This game was a pleasant surprise after Square Enix / Crystal Dynamics butchered the Avengers game. It should further prove to the industry that single player only and even linear experiences can be a big hit. This game is like an interactive movie, very well done script and the graphics/worlds look amazing. I would rate it 5 but the gameplay could be a little better as it was a little short and one dimensional

Gameplay: 7

• Cool abilities to unlock for yourself and teammates
• Lots of exploring for upgrade materials and cool looking outfits
• Gameplay is a little one dimensional but game makes up for it elsewhere

Story: 9

• Game is basically an interactive movie, story seemed true to the GotG.
• Some of the best voice acting/ writing I've ever heard. The amount of great banter in this game is insane. I would constantly stop to make sure the characters would continue to talk and not be interupted.
• Lots of story decisions to make that actually alter gameplay and what happens later on

Graphics: 9

• Played on the PS5 and further shows just what a powerhouse the new gen consoles are. 4k textures in the sci worlds looks amazing
• Game has two modes Quality and Performance, usually I use Performance but this game runs and looks amazing in Quality mode so that's what I stuck with.
• Great cutscenes again like you're watching a movie. The odd glitch but nothing major at all.

Soundtrack: 10

• Best soundtrack I've heard in a long time. Great licensed rock songs
• The original songs they made for the game are just as great
• You can listen to the songs while you use your special ability while fighting which adds to the gameplay alot.

This game is in many ways one of the year’s best, a funny, action-packed, and even heartfelt action-adventure journey whose scale and focus really impressed me. I didn’t feel that crazy about the last GotG movie, I am by no means a huge fan here, and I still think it’s excellent.

Eidos-Montréal’s take on the Guardians is one of the most fun parties of characters you’ll find in a game. Skipping over the origin story of the team allows a great rapport to be present from the very first mission, and we get plenty of deeper dives into the characters as well that allow them to grow as individuals and as a team. Controlling the team through their leader, Star-Lord, not only lets you use each Guardian’s abilities to traverse levels, but also eventually allows for really dynamic fights where you’re firing off their different abilities and your own different attacks in a really fun, chaotic way that makes it feel like a real team.

That combat has been undersold across the internet as generic shooter fare—I found it generally to be a lot of fun for that team feel and how much it demands of you at times. As a non-cover-based shooter, you’ll be dashing all over the place, and they also have you doing active reloads, different types of shots and elemental attacks, environmental interactions, and more to take down the enemies. There is definitely sometimes a little too much of this combat in a couple key missions, but it can be really satisfying either way. With one exception, boss fights are really fun as well. You can also customize the combat in great detail for the exact experience you want, like how much damage you take, how much you slow down time while picking abilities, and more.

Generally, the story is really fast-paced and fun, with all kinds of different threats and problems weaving together in a way that makes it feel like not much was wasted. There are some great characters outside the Guardians team, and the journeys they send you on go some places that I really did not expect. There are one or two points where the story makes a detour that I felt slowed it down unnecessarily, but they always make an effort to build everything up. The story is full of wacky stuff, but also takes significant time to tackle some heavy themes of grief, guilt, fear of responsibility, and more. There are some rare moments where the humor is a bit bad, but I thought the overall effect of the dialogue, humor, story, and just overall writing was probably the best I saw in a game this year. They even made a few dialogue choices feel impactful.

At times, the game has so much going on that I could only play a couple missions per sitting, but I always kept coming back, because I knew something great would happen each time I did. By and large this is an extremely solid title with very few major missteps, that even those not crazy about Marvel may find enjoyable.

Critics' Score:

Metacritic: 80/100

Famitsu: 36/40

GameSpot: 7/10

Game Informer: 8.5/10

IGN: 8/10 When The Game Awards released their nominations, I found myself in a position of discomfort. There wasn't a single nominated game I had played, which highlighted my total abandonment of 2021’s catalogue. Therefore, before the wrapping of the year, I set for myself into amending such grievances. And from the wide range of possibilities to do so, there was one particular game that I had a peculiar interest for. A game that I didn't expect either to like or enjoy, but the critical reception it had gathered seemed to point otherwise.

If you were to ask my opinion on Marvel’s The Guardians of the Galaxy after its announcement in E3 2021, it would be one of two: 'dogshit’, or if I felt cheeky and stupid enough ‘racoon-shit’. I wasn't sold at all by the premise, look and overall feel that the game exudes. Neither was much of a consolation the fact that the previous Square Enix entry into the Marvel franchise with Marvel’s Avengers wasn't particularly good, played only the Beta and I couldn't even finish that up such was the dislike that it produced in me. At that moment, perhaps the name of the distributor outshined the name of the developers for Eidos Montreal isn't Crystal Dynamics. But then, it would have been worthwhile to shelve the prequel/reboot series of Deus Ex (a very promising, and lauded immersive sim) to make a Guardians of the Galaxy romp… In my opinion, it was a big ‘no’. So, no one is more astonished by how the game turned out than me. It would probably be in my GOTY shortlist, if I had more games to compare it to, and it marks a clear sign that the MCU might not be the greatest place to tell these stories. If Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man and Eidos’ Marvel’s The Guardians of the Galaxy point to something, is that the future of these characters might reside -beside the comic book page- in these games. But before I sing its praises, I must get over it's not so pleasant defects. First and its greatest throwback, lies in its poor optimization; sure, I played it on a base PS4 and probably the game will be experienced better in the current-gen PS5, but it felt a bitter taste it's often fall of frame-rates and an occasional sound-clipping, something tells me that these issues might be persistent in the newer consoles. It’s also riddled with bugs, mostly I’d deemed it experience-breaking (as they are very obtrusive and pull you out of the experience), which I can abide by. Sadly in a few instances it did result in game-breaking faults, the game crashed on me and I had to restart it a couple of times. One last complaint, and with these I open the topic of the game’s weakest design choice, is the combat. It offers rushes of enjoyment when a cool-looking combo happens but it's mostly pretty bland, especially as the game begins to clock more hours. It doesn't offer much of a challenge -played on ‘Normal’ difficulty- nor the ‘strategic complexity’ that team-focused combat gameplay like Mass Effect offers -though, I also found it a bit dull. In any case, none of these unfortunate flaws affected much of my enjoyment of the experience.

But what does Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy do phenomenally, fantastically, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? It is a masterclass in Narrative storytelling and design. Credit where due, the only great contribution to Marvel mythos offered by the MCU was James Gunn’s take on The Guardians of the Galaxy, it gave the characters new dynamics which really fit with the audience. The game is therefore built in such dynamics, but it just does it better, this is where the power of the game comes to life, as the amount of game time expands the possibilities of creating real connections between The Guardians and the player. Sharing that many adventures and conversations aboard the Milano, each of the characters brimming with charisma and personality. And its just a heavy hitting and important story… It might not have the misguided ‘structural complexity’ or its intention of bringing a ‘mature story’ into video games as say The Last of Us Part II, but an argument can be made on Marvel’s The Guardians of the Galaxy better handling of the themes of trauma, guilt and thanatophobia. The Guardians are a dysfunctional family, the opposite of what one expects of a 'superhero’ team, mainly because none of them are superheros -the contrary as a matter of fact, criminals trying to clean up their names. Their shared experience with trauma and the need of each other to overcome it, is what makes this team relationship so endearing. The developers at Eidos Studios found the secret recipe to make it appear as such to the player. From the get-go, the genius design is displayed; in a very The Darkness inspired opening, the player is presented with a first person perspective of teenager Peter Quill (Star-Lord), laying on the bed listening to his Walkman. The tape he is vibing to is one made for the game, a bad named Star-Lord; the first player choice takes there, as Peter Quill holds up the tape’s lyrics booklet, one can listen to it in its completion, doing that, looking around the bedroom, Marvel’s The Guardians of the Galaxy builds its main character and by having it in first-person it really puts the player in Peter’s headspace. Immersion is where the game is heading to and where it excels at -the bugs are therefore more jarring and unfortunate. The game offers multiple choices, but it’s still a very tight story, all roads lead to the same place; however, those decisions made are cleverly intersected to sort of amplify these connections with the rest of the team members. As it pulls the player in these moments, the foundations where the team stands grow stronger, as bit by bit, you become the leader of this endearing, sometimes goofy, always rocking team. But do not be deceived, the fact that ‘all roads lead to one place’ doesn't mean that the multiple-choice decisions are of no importance, they are more than mere toppings in the burger, they do have importance. Some of them paid off unexpectedly, others which I thought were simple decorations turned up to be key decisions, after all Eidos was doing Deus Ex. Brilliantly written -most the jokers were actually funny and most of the dramatic moments were actually affecting- and brilliantly executed, the game is an example of narrative design done well.

Now, for those that were badly impressed by the look of the game on the announcement, like I was. I don’t know what they did, because the game is gorgeous to look at. Incredibly aesthetics and atmospheric design, it's enticing to pull-up the photo-mode and just take snapshots of the scenery. Kudos to the animation team, by the way, they did pull some great facial expressions on these characters, really impressed me, it adds so much texture and layers to the conversations -sadly, they left out the work of some of the optional conversations, which seem to have not been worked at all, pretty sad considering that there's where most of the backstory, deep characterization and fleshing out takes place. To the fellow comic book enthusiasts out there, the game pulls out from the cosmic side of Marvel, more heavily than any MCU movie; the story itself borrows heavily from one of Jim Starlin’s great cosmic sagas and it embraces those elements with admirable fervor, there's elements of Jack ‘King’ Kirby and the magnificent Kirby-Tech that finds its way through it. This is one for us!

Score: 87/100

Remember that feeling you got as a kid, when you ripped the shrink wrap off a freshly acquired new video game? Popping it into your console and feeling the joy of the title screen come up and just knowing this game would be a source of many hours of entertainment. Even the menu itself seemed so darn exciting that you couldn't wait to push start.

Guardians of the Galaxy gave me those jubilant feels again.

From the rockin' soundtrack shuffle of the main menu to the upbeat and wise-cracking combat sections to the hilarious, heartfelt and damn well-acted and well-written story, this game was a perfectly-paced romp through one of the more modern corners of the Marvel universe.

The combat isn't revolutionary, but it's still damn fun

Like many others, I raised an eyebrow at the first trailer that was released. Wait--we only get to control Star-Lord? That seems weird. This confusing aspect, paired with the recent (and continuing) lackluster performance of Square-Enix's other Marvel game, made me wary. I'm happy to say that the game won me over almost instantly. Controlling Star-Lord as the team's leader, calling out the shots as well as doling out your own shots, is a lot more fun than the trailer gave it credit. The difficulty isn't bone-crushing, but you still have to manage crowd control (e.g. Rocket's gravity bombs and Groot's roots), stagger tactics (e.g. Drax's beat downs), shields (e.g. Star-Lord's elements) and high-damage finishers (e.g. Gamora's execution-style slashes and Star-Lord's overpowered blasts) to get the best of many encounters. You can also build up a meter to form a "huddle" if the going gets tough, calling your team members into a strategic circle. They can either be cocky or dejected, depending on the situation and your dialogue choice will determine if the huddle is a success or not, giving you a damage boost or not. Aside from these aspects, the combat never changes much throughout the game, other than the ability to unlock new abilities for each team member, but it's always fun, hectic and is bolstered by the team making funny quips or calling out Star-Lord if you forget to use abilities that aren't on cooldown.

Also, the first time I nailed that Huddle mechanic? I was grinning from ear to ear the rest of the battle.

A dream story for Marvel fans, but fantastic for any newcomer

As a lifelong Marvel fan, this game really has it all in terms of easter eggs, lore inclusions, call-outs to other Marvel franchises and is chock-full of great compendium content. But even for the "uninitiated" (or even just fans of the MCU version) the game soars on the strength of its amazing script. It's an original story built on a new galactic threat, one that entwines the Guardians in such a cool way that keeps the tension high without seeming insurmountable. You don't need to know all the fun easter eggs to really enjoy what's done here, but if you do know them, it's all the better.

Environments leap off the screen in glorious HD hues

Modern gaming has taken large strides seemingly every year with graphical capabilities, and Guardians takes full advantage. The level design in this game really pops, with each new planet bringing something fresh and vibrant. Whether it's an extra-terrestrial rainforest with pinks and blues, or a cyberpunk sci-fi planet full of shady bars and even shadier ruffians, everything looks great, sounds great and is polished exquisitely. While the game is mostly linear, there is still amble opportunity to veer off the beaten path in all these environments to search for extra components for upgrades, compendium lore items, or secret costumes.

The acting is top notch

This section needed its own category. Each character is brought to life so well, so vibrantly, that you feel like you're playing through an extension of the MCU rather than a video game, only it's better. I much preferred the in-game canon versions of these characters than the MCU versions and these versions even rival the comic counterparts. Watching the team bond, bicker and come together to save the day really was a treat. Kudos to all the actors and mo-cap folks!

Soundtracks this good are rare

The MCU Guardians movies have done well to cement the partnership between this rag-tag group of heroes and some seriously epic tunes. This game builds off that by rewriting the lore and making Star-Lord take his name from his favourite Earth band, also named Star-Lord. Even better? The sound team wrote and recorded an entire fictional album to go along with the backstory! It's a speed-metal delight, and somehow fits really well with the rest of the game's licensed tracks, including the likes of Blondie, Wham, Foreigner and of course Rick Astley. Crunching out a successful combat huddle and hearing one of these tunes blare out is one of the most fun aspects of the game.

To sum it up in one word? FUN

Marvel's Guardian's of the Galaxy isn't going to break any barriers and it probably won't revolutionize any area in terms of combat mechanics or character customization, but that's not the point of this game. What it will do is take you back to a time (or introduce you to a new era) where video gaming is enthusiastically joyful, full of surprises and an absolute treat to play. We need many more games like this, starting with a sequel to this one!

In the opening scene, you’re listening to Star-Lord, a fictional hard rock (more like speed metal) band, whose album you’ve presumably just bought. Peter Quill is now a fan of hard rock and metal. That was right up my alley. I spent about 20 minutes listening to the songs of the band, looking around, and thinking how great the game was going to be since they've created a band just for Peter's backstory! And it was.

Characters are the main focus here, the events mainly serving the function of consolidating the bonds between the crew members. Almost everything the Guardians do is for a fellow Guardian or someone they care about. This makes the external threats feel less serious than they ought to be, but that is not a big problem, it's not that kind of game. As the story progresses, the player gets to witness the Guardians become a stronger team by learning to accept each other, with their weaknesses and quirks. Understanding and acceptance make up the underlying theme of the game.

The banter between the Guardians is probably the best in recent years, reminiscent of Bioware's good days. It is supported by decent voice acting, although it would have been nice to hear some more original interpretations. As expected, a lot of the banter is funny, though at times you feel like rolling your eyes rather than chuckling. Very frustrating, however, is that, on many occasions, the dialogues are overlapping or are cut off abruptly by a cutscene or another dialogue. It is not something we haven't seen in many other games, too bad it's still an issue.

Visually, the game is stunning. The environments are simply gorgeous. The heavy use of vibrant colors is evident even from the poster. There's nothing dark or gritty here, and it dovetails the nature of the story and the gang.

The combat is fun, but I found myself wishing there was less of it. Some fights drag on forever without any reason. It feels good to use your abilities and those of your teammates to clear a path or to reach something shiny and, likewise, this is what shines in battle. The melee combat feels pretty satisfying, too. The abilities look pretty good and there are also some nice finishing moves. There are two or three space battles, too, but they’re not metal, to put it mildly.

You can encounter quite a few annoying bugs and, apparently, they aren't doing anything to fix them. I had to reload a few times, because the game had gotten stuck. The most annoying bug happened at some point when you could talk to Drax on your ship (to get some backstory from him), but the game became unresponsive after you did. Reloading only made it unresponsive before talking. Also, on PC, the wireless Xbox controllers are not detected and playing with mouse and keyboard is not that good. Works just fine if you plug the controller, though.

Space opera, especially the Marvel kind, is the perfect subgenre for teambuilding and beautiful friendships. That's what the game offers and that's what it does best. The story, the dialogue, the gameplay, pretty much everything, is built around the constantly growing beautiful friendships. And it's good, no doubt about it.

What a fun, well made game! There is little to criticise GOTG for: it comes in a visually awesome package with great style and colourful presentation; it excels at entertaining storytelling with well placed humorous tones and competent world building; it makes you engage with and care for most characters you interact with (voice acting is top notch, which also helps); it never takes itself too seriously, which works really well within its silly context; it actually dabbles in surprisingly mature themes, appropriately fitting them in what is otherwise a grandiose, ludicrous save-the-galaxy story; it does a good job at creating incentives to encourage combat variety, with a ton of ways to take down enemies and an interesting, thematically fitting technique to create momentum (the Huddle mechanic); it lets you make a few impactful decisions throughout the game that actually shape the course of events; finally - and I can’t stress this enough - it comes with an amazing, amazing soundtrack that permeates every aspect of the game, from story to combat, and that will probably be particularly welcome if you’re an 80s child. All this makes GOTG so fun to play and enjoy, even if, like myself, you’re the farthest thing from a superhero or comic book fan there is.

Ultimately, GOTG plays and feels like the quintessential power fantasy, something, however, I only fully realised about 3 hours in. If I’m being honest, for all its nice aspects, I was kind of getting tired of the combat by then. In higher difficulties a single battle can take up quite a bit of time, and it often feels like there’s too much going on at once for my personal tastes. It was after those 3 hours of playtime that I decided to try the game on Easy, something I almost never do. And my perception changed pretty much instantly. From that moment on, I felt like the ultimate badass, blasting my way through enemies with my party in an awesome, distinctly powerful way. If done properly (and GOTG does it properly), I would honestly argue that such a game is more enjoyable when played that way, if all you’re looking for is a superhero experience that doesn’t require a lot of focus from you. I was already enjoying myself, but my enjoyment shot up when I made this switch.

I had a few niggles with the game, namely a couple of dialogue sound issues, the fact that, for all the sprightly upbeat moments it brings, the humour also tortures the player with some borderline cringy moments (especially throughout and past Chapter 13), that it feels a tad longer than it needed to be, and that it uses ‘flark’ and ‘flark’ related words way too often (this might be because I have zero attachment to - or knowledge of - the comic books this spawned from, but seriously: either accept a different rating for your game or tone down the frequency with which you use the word). Though pet peeves aside, there is a whole lot to be enjoyed here. Not even going into the rest, the awesome soundtrack, stunning visuals, character bonding and (if tuned properly to suit your needs) badass-feeling combat are more than enough to warrant giving GOTG a go. The Avengers fiasco should in no way weigh in on your decision to try this Square Enix release, because it absolutely does what every superhero game should do at its core: entertain at a higher level. 8/10

Despite being an even bigger geek for comics than games, I've only read a handful of Guardians of the Galaxy comics. Most of my fondness for the team comes from the James Gunn films, my favorites in the MCU. Based on that, I found myself really impressed with this interpretation of the team. But as a game, my feelings are pretty mixed.

Let's start with what I liked! I thought the writing was fantastic, which is even more impressive when you consider the astounding amount of dialog in this game... much of it context-specific and outside the flow of cut scenes. I thought the voice cast did an amazing job with this material: The rhythms of Jon McLaren's Star-Lord get a little irritating and sing-songy to my ear, but I'll forgive it given how believably he sells some of the more emotional moments. Between the writing and delivery, I frequently laughed out loud across my entire playthrough.

I also really appreciated the sorts of narrative choices the game offers. A pet peeve of mine is when games offer consequential choices where there is clearly a "good" and "bad" path: In this case, I found myself able to make an argument for or against both paths, which made it a lot more interesting to see their consequences play out.

Other aspects of the game made me nostalgic for past generations: The unlockable costumes and licensed soundtrack felt like artifacts of games from the sixth and seventh generation of games.

Which is a nice segue to what I thought could be better: The gameplay also reminds me of games from the PS2/PS3 era.

There is something about each chapter's linear rhythm of "tunnel, puzzle area, hallway, combat area, small room, puzzle area, tunnel, cut scene, combat area, etc." that gave me consistent déjà vu. It's not that a linear game is inherently bad, but the repetition and predictability wore pretty thin after a while: I eventually lowered the difficulty settings just so I could pass combat areas more quickly.

I'm also a lot less charmed by the game's visuals than others seem to be. The environments and costume designs are excellent, but there's just something so matter-of-fact about their presentation and lighting: It's not as polished as Insomniac's or Rocksteady's offerings, but it's also not as stylized as the films. It looks exactly how I expected it to based on what I've seen of the Square-Enix Avengers game.

And it's very buggy, at least on PlayStation 5. Characters teleport across the map, get stuck on geometry, stretch and distort. It crashed four times during my playthrough... thank goodness for the generous auto-save! By comparison, the Miles Morales game didn't crash once for me across two playthroughs.

Overall, I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy and I hope Eidos Montréal make a sequel. The narrative elements are all fantastic and truly hooked me from start to finish. I'd just like to see less repetition in the actual gameplay and more adventurous visual choices next time around.