Guardians of the Galaxy Review

Played on Xbox One (base)

Developed by Eidos-Montréal

Released 26th October 2021

Let me take you back to September 2020; Marvel's Avengers launched and happened to be one of the worst games of that year. So when Guardians of the Galaxy was announced 9 months later as another Square Enix-Marvel partnership project, it was obvious the reception would be mixed. Fortunately, everything, from the initial decision to the release signified that this game wasn't like its failure of a cousin, but instead, a great come-up story. Eidos chose the Guardians of the Galaxy as the stars of their game, with Game Director Dugas and Narrative Director DeMarle explaining that the Guardians were often seen as "underdogs", similar to how they think the game studio was viewed in the public's eye. From experimenting with cooperative gameplay and multiplayer to winning the 'Best Narrative' award, Eidos acts as the first, new superhero competition Insomniac has had with Spider-Man.

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Story

The story was very engaging throughout. If you've watched the MCU movies of these heroes, then you know exactly what to expect from this narrative: a slightly dysfunctional team ends up saving the universe from a world-ending threat. More specifically, this game follows the Guardians as they try to stop Grand Unifier Raker's Universal Church of Truth from mind-controlling the whole galactic populace. I heavily enjoyed this narrative. It's greatly paced, full of amazing moments, planets and characters and the development that each of the characters and environments receives is phenomenal. Even the most subtle details of each interaction have some strong attention paid to them. For example, throughout the game you'll hear the Guardians "swearing" but since the profanity is vastly different in space than it is on Earth, the foul-mouthed replacements ranged from "Flark" to "Scut" - something that exclusively happened in the comics up until this game's release.

The story felt like it had no flaw; it didn't overstay its welcome, there weren't any convoluted or cringy moments (at least not from what I remember), and whether the situation is supposed to be heartfelt, comedic or dire, it always felt like the feeling of the scene stuck the landing. The only drawback that you can encounter from this narrative is dependent on how much you enjoy the Guardians as characters and superhero stories in general, or how high your expectations are set prior to your playthrough. From this, I can tell you that my overall experience was nothing but great, but just barely hit the bar I set for the game after all the positivity I heard from it.

Gameplay

The gameplay was simplistic, yet effective. While it may feel like the game is stuffed with more cutscenes and story-driven moments than actual combat encounters, the actual ratio between the two is the other way around. The reason this occurs is that the gameplay rapidly becomes repetitive and doesn't have any standout features, however, it still is a good time. Even though the gameplay is limited to playing Star-Lord, you're able to command and receive the assistance of your fellow Guardians, each with their own abilities to use - Rocket's Five Barrel Barrage, Gamora's Shadow Strike, etc. These abilities are awesome and make up for not being able to play as the Guardians, and, in fact, work much better when they're cooperative allies than playable characters, especially when you combine all their abilities together to completely annihilate the enemies. The only real problem that occurs with this is that in the heat of battle, traversing your allies' abilities can feel stressful and can cause some grave mistakes, especially when playing on harder difficulties.

The AI for the Guardians is also quite great as they're able to assist in combat without them feeling like baggage that's weighing down on your potential. The AI is unique for each character as they're based on the character's personality. For instance, Drax often attacks multiple enemies at once and is first into the fight, which aligns with his thirst for glorious combat.

So, what is it like to actually play as Star-Lord? Well, it's not that bad. The player's interaction with the battlefield mostly consists of slightly numbing shooting and time-focused reloads, similar to Gears of War's perfect reload mechanic. You have a decent depth with your playstyle, in the form of abilities and alternative fires. Firstly, Star Lord's abilities are quite fascinating, but they simply don't have the same epic factor as his fellow Guardians. Secondly, as you progress through the game, Star-Lord will slowly unlock multiple different elemental modifications to his weapon that obviously work better against certain enemies, depending on the firing mode. For example, you can use a rapid-fire icicle launcher that will freeze the jelly-like enemies, while the air-grabbing shot will pull in long-ranged enemies like snipers, close enough for a melee attack. These elemental changes did help spice up the combat once in a while, but with how basic these effects were and how little they actually change your playstyle, they act more as a nice feature rather than a core mechanic.

An issue I do have to address is the lock-on. While it's not the worst thing ever and isn't too brutal on your camera, the flickering between enemies was slightly aggravating as it would lock on to the wrong enemy on way too many occasions. There is also a component of the game where you're able to craft mods that give you upgraded stats like an increased shield recovery rate, however, they didn't have a prominent effect on my experience of the game. Other things I can quickly mention are: the enemies were nicely telegraphed but lacked tremendously in any standout visual and gameplay design, the level design wasn't anything worth highlighting, the small puzzle sections where you used your team's abilities to solve the problem were entertaining and downtime in between different planets where you can interact with the Guardians with some nice, world-building dialogue was brilliant.

Bossfights

The bossfights weren't anything special for the most part. The duels would either be great mechanically, with some engaging attacks to dodge and counter or be visually rich, with some of the strongest designs and spectacles of the game. Unfortunately, nearly none of the bosses would equally share the quality between the two features. The two bosses that did, however, excel in these foundations were the Dweller in the Darkness and Fin Fang Foom. Their monstrous designs were a sight to behold, while the actual fight against them was one of the few times in my whole life where I didn't mind fighting a boss that was a part of the arena and created environmental hazards, rather than being in the arena and engaging with the player.

Characters

Guardians of the Galaxy won and was nominated for plenty of 'Best Narrative' of 2021. While the story itself is good enough to earn this award, the characters and the writing are what propelled this game to reach such achievements. Initially, I didn't really see what the fuss was all about with this supposedly 'best-written game ever'. However, it didn't take long for me to stand corrected, with some greatly vibrant dialogue between characters that felt lively and realistic, compared to the artificiality that some games have with their writing. The Guardians bicker, talk over each other, crack jokes together and convey their emotions, whether it's anger or remorse, quite clearly, and I won't even bother telling you how this applies to nearly every character, whether they're minor or major.

I still don't think this writing is the best I've ever seen, with games like The Last of Us and God of War (2018), holding the bar quite high, however, the quality is still one of the strongest that I've seen in a while. Some people might find the constant comedic element habituating and the emotional moments towards the final act of the game to be underwhelming, however, I thoroughly enjoyed them and it made the narrative all the more engaging. One problem I do have is how the characters don't stop talking. THEY. TALK. SO. MUCH. So much so, it feels like this game introduced me to audible clutter with how much they exchange quips, insults, jokes, questions, etc.

Atmosphere

I can tell that the atmosphere is superb, however, I was unable to fully experience its glory. Whether it was because my Xbox is close to flatlining, or the game doesn't have the best last-gen optimisation, it felt like I only experienced 60% of the game, visually and audibly. The audio would pop in and out way too much ruining the script-heavy or music-amped scenes as I sat there waiting for it to either return or sync back up. If this was an action-heavy game then I might've let this pass, but with how instrumental dialogue is in a narrative-driven game like this, and how much the game emphasises the music, it felt like I missed out on the strongest parts of this 15-hour journey. Yet, for the parts I did manage to experience fully, it was pretty great. The visuals are amazing with some of the most interesting environmental designs I've seen from the 2021 catalogue. It was weird, it was intriguing and it perfectly fits the whole vibe that the Guardians of the Galaxy bring via movies or comics. The animations were also noticeably good, with how fluid and dynamic the characters were when fighting, such as in those awesome team-joint combo finishers. The OST is also fantastic. While I'm not the biggest fan of rock and soul music that propagated across the 70s and 80s, it works wonders in this game's setting, world and energy that the characters radiate.

Story - 8.5/10

Gameplay - 7.5/10

Bossfights - 7/10

Characters - 8.5/10

Atmosphere - 8/10

Good

One of the best Marvel games to ever be released and I do hope that with the critical success that the game received, Eidos will create a much-deserved sequel despite underperforming financially.