"Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy" Pretty Fun, Warts and All

    I'll be the first to admit I'm not the biggest Guardians of the Galaxy fan. When the first movie came out I didn't watch it, then when the second movie came out I started seeing all of this baby Groot merchandise and it ardently annoyed the moody teen inside me. But people just kept on talking about how great the movie was, so I watched it, and felt it was fine, but cringed pretty hard at Chris Pratt's Starlord doing a dance-off. Yet, I have been in a comic mood, and I'm much more accepting now as an adult I'd like to think. I'm trying to be more accepting of pieces of media that are just earnestly themselves, as cringe as they might be, because I'm pretty sick of self-referential media that just has characters self-deprecate for 80% of the dialogue. So let's talk about this game.

    I will say this immediately off the bat, not in a bad way, but just so you understand what you're getting into. This is basically just an amped-up version of a narrative video game, like those made by Telltale back in the day. It has combat, pretty easy but decently fun combat, some very linear exploration, with puzzles that are fairly easy, and some costumes/cosmetics for you to collect. Basically, if you're not invested in this story, you won't enjoy this video game much in any sort of capacity. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, if you felt games like Life is Strange could use a bit less just walk and inspecting then this might hit that right intersection of gameplay and story.

    Personally? I didn't mind it, after all I do play plenty of narrative-driven games, but I'll save my thoughts on the story later. I will say, the gameplay was surprisingly fun? It's kind of refreshing not having to feel like you have some large open-world that was haphazardly put together with 20+ collectibles in each open area just for the sake of padding runtime (speaking of which I sweat I spent 20 hours on this but Epic Games said I only spent 10 so make of that what you will). That's not to say that the environments look fantastic, or that exploration is perfect. Just that the few things you do collect are costumes which you'll be looking at a bunch, or small items which help you have conversations with crew mates about lore.

    The only issue? The exploration you do have is just kind of thin. First of all if your character goes into any small crevice, or bends backwards, for some reason you just can't go backwards? This seems minor but anytime you might want to go back to look for a collectible it's just so annoying because you can't go backwards, like it feels like it should be easy but it isn't. Secondly, there isn't that much variety in the exploration. I personally felt like they introduced a lot of the cool star lord blaster abilities much too late (one of the slots doesn't get filled until 90% of the game is complete) and there are a hilarious amount of absolutely meaningless sliding minigames. 

    Do not even get me started on the fact that there are heavy guardrails in place, to make sure you stay on the right path, but that does mean on the semi-rare occasion you do end up bypassing them which isn't too difficult, or a glitch happens, you just have to reload from the last checkpoint. One time I had to slide down this one area, but Drax was injured, but there was no way for me to get back up to revive him, since the game has such heavy guardrails on forcing you one way. That also sort of applies to the collectibles, I wouldn't call them that well hidden. Not to mention, they kind of give up on trying variety by the end and just let you fight through waves of enemies, which surprisingly wasn't the worst.

    I will say, they absolutely should have let you play as the other Guardians. Starlord is simply the shooty shooty character, and he kind of grows on you by the end, but he's also kind of annoyingly grating by design. Unlocking the different abilities for the other guardians was cool, I feel like I got a good hang of making everything as easy as possible by the end, but the combat in general was super easy, even in the "normal" difficulty which was how the "game was meant to be played." Like you're telling me I couldn't switch to any of them? Or at least control them for a little bit while I used their ultimates? 

    I suppose that's part of the issue with this game. It's basically a narrative video game, with like some light gameplay elements sprinkled through. The combat isn't quite as good as you want it to be (the huddle-ups could be a little less vague to be honest it's basically just word-matching and leaves too much up to the interpretation of the players), the exploration isn't quite as good as you want it to be. So it's really up to the story to tie it all up. It's the one pillar everything is hoisted up onto. So did I enjoy the story of this game?

    Like I said I'm trying to keep a bit more of an open mind with different approaches to storytelling. I don't want to be one of those old, miserable crones who need everything to be high-brow, or am anti-intellectual, or just generally unhappy. I will say for the most part I enjoyed the story, though I do have some critiques. On the bright side, I do think the message of found family is a very strong through-line that unites every member of the GOTG, honourary or not. It's a good message to convey to people who can sometimes struggle with the fact that the family they have might not be there for them, or are simply not good people. I do also think there are plenty of cameo's and lore bits that should satisfy anyone who was a major fan of the GOTG. This doesn't have to be only for casuals or people whose first time it is seeing this team. I'll even say that the chemistry and the banter between the team was enjoyable, they all had distinct personalities and I enjoyed going out of my way to talk to everyone.

    I will say, sometimes it does lean a little too hard into what it thinks people will enjoy. They spent way too much time during the Peter Quill backstory, I did not need to spend more time in his childhood home, nor did we need the option to explore everything there if we wanted to, especially if you weren't going to change anything. If there was a part you could have added more guardrails to speed it up, especially since it's a memory that for the most part shouldn't be 100% accurate then it was this part. Also Mantis needed to be like 30-40% less aloof. She can be wise or dopey, or get Star Lord's name wrong the first time, but they kept on having her misremember everyone's name as a gimmick and it got old so quickly. Like she remembers all of these futures and pasts, yet can't remember Star-Lord after he corrects her on it? 

    Also I know she's a real comic book character but I was a bit lukewarm on Nikki. I think my main issue is that she shows up in the first or second chapter, and basically disappears until like 60% of the game is through and by then she's already converted so you don't get to interact with her. Then her new outfit is awful once she merges with the fire-stone, I think it's a mix of the costume, the short hair, and the fact that they all clash with each other in terms of colours. It's just not a good look and did not help me feel very endeared towards her near the end. I don't mind the whole mystery around who her parents are, I think it makes sense story-wise. Did her randomly coming in at the end to save everyone with the "woah cool I don't know how I'm doing this but it's working" dialogue make me groan? Yeah but she's a kid so I'll give it a pass. What I won't give a pass for is the dumb ass stuff about Peter's guns. "I just gravitate towards them whenever a loved one is in danger," like alright man there had to have been better ways to introduce new gameplay features. Like the banter whenever you strayed off the path to find collectibles was funny, this not so much.

Final Score: 70/100

    Even still, despite it's many warts, some of which I realize kind of make me sound like a bit of an incel complaining about female characters (if it makes you feel better I could care less for Raker who they tried to make sympathetic and Warlock needed to be like 20% less pompous), the game is good enough to paper it over. A lot of it is cheesy, but at the same time this is the guardians of the galaxy they should be a little cheesy. Star Lord is someone whose literally stuck culturally in the 90's and he's trying to get this group of misfits to connect with each other it makes sense that he's an annoying bundle of optimism. Like a lot of my complaints can be pretty easily hand-waved away. Frankly, most of mine are game-play wise, I think if they really honed in on making it a bigger and better aspect of the game, really making it super-fun, then I would have been able to raise my rating. But as it stands, this game is fine, and pretty decent, and maybe enough to get me to revisit all of the GOTG movies too.