways, let’s talk about a game that came out a year or two ago and everybody forgot after a month. Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy, a third person action adventure game developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix. If you don’t know, Eidos Montreal are the same developers of the well beloved modern Deus Ex series. A franchise that was originally planned to be a trilogy until Square Enix canceled it entirely and forced the staff of Eidos Montreal to make what they wanted to make. The next project Eidos worked on after Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was Marvel’s Avengers, a partnership between Square Enix and Marvel of course. A game with a ton of hype surrounding it, but as time went on and they revealed more about the game players soon started to become concerned. Marvel’s Avengers was an absolute sh*t show. There’s no denying how bad this game was and the corporate greed surrounding this product. Fill to the brim with bugs at launch and even to this day! A gameplay loop that involved you continuously grinding away at enemies and obtaining procedurally generated loot. An uninteresting story, tons of microtransactions, and above all the fact it was a live service game that required internet connection to play. Which is part of the reasons why this game had poor optimization, and if any player wanted to play this with friends as their friends went off to play something else. It was so bad that Square Enix abandoned Marvel’s Avengers this year. Shutting down its online servers and throwing it into the vault of forgotten media. It’s a really big shame this happened, and I can tell this was a game Eidos didn’t even want to work on. They are better than this! They brought us 2 great immersive-sims and they have passion for what they do!
After the catastrophe that was Marvel’s Avengers, Square Enix ordered Eidos Montreal to work on another Marvel licensed game. What better to follow-up a flaming pile of sh*t with another flaming of sh*t. Except this time they actually learned. They learned that maybe sticking with the live service motto was a bad idea, so they swapped over to making a single player title. They then revealed during E3 of 2021 that it would be based on Guardians of The Galaxy and come out later that year. One year straight after the disaster that was Marvel’s Avengers. Not a lot of people were excited for this game and what they showed off during E3 was not enough to rake in interest. Everyone, including myself, were expecting Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy to fail. The game finally comes out and it turns out it wasn’t as bad as players expected. In fact, it turned out to be quite good. It had its flaws and a fair amount of bugs at launch, but it felt more like the game Marvel’s Avengers should have been. A tight focused experience that kept a good pace and did a decent job fleshing out its cast of character. Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy was good, and it surprises me that I’m taking the time today to tell you this. It’s been sitting on my backlog for more than a year now and the reason why I’ve been putting it off for so long is because it seemed like the type of game I wouldn’t enjoy. A hand holding rollercoaster filled with constant shouting, quips, and lackluster combat. Some of which is true, but my expectations were then subverted after the opening hours. I think Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy deserves a second chance. It’s not a must play game, but it is worth your time. Today we’ll be talking about why I quite like Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy and why it deserves your attention.
Story
We follow Peter Quill, leader of the Guardians of The Galaxy who originally hailed from earth. When he was 13, his mother and him were celebrating his birthday. Slicing cake and jamming to the many tunes loaded on his music tape. The family farm gets attacked by aliens and Peter’s mother is killed when she attempts to defend her son. Peter is abducted and taken to the far off distance of space for his relationship to his father. If you’ve seen the movies then you know what they could possibly be referencing. Peter lived a rough life, but eventually grew up to become a mercenary. Taking on dangerous jobs and even doing some illegal stuff to make end’s meet. He also made a couple of peculiar allies during his adventure, and they decided to travel with him as much like him they had nowhere else to go. Drax The Destroyer, a fierce warrior who belonged to a formidable clan until they were whipped out by Thanos. Rocket The Racoon, a racoon that was experimented on until he broke out of captivity. Groot, a sentient tree alien who is the last of his kind. Then there’s Gamora, one of the deadliest women in the galaxy as her adopted father was Thanos. The group doesn’t always get along and it’s because of their mistakes that things occasionally get worse, but they always manage to pull through thanks to Peter’s leadership.
They’ve been traveling for quite some time now, and one of their latest jobs involves salvaging for highly expensive but illegal goods in an abandoned sector known as the Quarantine Zone. A place where Nove Corp, basically the space police, store away things they collected during a big space war from a while back. They were specifically looking for a highly dangerous monster to capture and sell to the beastmaster Lady Hellbender, but when Peter discovers a strange stone and unleashes a weird creature from it they are forced to flee. They do somehow find the creature they wanted to sell though only to figure out it was nothing more than a lamba. This disappoints the Guardians, and to make matters worse they are taken in by Nova Corps who saw them enter the Quarantine Zone. The Guardians are about to be sentenced to prison, but Peter manages to negotiate with Ko-Rel who is the leader of Nova Corp. They fought together during the space war and for a while had a relationship. Peter even notices Ko-Rel has a daughter now, Nikki, and she is doing the best she can to raise her in a strict setting. Instead of being arrested, the group is fined and they need to find a way to pay off the fine. They then formulate a plan and decide to sell one of them to Lady Hellbender instead. Off they go on another grand space adventure! Little do they know something worse is about to happen. Something that’ll doom the galaxy.
Gameplay
Do you the gameplay approach The Last of Us, Evil West, and the recent God of War games have been going for? That’s the type of gameplay structure Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy tries to aim for. Linear narrative focused action adventure games where you go from combat challenge to combat challenge. There are occasionally things in between combat sections to help break up the monotony. Environmental objects that block your way and you must work around them using your abilities or your companions’ abilities. Light platforming and the stereotypical hallway you walk through so you can continue listening to your companions bicker on. Combat is the main focus though and overall it’s alright. We’ll discuss more later on why it’s “alright,” but for now we’ll just talk about how it works.You control Peter Quill, aka Starlord, and you run around the battlefield gunning down your foes. Avoiding enemy attacks, having your allies help you, and doing the best to stay alive. Your two main methods of attacking enemies are blasting them and using a melee attack. Your melee attacks are finicky and easily leave you exposed, so shooting is your main way of fighting. Your blaster fires away quickly, but they can overheat if you fire them too much. Forcing you to wait for them to cooldown, but you can make them cooldown faster. If you time your button press just right you can instantly cool down your weapons and fire a charge projectile. Similar to active reloading in Gears of War and Returnal.
You’ll want to actively reload as enemies are always firing upon you and you need to keep up the pressure especially against stronger foes. As you progress through the game you also unlock the many different elemental guns. Secondary attacks that require energy to work. Ice allows you to freeze foes, shock can electrify them and spread to surrounding enemies, wind can pull them up close to you, and plasma can burn them over time. Certain enemies are more weak to certain elements and sometimes you’ll need to use these elemental attacks to break enemy shields. If you keep the pressure up on a foe you can stagger them. Doing this makes them weaker to attacks and even opens them up for a lethal blow. Everytime you defeat an enemy they drop health and elemental ammo refills. Meaning you want to always be on the move so you can get the supplies you need to survive. You aren’t alone though as you have the rest of the Guardians. They will assist in battle and at any time you can command them to perform a special attack. Chipping away their health easily and sometimes applying a status effect. You can even command allies to use environmental hazards which require no recharge timer at all. You can fill up this meter I like to call the “Huddle Up” meter, and when activated the Guardians will gather together. You must say the right thing to them and this will motivate the Guardians for the rest of the fight. Allowing you to spam their abilities easily while also playing some uplifting licensed music Marvel bought for this game. Okay, let’s see what else I have to say. (Starts flipping through notes.) Huh, that is literally all I have to say. You just walk from combat scenario to combat scenario for 15 hours. I mean there’s the upgrade systems, but honestly those don’t really matter nor need explaining. Just a simple third person action adventure game… alright. Hopefully you can save the galaxy for afterall you are the legendary, extraordinary, wonderful epic Guardians of The Galaxy!
Thoughts
Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy is actually a pretty good game! This is one of more surprising games I’ve played as of recently and I would go as far to say that it's a great game. However, there are a handfu;l of problems and of which I can expect to chase people away from playing it. For example, the gameplay is not that great. It’s not terrible and there were times I had genuine fun, but it’s the weakest aspect of Guardians of The Galaxy. Every level is linearly designed so that you keep pushing forward. It helps the game maintain a good pace, but the levels are made in such a linear way that there’s no reward for going off the beaten path. No secret areas, side discoveries, and a majority of collectibles are scrap to unlock minor perks or costumes to equip your Guardians. None of which change how they play or add much to the gameplay besides being able to look funny. Speaking of perks, most of them aren’t that great. There’s not too many of them, but they don’t really add much to the gameplay and I didn’t feel any stronger by getting them. You can unlock skill points by leveling up and they unlock Guardians abilities, but there’s not a whole lot of them either. Round of applause for Eidos Montreal not creating a skill tree bloated with stuff we don’t need, but each character has like three unlockable skills plus a fourth skill unlocked from progressing the story. You should have every skill by the end of your journey and as if you need any of them as I never found myself experimenting with Guardian abilities. I just selected a random one and they always did the job of chipping away enemy health. The only one I can think of that is remotely useful is Groot’s late game instant health refill, but why bother when can just down a couple foes and get health pickups.
Combat is fine enough. It starts off easy as first as the game pits you off against some really weak enemy types, but everytime it gets much harder. Either by throwing more enemies at you at once or spawning a minboss foe that requires prioritization to bring down. When the game gets hard and combat kicks into full gear that’s when Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy becomes really fun to play. Jetting around the battle, gunning down foes, having your friends slash goes by your side, and watching the explosions and mayhem unfold. The game does enough to make you feel epic during fights. It’s not that hard of a game, and the times I found myself dying was due to playing carelessly. Otherwise, it’s easy to pick up and I respect the amount of accessibility options that are available in the options menu. Allowing you to create your way of playing the game no matter what your disabilities are. Still, combat gets repetitive as the game goes on and near the end is when Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy gets really bloated. As the last chapters of the game transform into mindless shootout after mindless shoot out. I would actually compare this to the last few chapters of Red Dead Redemption 2 as that game tries to compensate for how they got all the good interesting ideas out of the way. One thing I did forget to mention earlier is how the game occasionally has speech checks. Carrying over Deus Ex are the speech checks where you have to say the right things to succeed in a conversation. Succeed and you may get help later down the line, but fail and you may get a worse outcome. It’s a way of offering player choice and reasons to replay the game, but I wouldn’t say making these decisions are hard. Most speech checks will provide you with two to three choices each time and if you pay attention you can easily figure out what’s the right answer. It’s a game that acts like choice matters when in really it doesn’t. We really need to reassess what choice is.
You might be wondering why I enjoyed Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy when the gameplay itself is really mediocre. The story and writing on the other hand is actually quite good. I’m not going to spoil anything, but Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy has a lot of moments that will hit you hard. Whether it’s in an emotional way or trying to hype you up for an epic moment. There’s a lot of big twists and while some of them are really predictable I was intrigued to see how they would end up playing out. Each of the Guardians are extremely likable and even when they are bickering you get to see their bonds strengthen and improve as characters. You get to meet a lot of recognizable characters in the Guardians of The Galaxy universe and visit a ton of spectacular places. I love the art direction for this game. It may not have the best graphics or animation, but my lord the places you visit outside of derelict spaceships are brimming with color. The first chapter of the game plops you in the glowing junkyard filled with pink crystals floating about. The bustling neon lit streets of Nowhere, desert caves, high mountains, and much more. It’s all stunning to look at and there were times I stopped to soak it all in. I love the character designs and I would as far to say I love the design of these Guardians more than the movie designs. As we were saying, the story just hits at the right moments and when it gets sad it gets sad. The story is ultimately about loss and being able to move forward despite it all. Seeing loved ones pass away and not being able to say goodbye. Learning how to cope and eventually let go. Know that they are at peace and what they probably wish of you is to live a happy fulfilling life. It’s no Spiritfarer, but it will get you in the feels. The story is what makes it worth playing.
I’d say the performance overall was good. Not perfect as there were the occasional glitches, bodies ragdolling crazily, and sometimes during scripted sequences mainly the sliding parts the game doesn’t always do what you want it to do. However, it ran swimmingly overall as just to note I played it on the Playstation 5. No framerate dips whatsoever and I even heard it runs fairly well on older consoles like the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. Which proves that single player games are somewhat easier to optimize than multiplayer games. You know, the sh*t shows like Marvel’s Avengers. Yes, we are not going to let go how terrible that game was and how sad it was for Square Enix to screw it over with corporate practices! Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy is great and I do recommend it despite its lackluster gameplay. The game didn’t really sell well at launch and Square Enix often puts it on sale. From thirty dollars to as low as fifthteen dollars. Great bargaining as I found this game much shorter than something like God of War. I don’t expect everyone to enjoy Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy especially since the characters never shut up even during gameplay, but I think some will find it a mostly faithful adaptation of one of the greatest superhero groups. In the end I am going to give Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy an 8/10 for pretty good.
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