LogFAQs > #968279004

#10: Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/1/4/AAA-H0AADthy.jpg

In 2014, a little movie called Guardians of the Galaxy came out. You're probably heard of it! When I heard of it, I didn't really have any idea at the time that it was a Marvel property - the only point at which I was able to make a connection, initially, was that I think I knew that Rocket was in UMvC3 and then he was also in this. When I heard of it, I just thought it sounded like a fun comedy-space opera romp. I don't watch a lot of movies, I had zero familiarity with the MCU, but I just had the feeling like I really wanted to see this one.

It ended up being a breakthrough hit, both in general but also for me. It's totally my jam - it's got fun characters, good gags, and a surprising amount of heart. I laughed, I teared up a little at the end, ended up being a fan of these dumb goofballs. It ended up being my entry point into the MCU mainly because I just wanted to follow the continued adventures of these characters (who got pretty shortchanged in Endgame but that's neither here nor there). Point is, I wasn't really a fan of any superhero-related properties up until this point, but now I've suddenly carrying water for this one in particular. So then there's this video game based on the Guardians, and unlike past games based on comic book characters, this one I've got a vested interest in. And of course, much like the movie, it's way better than it has any right to be.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/1/5/AAA-H0AADthz.jpg

I guess it shouldn't really be that surprising that a game based on a Marvel property is good. There've been many highly acclaimed Spider-Man games, as well as obviously Marvel vs. Capcom, the X-Men arcade game, etc - they're around. Maybe I have a bad association with superhero games because of Superman 64, but even on the DC side of things there's a long history of good Batman games out there. Or maybe it's a bad association with licensed properties related to movies in general (this isn't movie-based, but it sort of is, I'll get back to that), but hey, even movie-based games gave us Goldeneye, and a few other things. Man, remember movie tie-in games? They used to do that all the time in the 2000's but I guess they stopped because they realized that churning out a bunch of random crap wasn't selling.

Which is what I guess I assumed this was going to be. Can you blame me? Even with all these examples to the contrary, games based on licensed properties just kind of have this stink to them unless they have *very* good pedigrees backing them up, but this is just Eidos Montreal, who made... the Deus Ex sequels, which I guess people liked? But that's about it. I wrote this off when I first heard of it - most attempts to cash in on any Marvel property that isn't Spider-Man haven't produced much. (Was the Telltale GotG game any good? I didn't play it.) But this game got surprisingly good reviews despite poor sales. And because of its poor sales, it went on sale for more than a game of this caliber would normally go on within my window of writing about GotY games. So I took a chance on it. Why not? I took a chance on GotG before, and it was rewarding.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (its full, official title) is a mostly story-driven game with some generic third-person shooter action thrown in there. When I say this game is better than it has any right to be, I mean it. This is like, the most generic big-budget action game possible, in most ways. It's a clumsy amalgamation of uninspired combat, pointless puzzles, and extremely linear level design. But what it does well, it does so well that it can't be ignored, which is be what a Guardians of the Galaxy game should be - funny, irreverent, heartwarming, surprising, and just kind of fun despites its flaws.

The first thing that stood out to me was the characters. It's the same gang as the one in the films, but it's not the same canon as the films, and these aren't the exact same versions of those characters, though they're recognizable enough despite some offputtingly different looks (especially for Peter Quill, who looks a lot more gangly than Chris Pratt's rendition). But that feeling that I was getting some weird off-brand, Wish.com version of these characters subsided within the first hour of play; by the end of the first chapter, I grew fully attached to this group. These doofuses were my Guardians at that point, not the ones from the film.

If you bought this game hoping for character banter, oh boy, I cannot even begin to tell you that you are going to get more than what you bargained for. This game stretches the limits of good taste and turns the banter knob up to 11 - there's barely a single quiet moment in this game where one of the characters isn't yapping about whatever's going on at that moment. It would be grating, if not for the fact that I love these damn characters so much. They usually hit the same beats - Drax is blunt, Gamora is snarky, Rocket is acerbic, Groot is Groot - but their performances are great, the dialog is sharp, and goddamnit I could just stand there and listen to these assholes all day. Sometimes I did! I stood around and waited for them to exhaust their quips before moving on. It really sort of became my reason to play. It makes the story feel alive to me - I'm not the only one experiencing the events of the story, the characters also are and oh boy do they have opinions about this shit and I'm here for it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/1/6/AAA-H0AADth0.jpg

I must have spent like half an hour just chilling on the ship at the start of the game. The environments in this game are great; the Guardians' ship is so cozy and has so many little details crammed into it that I mostly just spent time wandering around the ship and looking at shit while listening to my crew screaming at each other from down the hall. The visuals in this game are a treat throughout - the environments are wild and colorful, a stark repudiation of the usual grays and browns that used to plague these sorts of games at basically every turn, and the urban environments in particular are packed with detail - the chapter that takes place on Knowhere gives the Citadel from Mass Effect a damn run for its money in delivering a living, breathing place full of people and feels way bigger than the map actually is.

I bring up the Citadel on purpose, because this game does feel like it's trying to be a low-rent Mass Effect with more jokes a lot of the time. The combat's pretty simple and gets kind of old pretty fast, lacking the engaging RPG elements and tactics of Mass Effect, but it's got the whole third person shooter with a bunch of squadmates thing going on, it's all set in space, etc. But the great trick this game pulls is that it's not Mass Effect at all - it's actually Life is Strange. The real driver behind this game is its character-driven narrative and the difficult story choices you make along the way. I mention LiS in particular because it's got a particular vibe - the whole 'wandering around rooms and looking at objects and posters on the wall' schtick that Life is Strange has by way of Gone Home, and the way the plot centers around some psychological supernatural shit where the characters have to solve problems by overcoming internal trauma just as much as they have to deal with external problems.