Guardians of the Galaxy Overcomes Clunky Gameplay with Sharp Storytelling

While the combat can be chaotic, it’s better than the half-assed puzzle sections, which often break down to a cheaply rendered graphic in which Star-Lord uses his visor to find electrical switches or other things in the environment that need to go boom. The truth is that much of “GotG” is very dialogue heavy—you even get to choose response options for Quill like in a Telltale Game that can impact the story—and someone must have decided that something more interactive was needed to break that up, but it feels like that was an afterthought late in the process.

So what works about “Guardians”? First, it looks great, smoothly transitioning between cut scenes and action in a way that gives the whole experience the feel of a feature animated film. And the voice work is stellar with each of the performers really breaking free from the household names that played these characters in the MCU. Without spoiling anything, “Guardians of the Galaxy” is about a potentially universe-ending threat, but the plotting allows for character detail and background on each of the Guardians to emerge in a way that’s organic to the story.

Quill is the lead—and his background with his mother, along with his actual powers have been radically altered from what fans will remember from the films—but the writing here allows for each character to be far more three-dimensional than is typical for a superhero action game. (Heck, there’s more meat on the bones of the storytelling here than is typical for a lot of recent superhero action movies.) It’s a story about teamwork, of course, but that element isn’t cheaply earned or tacked on. Most action games boil teamwork down to “destroying together,” but the story here (and the gameplay) requires the Guardians to lean on each other to do nothing less than save the entire universe. It also helps a great deal that the dialogue is often sharp and funny.

A superhero action game with better writing than action? 2021 certainly hasn’t been short on surprises. While I wish some of the combat and puzzle sections could have been refined in “Guardians of the Galaxy” those elements could be fixed in a follow-up as long as they don’t lose this title’s sharp focus on character. After all, every good superhero story demands a sequel.

Square Enix provided a PS5 review copy of this title. It will be released tomorrow, October 26th.

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