Marvel Rivals is the Closest Thing to a Marvel’s GotG…

Seeing how successful the MCU’s Guardians of the Galaxy was at putting Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot on Marvel’s map, it’s truly odd that Eidos-Montreal’s Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy underperformed. It’s doubly strange, then, that Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was apparently beloved by nearly everyone who played it and yet it didn’t do as well as those claims suggest it should have. If the Guardians of the Galaxy were going to have any decent chance of skyrocketing in a video game adaptation it was during the MCU’s heyday—with James Gunn’s trilogy wrapped up and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy’s sales falling below Square Enix’s expectations, though, a sequel seems unlikely.

In many ways, Marvel Rivals is the first Marvel game in a long time to fully embrace its comic book source material rather than the recency bias and familiarity of the MCU. Marvel Rivals certainly has its hand in the MCU cookie jar when it comes to skins, MVP cinematics, and interactions between characters, of course, but its selection of characters and maps—not to mention rich, original lore peppered throughout—is unmistakably novel. Either way, with Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy’s future in jeopardy, Marvel Rivals is easily the next best outcome players could have hoped for as its roster at launch already pedestaled the intergalactic band of misfits by featuring five Guardians affiliates who are all fully developed with unique kits.

Marvel Rivals’ Daily Bugle Midnight Features and Gallery Comic Books are Its Beating Heart

Marvel Rivals has a deep well of lore associated with its gallery serial progression and Midnight Features is a lovely expansion of that storytelling.

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By Jared Stewart

Marvel Rivals Gives the Guardians of the Galaxy a Ton of Love

Star-Lord is the lead protagonist in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy with Gamora, Drax, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot being reduced to simple input commands and behaving as NPCs. This is arguably disappointing as the Guardians are best as an enmeshed group where all of their abilities and traits can be profound rather than having one character dominate the rest, and even though they’re all still prominent in the story that dissonance is felt during gameplay when players are waiting for one Guardian’s ability to finish its cooldown period.

Marvel Rivals isn’t a single-player game. Instead, as individual playable characters with their own kits, Star-Lord, Mantis, Adam Warlock, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot shine brightly with or without their beloved companions.

In fact, Star-Lord, Mantis, and Adam Warlock share a Team-Up ability while Rocket Raccoon and Groot share their own.

Marvel Rivals Has Room for More Guardians of the Galaxy in the Future

As far as the team’s most ubiquitous and iconic line-up is concerned, the roster’s selection of Guardians of the Galaxy characters is only missing Gamora and Drax. Mantis and Adam Warlock making it into Marvel Rivals before Gamora or Drax would seem strange if not for Gamora and Drax both realistically vying for roles as Duelists, which the live-service hero shooter is already oversaturated with.

Of course, Gamora and Drax would now make fine candidates for a single season’s two new characters with one launching at the beginning of the season and the other releasing halfway through. Plus, all it would take now is for one of them to be added and a full team of six players could role-play as a Guardians of the Galaxy line-up and it wouldn’t be all that unbalanced, either, with multiple healers, a tank, and a DPS guaranteed.

Cosmo the Spacedog has a viable chance considering how popular Jeff the Land Shark is in Marvel Rivals, but a character like Fin Fang Foom or Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy’s Lady Hellbender would be an exciting and unprecedented addition. Either way, the Guardians of the Galaxy play a massive role in Marvel Rivals and it’ll be interesting to see if more known affiliates eventually join the roster alongside them.