Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Review

As a sucker for anything Marvel, I was thrilled when I first saw Guardians of the Galaxy back at E3. But my excitement was soon tempered when I realised it was being made by the same developers who made Marvel’s Avengers. I was almost ready to be disappointed again so I dialled down my expectations to the minimum towards the release.

Very soon into the game, you will realise that Guardians of the Galaxy (referred to as GOTG henceforth) is nothing like the Avengers; it’s in fact quite the opposite. The story is phenomenal from beginning to end and kept my eyes glued to the screen for over five hours straight. GOTG is a third-person narrative-driven game, much like the Batman and Spider-Man game franchises, so you don’t really have to worry about there being the same looter-shooter aspect.

Players take control of Peter Quill, the avowed leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy, who are an infamous heroes-for-hire group in outer space. The team consists of Gamora, AKA the deadliest woman in the galaxy; Rocket, who is a raccoon-like engineer; Drax, a green war hero; Groot, the man-tree hybrid creature; and finally Star-Lord (Peter Quill), a regular human with jet boosts and cool handguns. Initially, the team just feels like a bunch of bratty misfits who are arguing—constantly. There wasn’t a single minute that passed by where all of the Guardians considered being quiet.

Drax and Gamora have an ick for each other, whereas Rocket and Star-Lord both have control issues, top that off with all of them having the temper of an 8-year-old. The only humane teammate was Groot, which is ironic because he's a tree. But this constant bickering adds flavour to the game, we see them try to overcome their differences as we proceed further; not to mention that the quarrels also consist of funny dialogues.

The game’s approach to combat is intuitive, and the gameplay mechanics are complex, giving players a lot of options to choose from. You only have direct control over Star-Lord, but you can give commands to your teammates guiding them on what to do. Each character has a set of unique abilities, but you’re limited to only one ability each to start off with and have to unlock the rest further into the story.

To issue a command to other teammates, you have to hold down the bumper then button-press the character you want to choose an ability for and then button-press again to confirm which one of the four abilities you want to choose. For Star-Lord, the process is similar but you have to press the left stick after holding down the bumper instead. In the middle of combat, choosing your attack and commanding your team can turn out to be overly complex for some but it’s nothing you can’t get accustomed to. For what it’s worth, I actually enjoyed this mechanic.

Another highlight of the combat was the ‘huddle mode’ which comes in handy when things are slipping out of hand. Your teammates start huddling around you and, as the leader, you have to give them a motivational speech that boosts their morale; this gives the characters a temporary damage boost and recharges abilities a lot faster. Huddle mode also starts playing really badass background music, which makes the combat feel even more satisfying.

I did have some nitpicks in the gameplay department. Rarely, your teammates will start acting totally dysfunctional and bump into each other while performing their moves which makes the combat feel less fluid. Similarly, the aforementioned huddle mode mechanic requires you to press both bumpers simultaneously, which is also the case if you want to use your special handguns and command your teammates at the same time. So in some situations, I did find myself mistakenly wasting the huddle mode in relatively easier encounters.

Visually, the game is stunning. It gives you two modes to choose from—either quality or performance and after playing both, I can safely say that the performance mode with 60 FPS is the way to go. The quality mode does have minor upgrades in graphics if you look close enough but it’s nothing major enough to sacrifice 60 FPS for.

Guardians of the Galaxy is set in a sci-fi world with unique level designs. During your playtime you’ll travel through several biomes with unique colour palettes; some may be dark while others will have colours that pop far more. Character designs are also extremely well done and oftentimes they are able to portray emotions without the necessity of speaking.

The game has a linear path but still offers you some exploration. There are many collectibles spread throughout as well as various other items to find including some lore, MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) references, and outfits that are actually worth looking for—all those add to the game’s replay value. The Guardians also have their movie-based costumes available and there are some super cool cameos as well.

Next comes the audio, which is an integral part of the game. If you’re familiar with the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, you must know how seriously Quill takes his music, there is no exception in this iteration. Peter is obsessed with metal and through a flashback, we see young Peter’s favourite band called Star-Lord (which is where he got his superhero name from). The soundtrack of the game includes titles from Iron Maiden, New Kids On The Block, KISS and more. There is also the infamous RickRoll music ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ blasting on the speaker in the midst of combat. On the whole, the music makes a really good impact on the game.

The dialogue is just as significant and is just as well done. In fact, it is nailed to a point where the quipping of the Guardians at each other feels natural. It actually starts to feel weird if they’re not always disagreeing. There are also several dialogue options and decisions that modify the story but on a very minor scale. They may save you from a horde of incoming enemies or provide you with backup, but they aren’t an ‘alter your story’ kind of situation where the endings will be different.

There are very few downsides to the game, except for some of the glitches I encountered that were really annoying. For instance, there was this bug I encountered several times; when you reached a new checkpoint, your character would just freeze unless you restarted the checkpoint from the menu, you don’t lose any progress but it was frustrating. Similarly, this one time I got stuck while being thrown off an edge and had to restart the checkpoint, losing all progress in the battle. There were no game-breaking bugs however, and the ones I mentioned can easily be fixed with a patch.

Right now there are only two graphic modes, and none of them offers ray-tracing, which is a downside for me. I encountered some significant frame drops later into the game as well but thankfully they weren’t consistent. Having said that, I have to mention again that the game looks phenomenal and is largely bug-free.

All in all, if you love comic book based games or any narrative-based games, GOTG is a very worthy candidate. If you’re sceptical like I was before buying it due to the studio’s last superhero game being extremely mediocre, you have nothing to worry about. Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the best games I’ve played this year with an outstanding storyline. It is unarguably the best newer superhero game available on Xbox right now.