Guardians of the Galaxy is a game that builds on the stories presented in 2007’s comics series ‘Annihilation’ and ‘Annihilation: Conquest’ andGuardians of the Galaxy is a game that builds on the stories presented in 2007’s comics series ‘Annihilation’ and ‘Annihilation: Conquest’ and 2008’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ team. This game is based on the characters and events from the comics, not the movie universe and that only serves to aid this game in every way. This is definitely for people who like story-games, if you’re looking for something that you can turn off your brain and just shoot, this is not for you. For this game is like a BioWare and Telltale game put together.
The story is immersive and completely engaging. I felt every moment with the characters and loved each time I got to interact with them or when we got to hear their backstory. I truly felt that the growth the Guardians went through was earned. There were moments where you got to make a choice, in dialogue, in character events, and like Telltale games the characters would remember it and have an effect down the line. And like a BioWare game, the way you interacted with your team could help rally them together or set them against each other. Everyone was well voice-acted and there were so many moments where I was just laughing because the comedy was gold. To say too much about the story though would spoil it, but it’s like a well-written book.
The gameplay is super fun. You play specifically as Star-Lord but you have complete control over the rest of the team’s actions in a fight, as you unlock everyone’s abilities as you progress. I loved being able to pair the different abilities together and learning what would work best in a particular fight. The special abilities pair together for combos that are what you’re working for. Each ability on its own isn’t too powerful, but together you can destroy enemies. There’s a minimal skill tree that actually makes sense as it’s paired with the story, you earn things as the characters grow.
Just as the creators promised, there are no microtransactions or DLC. They focused completely on story and characters. The collectibles (costumes, things for your companions) were all located in game, in easy to find places if you just looked. And the collectibles for your team would actually enable a conversation with them that gave more history to the characters.
My only problem with the game was once I got to Chapter 8 and fighting on the ship begins in earnest, bugs begin to appear. Throughout the next few chapters I had odd happenings of we’d defeat all the enemies but the fight wouldn’t end, I’d be trapped and couldn’t continue to the next scene. The game thought that the last enemy killed was still alive, in fact the first time it happened the enemy was invisible but I found his health bar floating. We managed to trigger a finisher but nothing happened, it still acted as though he was alive. I couldn’t even jump off the ledge to fix it; I had to reload the last checkpoint. This happened a few other times. There was also an instance where I went down the path but no companions followed and I couldn’t get back to them. Once again I had to reload the last checkpoint. One of Drax’s collectibles was bugged where after speaking to him, I was frozen in spot and couldn’t do anything but reload. And nearer to the end a few times, Groot should have been speaking but no sound occurred. It’s very odd especially since when I popped the game in, it had an update. I’m not sure what the update involved but clearly it didn’t do anything to solve what should be easy to fix bugs. But while frustrating, it didn’t ruin the game experience for me.
I would absolutely recommend this game for comic fans and any fan of great story games. I’m so glad I got it. I even found that this game has a prequel book that involves the time of the war that is constantly referenced to in this game, along with just before the game!… Expand