Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is an action game developed by the same developers behind Deus Ex. Unfortunately, while this is a fantastic single player game, it was hindered by the terrible reception of Square Enix’s previous Marvel release, Marvel’s Avengers, and didn’t sell too well. Anyway, right off the game, you’re treated with how great the game looks, made even better thanks to the colorful and vibrant aesthetics.
You control Star-Lord for the whole game and the combat system is easy to pick up with a few options. He has his melee attack well as his signature pair of guns. Firing is done by holding the right trigger while you can lock on to an enemy with the left trigger. He’ll eventually gain the ability to use one of four different elements that enemies may be weak to. There’s a health bar and a shield bar, and the other major combat element is that he can activate the abilities of the rest of the team. He can order Groot to use his roots to trap enemies into place, or Rocket to use his cluster bombs to deal damage to many enemies at once. They’re on a cooldown so you cannot just spam them.
The team’s abilities are probably the most interesting part of the combat as they’re flashy and powerful. Each team member gets up to four abilities which are useful. However, you need to go through two sub-menus to execute any one of these abilities so it can be slightly annoying in the heat of things. After each battle, Star-Lord will earn experience points which are used to unlock those abilities you use in battle. Since there are only four in total and you only unlock two additional ones, you don’t accrue them as fast as you would expect.
There’s an interesting mechanic where Star-Lord can command the team to huddle up. This’ll pause the battle as the team gets together and gets a pep talk to buff everyone up, complete with 80s music. It’s so corny and charming that it just works even if it is out of place. The combat, while basic, is frantic and in the end, heaps of fun. When there are a lot of enemies, there’ll be explosions and shots everywhere. The chaotic battlefield fills you with adrenaline, although the aiming and ability usage can be awkward in the frantic action. There are plenty of encounters where it isn’t a standard battle, as in, you’re not supposed to defeat all the opponents. Instead, you need to listen to what your teammates are saying as they’ll give hints on what to do, but can be annoying when it is not immediately clear what you have to do.
Outside of battle, you’ll be going down linear environments. There are simple platforming where Star-Lord’s rocket boost come in handy as it’ll give him a height boost whenever he jumps. There are the typical things such as climbing platforms, shimmying across ledges and squeezing into small gaps. It’s never quiet in the game though as there is always some sort of excellent banter between the characters in the team. Everyone feels perfectly at ease and they play off each other so well. They’ve already worked together for a while so there’s none of the awkward get-to-know-each-other phase to go through. While it is hard to separate these characters from their Marvel Cinematic Universe incarnations at first, you’ll get use to them and the chemistry is spot on.
The game is split into chapters and yes, the game is completely linear without even any sidequests. However, it’s not a straight corridor and surprisingly, you will go across many different types of settings and planets so it is always something different. There ae some side paths leading to collectibles but it’s impressive at how much the developers were able to pack into this. Furthermore, by being a straightforward action-adventure game, it cuts out all the pointless fluff and filler of open world games. It keeps up the pacing of the story so this type of structure is superior is many aspects.
There are many times where the way forward may not be too clear and you’re on a short time. Thus, you may end up failing and having to repeat that section. It doesn’t take up much time but can feel somewhat unfair at times. On the whole, the game doesn’t obviously point out the next objective, there’s no mini-map and if you wanted to see the objective marker, which only marks the general direction, you have to press the right stick to activate Star-Lord’s visor view. You’ll probably also fall off the edges much more often, particularly in combat, but the only penalty is some health lost. All this makes the game more immersive but also more annoying and pace breaking if you couldn’t figure it out.
The story at first feels like a random collection of encounters. The Guardians of the Galaxy travels from place to place without too much connection with each other. They go from trying to track down a monster in a quarantined area in space to getting arrested by Nova Corp and then having to pay off a fine. However, by the middle of the game, these events start to link with each other and you can see what the main plot of the game is. Of course, it’ll eventually lead to the Guardians having to save their galaxy. The second half of the game was actually really clever as it turns out all of the commentary in the first game was basically foreshadowing, and it was amazing when it slotted into place.
There are dialogue choices throughout but a lot of it only just changes the banter. There are a few that will slightly change the events. A scene might play out in one way instead of the other and it gives enough consequences to your actions without massively changing the game. It’s not different enough to replay the game though as the general events and the ending stays the same. It leaves one last surprise at the end of the game but unfortunately, the final boss battle is ultimately lacklustre. It had the potential and did start off being appropriately grand and epic but then it ended up being a fight against normal enemies. Despite that, the story on the whole was fantastic and surprisingly personal since the characters really help sell the game.
Overall, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is an awesome game. It’s rare that we get such a high-quality AAA single player story driven game that’s this well polished and well done. It’s the perfect length, not outstaying its welcome in the 17 or so hours it takes to finish the story. There’s not much to do afterwards although there is a New Game Plus mode. The chemistry of the team, with their banter, personalities and attitude towards everyone else being so consistent and coherent, makes it one of the best displays of camaraderie in gaming.
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