Guardians comes from the same
publisher and appears to be made of
the same stock, except that this time,
it’s a singleplayer only campaign and
the player is restricted to the least
interesting member of
the troupe, Star-Lord.
There is a pervasive
focus-tested coldness
that corrodes so many
products that bear the
Marvel name in 2021,
and I wasn’t optimistic
that Eidos Montreal
would be capable of
overcoming the taint.
That is until I solved a puzzle
involving a psychedelic space llama
who I needed to coax into chewing
up some wires on the ship. The beast
was either enchanted or repelled by
each crewmember’s singing voice –
he’d come closer to Star-Lord’s
melody, run away from Rocket
Raccoon’s, and so on – so we all took
turns belting out Bobby McFerrin’s
Don’t Worry Be Happy until our
mercurial llama was finally in place.Guardians is full of sequences that
capture the odder, funnier, lighter
side of Marvel’s cosmic expanse. I ran
into a Soviet test-flight golden
retriever blessed with celestial
hyper-intelligence, and
in a moment of
weakness, he admitted
to me how much he
missed his former puny
dog-intellect, those
endless afternoons
chasing tennis balls in
the front lawn. There’s
a fourth-wall-breaking
left-hook, taken right out of the
Arkhamplaybook, tied to an amazing
twist that caught me hilariously
off-guard. Hell, deep into the game’s
final acts, I watched as the
permanently chaffed Rocket Raccoon
faced his one lingering trauma thanks
to the encouragement and support of
his teammates. The scene worked as
a better emotional payoff than
anything I’ve seen the character do
on film. Guardians of the Galaxyhas
its heart in the right place... if onlythe game itself weren’t constantly
sabotaging those efforts with
exhausting technical jank.DRAX, MURDERER
LikeAvengersbefore it, Guardians of
the Galaxyis steeped deep in the
character-action tradition. You wrest
control of Star-Lord, as I mentioned
earlier, and unload an endless stream
of photon beams at the toothy
beasties, corrupt interplanetary cops
and deranged cult leaders that stand
in your way. A bar on the left side of
the screen fills up as the player deals
damage, punctuated with Marvel-fied
versions of those vintage Devil May
Cry descriptors – “Marvelous!”
“Uncanny!” The remaining
Guardians come into play with your
unlockable special power rolodex. I
could ask Groot to bind my enemies
to the floor with his roots, or
summon up Drax for an earth-
shattering ground pound. But outside
of those instances, your fellow
superheroes are relegated to the
nameless faces that tend to populate
Call of Dutylevels, offering the faint
image of warfighting solidarity,
without actually doing anything all
that productive.
It gets the job done. The combat
isn’t where Guardians of the Galaxy
shines, but it is both flashy enough
and simple enough to sustain some of
the more active portions of the plot.
Strangely, I found that the villain-
fighting got more engaging the closer
I came to the game’s conclusion. In
the beginning, armed with only a pair
of pea-shooters and a handful of
basic attacks, Guardians is a shooting
gallery with no pulse. But when
you’re popping off multiple
cooldowns at once and enjoying a
fully optimised arsenal, the design
gets close to that overwhelming,
splash-panel, polychromatic eye
candy that is so often prioritised in
the films. Laser beams, bombs,
swords, and Drax flying in off the top
rope like a punishing Marvel vs
Capcomassist.I
did not expect to root for Guardians ofthe Galaxythis much. The
game was weighed down by so many stagnant vibes during its
pre-release cycle. The shadow ofMarvel’sAvengers, Square Enix’s
2020 attempt to transmute the total media superiority of the MCU
into a living co-op videogame, loomed particularly large. That
game’s cast of Hollywood facsimiles left customers ice cold, and while the
core narrative was solid, nobody enjoyed the meaningless currency grind.MOONAGE DAYDREAM
MARVEL’S GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is charming, heartwarming,and beset byissuesByLukeWinkieIt’s full of
sequences that
capture the
funnier, lighter
side of MarvelNEED TO KNOWWHATIS IT?
A singleplayer space
adventure full of
moral choices
EXPECT TO PAY
£50
DEVELOPER
Eidos Montreal
PUBLISHER
Square EnixREVIEWED ON
Windows 10, GeForce
GTX 1070, Intel Core
i7-9700 CPU, 16GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
No
LINK
bit.ly/30Ml7yJTOP OF THE POPSThe objective, scientificranking ofthe Guardians ofthe GalaxyDRAX
Sure, he doesn’t get
jokes and he’s
animated only by
grief, but he’ll never
let you down.GROOT
It’s a giant tree with
restorative powers
and super-strength.
Great in a scrap, if
bad at conversation.GAMORA
A powerful ally, but
perhaps a little quick
to threaten our lives
over every single
perceived slight.ROCKET
RACCOON
Look man, I get that
you’ve had a hard life,
but do you always
need to be a dick?STAR-LORD
This game would be
ten percent better if
Star-Lord was eaten
by the Dune worm in
the first act.1 2 3 4 5Marvel’sGuardians ofthe GalaxyREVIEW