DUE
26 OCTINNIT MARVELLOUS?
When a publisher like Square Enix
gets hold of the Marvel licence, you
naturally expect big things – and
even more so when the word
‘Avengers’ is uttered.
But it’s fair to say last year’s
video-game take on everyone’s
favourite superhero collective
was a mixed bag, with a host of
performance issues hurting the
live-service title at launch, and
grindy post-game content failing
to give players much incentive to
stick around once the entertaining
campaign was done with.
So what’s next? Well, it’s perhaps
not surprising that we’re getting a
Guardians of the Galaxy game this
year... but we wouldn’t have put any
money on it being the story-driven,
entirely single-player title unveiled
at E3. In Marvel’s Guardians of
the Galaxy you play as Peter Quill,
better known as Star-Lord, the
self-appointed leader of those
intergalactic outlaws, in an original
comics-inspired adventure that
looks very promising indeed.
And we hope Star-Lord is your
favourite Guardian, because you
only play as him. When beating up
aliens in the game’s third-person
combat sections, Quill is able to
issue instructions to the other
AI-controlled Guardians in real
time, while there will be dialogue
choices that affect how the story
plays out. For example, in the fairlylengthy E3 gameplay demo, we
saw the Guardians squabbling over
whether to sell Rocket or Groot
in an attempt to make a bit of fast
cash, with the final decision being
left to Star-Lord. It’s a fun idea
that seems well suited to a game
featuring the Guardians, whose
strange alliance is what makes
them so watchable.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a
Guardians of the Galaxy game
without a soundtrack rammed
full of ’80s bangers, and here they’ll
kick in when you trigger certain
special attacks – because what
scrap in space can’t be improved
by a bit of Bonnie Tyler? It’s due out
in October.MARVEL’S GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY PS5, PS4, Xbox, PC, Switch (via cloud)