Videogames that are adapted from movie properties have a reputation of being so awful that they’ve become a meme and I’ve always avoided them. So it’s quite a shock to come across one that bucks the trend so much that gamers go out of their way to recommend it. Having to shoulder the baggage of being a well-known Marvel property, this game has steep hurdles to climb. So I’m pleased to report that it actually exceeded my expectations. The mechanics are only average and there are some annoying bugs. Yet the story is absolutely top-notch and I daresay better than any of the films are that part of the MCU trilogy. This game is clearly influenced by the movies but it uses none of the familiar stars. It draws instead from the wider comics universe and doesn’t hesitate to use original characters of its own to create a fantastic story.

In the present, Peter Quill leads the Guardians of the Galaxy consisting of Drax, Gamora, Groot and Rocket as a group of mercenaries travelling across the galaxy in his ship the Milano. Their latest moneymaking scheme is to enter the restricted Quarantine Zone to capture a rare monster to sell to Lady Hellbender who collects monsters on her planet. The zone itself was established by the Nova Corps and contains debris from the massive war between the Chitauri led by Thanos and everyone else. When the Guardians confront the monster, it is instantly killed by a strange entity inadvertently released by Quill. They escape the zone only to be apprehended by a Nova Corps patrol ship. Fortunately it is commanded by Centurion Ko-Rel, Quill’s former lover and compatriot in the galactic war. After a misadventure with Ko-Rel’s daughter Nikki, the Guardians are released and agree to pay a fine. Yet as the Guardians travel to meet Lady Hellbender and bicker over how to make money, the Nova Corps confront the entity that was released. The threat ensnares Nikki and rapidly grows to such a scale that it scares even the Xandarian Worldmind.

As an action game, this puts you directly in control of Peter Quill. You can shoot blasters, momentarily take to the air, dodge and so on. The other members of the team fight independently but you can order to carry out special moves, subject to a cooldown. Quill has similar special moves and over the course of the game, you unlock more abilities as well as charge your blasters with elemental effects. In dire situations, you can also call for a team huddle that can add bonus damage and you can execution combination finisher attacks on weakened enemies. Many of the out of combat sections have platforming or puzzle-type gameplay elements and you often need to use the abilities of your teammates to complete them. So Groot for example can extend his branches to form a bridge over a gap while Drax can punch through obstacles or knock down towers. The combat is flashy and can be chaotic with multiple team members and many enemies. But overall I’d say it’s also average. Normal attacks are very weak so many enemies feel like bullet sponges, especially when they have regeneration abilities. Winning fights pretty much requires spamming the special moves as soon as they become available or even avoiding enemies in order to head straight for the mission objectives.

That’s actually another reason why I found the combat to be only middling. Some of the fights are real ones where you win when you down all of the enemies, like any other games. But there are also ones where you just kind of faff around until some story-related trigger kicks in. Yet other fights involve endless waves of enemies that stop spawning only when you accomplish the objective. Then there are the sudden switches to a QTE sequence of some kind. It just doesn’t make for a very satisfying or consistent gaming experience. I also encountered several bugs when triggers that were meant to fire, at the end of a fight for example, failed to do so, forcing me to redo the fight. As far as I can tell, there’s also no way to remap the controls which I found annoying. Between Quill’s own abilities and the things you can order the other Guardians to do, there are a lot of control combinations.

All that is forgiven however due to how good the story and the writing in general is. The story beats are just perfect and I love how the Guardians have to be dragged kicking and screaming into saving the galaxy. How each of them reacts to the Promise, effectively a Lotus-Eater dream world in which all of their deceased loved ones are returned to life, reveals something about their backstories. It’s especially satisfying that it features Drax’s backstory in particular as none of the MCU films has properly delved into his past yet. One complaint that I have is that it really plays up Rocket’s antagonism towards Quill even if the player goes out of his way to be nice to the little rodent. The writers use this to add internal team conflict but it does show that despite the dialogue choices that you can make, the story is very linear and there’s not really much leeway to shape the outcome.

Still, the execution is fantastic. There is so much dialogue and so much casual banter while you’re working your way through the levels or even while fighting. They’ll talk about the specific enemies you’re fighting or make jokes about the obstacles you’re facing and don’t stop ribbing each other. If you take too long in some fights, there might be a lot of repetition, but I’m pleasantly surprised by how rich the writing in here is. The voice actors here may not be superstars but they do a great job and I daresay their version of Peter Quill is superior to the MCU one. I also greatly enjoyed being able to explore locations like Knowhere, the interior of a Nova Corps ship, planet surfaces etc. The references to even obscure bits of Marvel lore is much appreciated. Thanks for remembering that Quasar exists! The graphics look great to me, though I had to turn off the real-time ray tracing effects on my aging GPU to stop the game from constantly crashing.

This game failed to make much of a splash upon release, so it would be fair to say that it’s underrated. The team previously made an Avengers game that was heavily anticipated but turned out to be terrible. This one does have its share of problems such as janky gameplay and some bugs but on the whole, it’s a decent action game that any studio should be proud of. It doesn’t have much in the way of replay value since the story is more or less fixed and it’s easy to buy all of the abilities and upgrades for everyone during the course of a normal playthrough. But I would highly recommend it as a great superhero action game and an excellent take on the characters you may have first gotten to know through the MCU films.