'Guardians of the Galaxy' review: enough to make you forget Chris Pratt
When you’re piloting a spaceship through exploding debris as A Flock of Seagulls blasts from your ship’s speakers, it’s hard to not crack a smile. The same can be said for knee-sliding under enemies who are suspended in the air, blasting away with dual plasma pistols as Rick Astley croons away. Guardians of the Galaxy has one of the best licensed soundtracks since GTA: Vice City – ‘80s music just hits different.
When the 2014 Marvel movie opened with Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord dancing, kicking space rats, and using them as a makeshift microphone, it was the perfect introduction to the wacky, relatively unknown world of the Guardians of the Galaxy. The Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn’t ever taken itself too seriously, but this team of misfits felt positively unhinged compared to Iron Man and company. Sure, there are plenty of movies set in space, but no others have a talking raccoon and a sentient tree (played by Vin Diesel).
The Guardians of the Galaxy game doesn’t nail its introduction as successfully. We still get a good grasp of Star-Lord’s character, but controlling him as a kid on Earth isn’t quite the same as kicking cosmic rodents to ‘70s rock tunes, is it? Still, by the time the credits rolled on this lengthy single-player adventure, I realized something: I prefer Eidos-Montreal’s take on this universe.
Coming off the back of two brilliant Deus Ex games – complex first-person RPGs where player choice is paramount – Guardians of the Galaxy isn’t what I’d have expected next from the developer. It’s a linear action game with shooty bits, walky bits, jumpy bits, and talky bits. Out of all those bits, there’s only one that I’d call exceptional: the chatter. The characters are bursting with personality, each has their own character arc, and they all grow across the course of the story, which is fitting when one of them is a tree (not played by Vin Diesel). You feel like an integral part of that story, too, thanks to regular dialogue options, allowing you to make decisions that can impact the team’s dynamic or the outcome of certain missions.
Inspired by the conversation system in indie game Oxenfree, verbal exchanges here are fluid and dynamic. It’s rare that anyone ever shuts up, which could easily be annoying, but rarely is. When a fight drags on and people start repeating their lines, it can be a bit much, but otherwise, it’s a joy to hear these misfits trade barbs and quips. Whenever you’re exploring or hanging out on your ship between missions, there’s constant chatter between your squadmates, and you’re often allowed to interject. People talk over each other, bicker, banter, and interrupt, and you’re free to do the same as Star-Lord, the only playable character of the bunch.
The story and character relationships also tie into the mechanics, with character growth unlocking certain combat abilities as your squadmates overcome their personal demons. During exploration, puzzles are usually a case of getting Groot to make a bridge of bark over an impassable gap, asking Rocket to enter a crawlspace, getting Gamora to slash some pipes, or asking Drax to bust down a wall. By the final few chapters, your allies become more self-sufficient and begin to do things unprompted, signifying your growing bond. The game is full of nice little touches like this. There’s clear intent behind most of the design decisions, each tying the experience together – an experience built around these core personalities.
Star-Lord himself is the most removed from his MCU iteration. While the other characters have visual identifiers that make them look like their cinematic counterparts – Groot is still a tree, Rocket is a raccoon, Drax is a meathead, and Gamora has green skin – Star-Lord is just a guy from Earth; a guy who doesn’t look like Chris Pratt. Once you get past his surfer dude exterior, though, you’ll soon warm to this version of him, with his cheesy finger guns and a shit-eating grin. He’s cool in a goofy way.
Drax – who has full pectoral jiggle physics, by the way – is easily a standout, much as he is in the MCU. In the scene where you’re piloting the ship as A Flock of Seagulls plays, Gamora tells you to “punch it”. “Now is not the time for hand-to-hand combat,” Drax replies. “Watch your heads,” one of the Guardians shouts as you make your way through a crawlspace. “That is physically impossible,” Drax points out. If you go into his bedroom on the ship, there’s a book on sarcasm on his bed. He’s doing his best.
If you head to Groot’s room, you’ll find various flora from the planets you’ve visited, Rocket’s room is littered with mechanical parts and gizmos, and Gamora’s is slick, clean, and has a shrine for her murder implements. Star-Lord’s room, fittingly, is the only one with a mirror that isn’t smashed or covered over, because he huffs his own farts.
You can tell this is the studio that created the dense and detailed Prague hub in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and not only because one of the first things you do is punch the numbers “0451” into a keypad – a little nod to immersive sim fans. Every place you visit is packed with detail, and these details further flesh out the characters you meet and the places you visit. From the neon-lit and rain-slick streets of Knowhere to icy tundras, storm-battered expanses filled with giant mushrooms, and hulking capital ships, there’s plenty of visual variety throughout the adventure. And it is gorgeous throughout.
There’s variety in the enemies you face, too – from gelatinous cubes to sentient eyeballs with tentacle legs, you never forget that you’re exploring an alien galaxy. It’s a lengthy game for a single-player action title, but it’s made longer by all the times you’re compelled to stop and stare at some oddity or environmental marvel, and it constantly encourages this through quiet moments between the action.
Unfortunately, the bits between all the gawping and talking are less than marvelous. Platforming feels imprecise, and you sometimes find yourself stuck on scenery. With Star-Lord’s character intrinsically bound to his dual plasma pistols, that’s all you get to play with. As a consequence, gun combat lacks any real punch. On top of that, input comes secondary to animations, so general movement can feel sluggish, which doesn’t suit the fast pace of its battles. You can also get knocked into a ragdoll state, which sometimes makes your jittering body interact with the scenery in strange ways. In one fight, I get knocked from a ledge and my leg gets stuck at the edge, leaving me dangling there like a meaty pinata. In another, I’m punched through a wall, where I remain until I load up the previous checkpoint.
Once you’ve unstuck yourself from whatever wall you’ve been punched through, you can give commands to the other Guardians, asking them to focus on a single enemy with a big move, do area damage, or place traps and interact with environmental hazards. You bring up a radial menu to issue these commands, and time slows down, giving you time to think as a thousand projectiles zip overhead. You do this while sliding and double jumping with your jet boots, firing, punching, kicking, and using elemental powers all the while.
Star-Lord himself also has a range of special abilities, which are in a different radial menu to that of the other Guardians – for some reason, this one is tied to a push and hold of the left stick, which you also use to, you know, move the character. Sometimes you’re moving, sliding, pushing the stick in, and pressing a button to fire off a special, trying to time the reload of your guns so they don’t overheat, while also trying to look around with the right stick and fire off commands to your Guardians. It’s like playing a game of Twister in an actual twister. While you do get used to it, it stops short of ever being great. Considering how intentional almost every other aspect of the game seems, perhaps it’s a comment on Star-Lord’s clumsiness. It’s just a lot to deal with.
Speaking of a lot, one later chapter completely buckles under the strain of the on-screen action, at least on Xbox Series X. In Chapter 14, it didn’t matter whether I used Performance Mode or Graphics Mode, this near-endless gauntlet of enemies was like watching a slideshow at times, the frame rate dropping way below 30fps in the busiest scenes. I also experienced other technical issues, such as a cutscene that didn’t play properly, voice lines playing at the incorrect time, and, on more than one occasion, Groot losing his voice completely. He only ever says “I am Groot” in various ways, but he’s a character that’s all about comic timing, which doesn’t work when he’s less Groot and more Mute.
Despite those issues, I had a brilliant time with Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s easily one of the better games released this year, and it has more heart than a cardiologist. Technical issues will no doubt be patched and, like all games launching in these times, it was developed under challenging circumstances. Like the Guardians themselves, you’ll fall in love with it despite its flaws. Push on through the adversity and you’ll be rewarded with incredible art direction, one of the best video game soundtracks ever made, exceptional writing, and one of the most atypical things a video game can have: a satisfying ending.
Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.