Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy – Review

Even people who are not into a lot of the superhero movies that have been released throughout the last decade have heard of the Guardians of the Galaxy. The legendary characters have gotten a lot of attention over the years, especially the loveable Groot and the scoundrel Rocket. Even though the story of the Guardians takes place across the galaxy, Marvel eventually introduced them via the Avengers movies, making superhero movies in space slightly more accessible. Now, after the mediocre Marvel’s Avengers game, we get another Square Enix published title that is based on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. In all honesty, we dived in with low expectations thinking this would be just like Marvel’s Avengers, albeit with a space theme. We were gravely mistaken and soon found ourselves enthralled by this original storyline.

Story

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy offers a story that might look familiar, but is in fact not. The game could be considered to play out in an alternate galaxy, as it differs from the story we have come to know and love from the MCU installments. That being said, the story being unraveled here is easily on par with the story in the movies and actually captivated us right off the bat. We’ll get to follow around the Guardians of the Galaxy, who have already been together for a short while, after Thanos has been killed. Drax defeated Thanos, and now they have formed the merry band of loveable scoundrels we already know to a certain degree. The group’s next dodgy mission leads them to the Quarantine Zone, where they wish to capture a so-called monster to sell it for a lot of money. Sadly, the plan does not go as intended, and the Guardians release a strange being in the Quarantine Zone, they soon after get arrested, and eventually have to scramble to get the money together for their fine. Throughout the course of this story, Peter interacts with characters from his past, while we learn more about his origin story, as well as some background information about the other Guardians, who have led somewhat different lives in this version of the story.

Graphics

Even though we played the game on our PlayStation 5, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy feels like a high-tier PS4 title, albeit with some updated textures. That being said, it’s so much fun going through all the different areas the game has on display. There’s a lot of clutter in zones that have some story content on offer, while environments that spawn enemies are usually a bit emptier but have impressive backdrops. More than once we found ourselves standing still to take in the view(s), to then continue bashing and smashing our way through the different locations of the game. The facial animations of the characters were superbly handled, and the lip-syncing was actually quite good. We did encounter a fair few clipping errors, texture popping, and frame drops along our journey.

Sound

The sound design is absolutely stellar. Outside of the classic hits that will be playing in the background, or via the music installation in your ship, you’ll have loads of voiced lines to go through. Sometimes there is that much random dialogue, that you just have to stand still for a bit, making sure you don’t trigger something story-related by progressing and perhaps miss out on a few lines of the random banter that is going on. The voices match the characters perfectly, and unlike the Avengers game, we didn’t constantly compare the game to its cinematic counterparts. The constant flow of dialogue did make it so that some subtitles would not render, making it hard to read what was going on during certain occasions.

Gameplay

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is a story-driven action-adventure game that sticks closely to the basics of the genre. From start to finish, the game will put you in different scenarios where you must fend off enemies in order to progress the story. As the story progresses, you’ll unlock new perks, abilities, and so on. It’s actually all very basic stuff, but it works perfectly given the proper mix between story and action. The game offers different difficulty options, but the combat is somewhat basic and we find that the story is the focal point of this title. Nonetheless, those seeking a bigger challenge will probably find some fun by cranking up the difficulty level.

As you plow through the game, you’ll also unlock elemental attacks, which add a bit of depth to the combat, as some enemies are more vulnerable to certain attacks. On top of that, you’ll be able to give commands to Drax, Groot, Gamora, and Rocket, allowing for heavier hits, stuns, area damage, and so on. Sadly, you never truly get to play with these characters at any point in the game, which somewhat feels like a missed opportunity. Outside of combat, you can also give commands to the other Guardians to hack devices, move heavy objects, create bridges, or slice through obstacles. Thanks to this, the game has some simple puzzles to overcome, breaking the otherwise monotonous combat segments. Nonetheless, there is a lot of fun to be found in the game’s simple approach to combat, exploring, and solving puzzles. We were often not a fan of the QTE prompts in the middle of engaging cinematics.

All of that being said, the game does have a fair amount of bugs present where you get stuck in objects, button inputs don’t register, command prompts that never disappear from the screen, and so on. Even though the game saves on a very regular basis, it’s quite annoying to reload an old checkpoint because the command to open a door from 15 minutes ago is still floating in the middle of your screen. We also noticed that running into certain elevators too fast may not spawn the control panel to operate the elevator. If it were not for this cartload of bugs, the game would have received a higher score.

Conclusion

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is an absolute blast to play through, even though it does feel a bit linear and buggy at times. We very much enjoyed the story from start to finish and loved the alternate storyline that is being told in this standalone adventure. The game is an amusing action-adventure game, that is accessible for (fairly) young and old. We would not mind more releases such as this one, instead of the cash-grab formula that we saw in Marvel’s Avengers. As a closing note, we have to give loads of credit to the writing team of this game, as there is just so much present in terms of random banter between the characters, making this such an immersive experience.

Ibuki

View My Other Posts

Aspiring ninja.

Related Items

Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival (PS5) – Review

PC, PS5, Reviews, Switch, Xbox Series X/S

Earl vs. the Mutants – Review

PC, Reviews

Undisputed – Review

PC, PS5, Reviews, Xbox Series X/S

LEGO Horizon Adventures – Review

PC, PS5, Reviews, Switch