Summary
- Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy received praise for its story and characters, but it underperformed commercially, raising doubts about a potential sequel or follow-up.
- The game's gameplay and combat grew repetitive, and choice-based events didn't have significant narrative impact. However, the cohesive group interactions made the experience enjoyable.
- The game's single-player approach, with players controlling different Guardians, was a successful aspect. This serves as a blueprint for designing ensemble superhero games, even if Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy didn't meet expectations.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, like any other game, isn’t perfect. There are a lot of opinions fans have shared within superhero fandoms since the MCU began making its stamp on the industry, and that popularity certainly seeped into many Marvel and DC games since. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is seemingly a direct response to the theatrical iconography or notoriety of the titular group, for example, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy surely stemmed from a similar inspirational merit. But while its story and characters were greatly praised, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy still apparently underperformed.
The consequences of this have since rippled into an uncertainty around whether it’s possible that Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy could receive a sequel or at least some sort of follow-up. It might be odd for another developer to tackle the ensemble team now in an unrelated title so soon after Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, but that seems like the only way another Guardians of the Galaxy game is moved forward with at this point. This is unfortunate because while it may have underwhelmed, it actually put forth a stellar blueprint for how single-player ensemble superhero games can be designed.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is Still How an Ensemble Superhero Game Should Be
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Wrangles Its Ragtag Team Well
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy isn’t terribly dynamic in terms of its gameplay, its combat grew repetitive as the game progressed, and choice-based events never dramatically altered events in a way that disrupted the narrative and branched out to a vastly new path for Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket, and Groot. That said, the general atmosphere of the group and how they interacted—while still heavily influenced by the MCU’s comedic take on Guardians of the Galaxy—made gameplay feel at least cohesive from that standpoint.
The most impressive avenue Eidos-Montreal took with Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was making it fully single-player, which must have been difficult for developers and designers to wrap their heads around. The studio knew players wouldn’t want to play as Star-Lord exclusively in an ensemble group, and therefore players can control the other Guardians uniquely through specific abilities in combat or environmental navigation.
This positioned Star-Lord as a team leader or commander on the field of battle, where other characters had abilities set to cooldowns that players could spam when available. This left the impression of an interesting Mass Effect similarity where Shepard is able to command companions’ abilities, and while it is relatively elementary it was a decent template for such a game.
Ensemble Superhero Games Need to Know They Can Still Be Single-Player
It’s not necessarily a nail in the coffin for single-player ensemble superhero games that Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy didn’t perform well. Unfortunately, though, it may suggest that fans aren’t willing to dabble in ensemble games regardless of whether they are centered around single-player or multiplayer gameplay.
If Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy praise was always out in full force, then it doesn’t make sense that it underperformed unless there was a vocal minority with the majority of players having disliked it. Either way, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is the latest ensemble game based on superhero media and the way fans have painted it already does not bode well for the always-online, live-service multiplayer game.
Of course, Marvel still does have at least one other ensemble game in the works with Skydance’s still-untitled Marvel game, and how that title is designed could usher in an emergent way for ensemble superhero games to follow instead. If anything should be learned from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, though, it’s that it had its direction in the right place and such games shouldn’t be given up on.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 82 /100 Critics Rec: 86%
- Released
- October 26, 2021
- ESRB
- T For Teen Due To Language, Mild Blood, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Eidos Montreal
- Publisher(s)
- Square Enix
- Engine
- Dawn Engine
- Franchise
- Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel
WHERE TO PLAY
Fire up a wild ride across the cosmos with a fresh take on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. In this third-person action-adventure game, you are Star-Lord, and thanks to your bold yet questionable leadership, you have persuaded an oddball crew of unlikely heroes to join you. Some jerk (surely not you) has set off a chain of catastrophic events, and only you can hold the unpredictable Guardians together long enough to fight off total interplanetary meltdown.
Use Element Blasters, tag-team beat downs, jet boot-powered dropkicks, nothing’s off-limits. If you think it’s all going to plan, you’re in for a world of surprises, with the consequences of your actions guaranteed to keep the Guardians on their toes.
In this original Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy story, you’ll cross paths with powerful new beings and unique takes on iconic characters, all caught in a struggle for the galaxy’s fate. It’s time to show the universe what you’re made of. You got this. Probably.
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Genre(s)
- Action-Adventure
- How Long To Beat
- 18 Hours
