The latest action-adventure game from Marvel has been out for nearly 2 weeks now. The Guardians of the Galaxy game is developed by Eidos-Montreal and published by Square Enix. The game was released for multiple consoles including Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S back on October 26, 2021.
First Initial Thoughts
After playing around about an hour of the video game thus far, I’ve had no issues and a lot of fun playing this character version of Starlord from Marvel Comics. The story so far has been very interesting, to say the least, and the environment which opens the game up has been very well crafted and designed.
I went in not knowing what to expect from a game that focuses on a group of characters but only being able to control one, however, this is not a problem because of the mechanics in the game that the developers have created and allowed users to use throughout the game. You play as Starlord but throughout the game, you can tell characters what to do whether that be Groot creating a bridge or Gamora being the deadly assassin she is and taking down enemies very easily.
Another thing that caught me by surprise was the menus before you head into the actual game. It allows you to customize the story and game to how you would like, you obviously have the “difficulty” selector but it expands on that by adding options to give Starlord more damage, do more damage or take it, as well as giving you an option to choose how slow you can make the Guardians in the game.
Another standout feature was the banter and interactions that the characters have while you explore the surroundings you are in. It honestly captures the Guardians of the Galaxy movie truly well.
Let’s jump into it.
Story
Right from the get-go, I was immersed into the story, where the game opens up on Earth and you are speaking with Peter Quill’s mother, only to be woken up by Drax back on the Milano. The game opens up with the Guardians of the Galaxy going into a “Quarantine Zone”. This universe’s backstory is fantastic and is one I hope we get to explore more.
The story implements elements from throughout the Marvel Universe like the Soul Stone, this plays a major part in the story going forward. After a while in the Quarantine Zone, the Guardians are later picked up by the Nova Corps and when they are being escorted through the ship, we get a tease of a character who we’d later interact with even more.
The story is the typical Guardians story, making their way through the universe making money, doing jobs, and well, pulling off cons against people who they really shouldn’t. Back on the Nova Corps ship, we get introduced to Ko-Rel and her daughter Nikki. Throughout the cutscenes on the ship, we get hints of the backstory between Quill and Ko-Rel which later leads to Quill believing that Nikki is his daughter.
Throughout the rest of the story, we see just how the Guardians work, where you as Quill, get to choose many options throughout the game to decide on decisions and directions the story wants to go, along the way you’ll either upset members of the Guardians or keep them happy.
Later on, we get introduced to Adam Warlock who has that same energy that Quill and Thor have in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The story begins to get even crazier when the literal galaxy begins to get taken over. I had fun exploring throughout the story as well as continuing the main story.
Throughout the main story, the game itself gives you that sense of open-world where you can go off and explore in different parts of the world which you can easily get distracted going off and finding parts for upgrades or even different suits for each character.
In the story itself, you come across no shortage of the same AI to fight, it gives you a wide range of differences throughout each world, some enemies might be aliens, some might be Nova Corps, and some might even be Chitauri. Not to mention the different boss fights throughout the story, although around chapter 12 I was getting quite bored of fighting big robot-type villains.
The end of the story gave the p[layer such an emotional rollercoaster of a ride with the story touching the player deep with storylines involving Drax and his family, the friendship between Rocket and Groot, Rockets past about him being an experiment, Peter Quill with Nikki/Peters mom, and finally the relationship between Gamora and Nebula.
In this story, the game truly made you feel sorry for this group of Guardians, it touched on some emotional things involving them and gave each character a sense of purpose and pride. It delivered perfectly for the characters.
Gameplay
After watching trailers and YouTube videos on the game, I went in not knowing what to expect because the gameplay is you essentially controlling Peter and Peter only, however, in the gameplay it gives you an option to control the characters by telling them which moves to use or which enemies to attack.
The automatic team-up moves that were implemented into the gameplay is actually really great and it flows so well. The upgrades to the Guardians movesets were incredible and so easy to come back, all you truly needed to do was to progress the story, defeating villains and earning the ability points.
The gameplay also had such a great feature of how to unlock the different suits for each character. As well as upgrading each member of the Guardian’s abilities, you could also give them different suits with each character having around 6-7 different suits you could get.
This is where my time went mostly. I had fun exploring and finding different suits. It’s not like Marvel’s Avengers where you can earn some suits in a battle pass system or spending in real-life money, you didn’t have to pay for any. All you needed to do was explore and find a little box with a pink/purple light and hold the button and boom, suit unlocked.
It wasn’t also suits created purely for the game either, it was suits from previous Guardian’s stories as well as even added the Marvel Cinematic Universe suits to the game. I rocked those suits for the entirety of the game, they were so well done from live-action to animated form, it truly felt like I was rocking with Dave Bautista’s version of Drax.
Another huge feature for me was the “rally cry” feature where throughout the fighting, you earn a meter bar which when filled, you press L1 and R1 (PS5) and you can give a speech to the group if you choose the right answer you as well as the rest of the Guardians get buffs and shields, if you choose wrong, only the player would receive this.
When this was going on, music would play in the background and it was the perfect playlist. It truly felt like that time period where Peter was taken from Earth. I absolutely loved this feature and used it as much as I could.
Dislikes
01. Peters’s ability to use his boots make him able to fly, I don’t know if it was just me but I didn’t use this feature at all, I tried it once and you literally hovered off the ground for around 3 seconds and that was it. No flying, no nothing. It sucked.
02. There was a tiny glitch where on one part of the story I was exploring and found a suit box which was across a tiny ledge. To get across you needed to use the analog stick to maneuver along with it, when I tried it and made it across, I would try to walk to the box and it would keep putting me back on the ledge, I walked across it 5 times.
02. Towards the end of the game, there was a part where you would need to fly into a ship and land, but to get there you would need to fight your way through around 30 ships and they would just absolutely destroy you. I failed at this 3 times before I eventually gave up and just ignored the fighting.
Favorite Moment
I have a few favorite moments from this story but if I had to choose, it would be the end when the story would force the player to choose answers to bring Drax back and to move forward from his family’s passing. I absolutely loved this scene, I felt so bad for Drax, something which the live-action movies have never made me feel.
Verdict
A surprising entry for my Game of the Year. As a story-driven player, this was right up my alley, I absolutely loved the story from the beginning. The combat and gameplay were both equally amazing. The characters were well crafted and designed and voiced tremendously well. Overall a solid, fun, and entertaining game.
Rating: 8.8/10
Photo: Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
The rating
Story - 10
Graphics - 7.5
Sound - 10
Gameplay - 9
Customization - 6
Characters - 9
Content - 10
8.8
Great
A surprising entry for my Game of the Year. As a story-driven player, this was right up my alley, I absolutely loved the story from the beginning. The combat and gameplay were both equally amazing. The characters were well crafted and designed and voiced tremendously well. Overall a solid, fun, and entertaining game.
