Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (Xbox Series X)
The science fiction superhero team the Guardians of the Galaxy have become a very popular example of a “found family”, the idea being that even though this sometimes discordant group is not tied together by any blood relations, they have become close enough as friends that they aim to support each other no matter what may come. However, while this band of former criminals are better together, the real families they’ve put behind them still influence their lives, and in the 2021 action game Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, much of the heart of its plot comes from that pull between biological family and this group that came together in hardship, all of this without sacrificing the franchise’s trademark comedy to keep things light between those moments.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy begins with the band of five heroes starting off doing odd jobs to earn cash, but each new attempt to make things right seems to come with some new problem they’ll need to solve. The Guardians of the Galaxy’s mercenary nature comes off well in these early chapters, their nontraditional heroics shining through as they will do things for their own self-interest and not care much about the consequences but do still have a moral compass when it comes to moments that matter. This becomes more important as the early raucous adventures start to hit up against more personal stakes, a religious movement spreading throughout the galaxy that claims to be able to manifest a perfect life for anyone who helps realize its rituals, even if that means radically altering history like bringing back the dead or changing how people behave. The Universal Church of Truth slips into the main concern as it seems to have too high a cost even if its promise is true, but it is also a legitimate temptation for this band of characters who live a life of frequent problems and whose pasts are built on tragedy. While this sounds like potentially heavy subject matter and maybe even a condemnation of faith-based religions, it appears to be more a means of testing the resolve of characters on whether they cherish an ideal life or accept that through adversity some of life’s best things can arise.
The player takes on the role of Peter Quill, a.k.a Star-Lord, in this story, the game’s interpretation of the Guardians of the Galaxy as a whole seemingly existing in its own invented space between what people who saw the films and read the comics might expect from the heroes. Peter is recognizable here as one of the few humans out traveling the stars but with a foot squarely locked in the 1980s since that was when he was abducted from his time on Earth where he lived with his single mother. Quill’s able to step forward as a leader of the group because he has a sound enough head on his shoulders compared to his sometimes more aggressive compatriots, but the story also throws him a curveball by way of the reappearance of an old flame who has a twelve year old daughter named Nikki whose age suspiciously lines up with the time the two were together. The question on whether this girl is Peter’s daughter comes up again and again over the story but since she starts to get roped into the Church business as well, the question starts to turn to whether he has a sense of obligation to potential family and if he’s jeopardizing his found family trying to help her. Nikki and Peter do get along well before that angle even arises though, meaning it can also just be a question on whether the team should try to selflessly risk themselves for someone potentially important to one of their members.
Peter isn’t the only one who gets some time looking deeper into his personal life, Drax the Destroyer perhaps being the best served character of the bunch as the game not only writes his comedic moments exceptionally well but takes a good deal of time exploring his struggle over the idea that Church might bring back his dead wife and daughter. Drax is portrayed as a warrior who revels in battle but also has issues with social interactions like failing to interpret sarcasm or taking certain phrases literally. Compared to his portrayal in other media like the Telltale Guardians of the Galaxy game and even the films, Drax is exceptionally well balanced and diverse in how the humor in his misinterpretations can manifest. He won’t latch onto every possible moment to misunderstand something and the game prefers to whip out more amusing directions for what he believes someone’s intent is. One good example of this comes from Gamora, the female assassin a daughter of the galactic despot Thanos and Drax suspicious of her because of it. Her simple actions and remarks are filtered through his belief she is guilty by association for a while, but he is quite frank with her about these suspicions and when she sarcastically says Drax was right and she’s about to betray them all he laughs and proclaims he knew all along of her treachery. The angle doesn’t last the whole experience so it doesn’t get old, but Gamora is perhaps a bit underserved by comparison, the game not having too much time to dive into her damage and her less extreme personality compared to others meaning she’s mostly good for serving as a more level-headed voice in the group or one who offers a snide barb here or there.
Rocket the gun-toting racoon gets a great deal of focus, not so much delving into his backstory like Drax but instead being a constant source of tension in the group because of his generally angry disposition. He’s a useful tool for creating conflict and placing some questions out in the open like whether Peter valuing Nikki’s safety over that of the Guardians, but he also does run into a bit of an issue. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy has a sometimes overwhelming amount of character dialogue. While you are exploring or in battle, your band of heroes love to chat. There is an impressive amount of conversations directly relevant to very limited situations and there is certainly a temptation to stop and listen to what people have to say, but it also feels like you aren’t meant to because not only is the dialogue so abundant, but it can start to paint characters like Rocket in a bit of a negative light. Naturally he has reasons to complain as the Guardians are frequently in life and death situations, but during the downtime when you’re exploring or solving puzzles, hearing him continue to vent his anger can start to wear on the player. Luckily there is often some form of comedic spin to a conversation if it isn’t one important to furthering the plot, and the towering tree-alien Groot is perhaps a good counterbalance. Only able to say “I am Groot”, Groot is still almost universally kind and positive despite Rocket being his translator, Groot helping to ground his friend at times but even able to express emotion a good deal on his own with well-timed laughs or grunts. Groot is more a kindly tag along in the group, but having someone to bring Rocket back down to earth from his ranting can help the character from becoming outright grating.
There are plenty of other characters encountered on your galactic journey and some are wonderfully absurd characters that still work into the plot well. The game is able to have its serious stakes but also introduce sequences purely for comedy or exploring its interpretation of life in space. Some of this emerges from the mild choice system at play, sometimes the player getting to pick how Peter talks in a conversation or tries to guide the idle chatter but at other times there are more impactful choices that can steer the plot more. An early example of an amusing but important choice involves the gang trying to pass off either Rocket or Groot as a monster so they can sell them to a monster collector and then bust their buddy out for an easy pay day. Your choice actually influences the specific action sequence that follows and some conversations along the way, but there is still the comedic angle of trying to trick someone by making your friend play the role of a wild beast. Of the many strange, emotional, or silly scenarios you come across, there are some that required remarkably smart writing like a verbose character who uses constant alliteration in speech yet manages to structure their language well so its nearly natural. On the other hand, Mantis appears later in the story and her writing is unfortunately repetitive and her humor gets old quickly. An alien who can view alternate timelines, she sticks around for quite a while and due to the frequent group chats as you’re doing other activities, she constantly mentions how in an alternate universe the group failed or died at that moment, the joke run into the ground. A good comparison emerges with Drax whose humor changes and can come from other parts of his personality, not always latching onto every hook for his most common joke formula of taking a statement literally.
Mantis is an odd fumble considering how well the game can handle other elements of characters. There is a surprising amount of licensed music to tie into Peter’s attachment to his life back on Earth, but the many 80s tracks included crop up rarely during the plot and instead the game likes to lean more on a fictional and quite excellent hard rock band invented for the game named Star-Lord which has a more obvious emotional tie to Peter’s life. You can still hear the licensed music from time to time and it plays in the background on the group’s ship as you walk about it. The moment where it can try to pump up the player is during the group huddle sequence that you can activate during battle, the team coming together to discuss their performance in the fight so far. You need to select a dialogue option to try and motivate the team to coordinate, everyone getting boosted if you pick the right one and a random song from the game’s soundtrack playing during the fight, meaning you can be fighting a massive boss to tunes like A-ha’s Take On Me, Billy Idol’s White Wedding, or Wang Chung’s Everybody Have Fun Tonight. It is a solid selection and perhaps an option to enable the tracks to play when you desire would make better use of it, but it also doesn’t overplay this element and instead relies more on the strength of its characters and their interactions, although perhaps it could also be that there is so much talking the music was at risk of covering that up.
When it is time for a battle in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, you control Peter Quill and utilize a pair of Element Guns for combat. The weapons have a fairly standard laser fire for their simplest attack option, but you can get in close to your enemies and deliver a sequence of satisfyingly strong melee attacks to do more damage at the risk of them possibly countering or you just finding yourself in the thick of a skirmish. Over the course of the story the name of the Element Guns becomes more relevant as you unlock new powers for it, different shot types giving you some new attack options in battle. An electric shot can bounce between grouped up enemies for example, or you can use the wind shot to pull snipers off of their perch. Element attacks utilize ammo that either slowly refills or can be gained from kills, but this option to spice up your attack options maybe doesn’t see its full potential realized. While the game begins by throwing many creative alien monsters at you, it also tries to be believable about it, not reusing creatures across the many worlds you visit. This means that other humanoid beings with guns of their own will crop up more often as enemies since they can believably travel across the galaxy, and while they have some variation as well, the game also comes up with the rather weak idea of giving some of them forcefields that only go down when the right Element shot hits them. It’s not difficult to break those barriers, but some more time spent giving you opportunities to use elements cleverly rather than to just bust shields would have helped. The earlier mentioned applications are common enough that battles still give you reason to use your powers outside of barriers, but your basic shots also feel remarkably weak and often just a way to add a small bit of damage to foes rather than take them out. There is an active reload feature that lets you continuously fire with those normal lasers if you time a button press right, but pretty much any other attacking option works better and clears out danger more quickly.
Luckily, there are layers to the battle system that emerge from the group dynamic. While in battle, the other Guardians will be fighting alongside you, taking out foes on their own at times but more importantly giving you an extra resource that plugs some holes in your limited abilities. Star-Lord’s guns might not be the best weapon on their own, but your allies all have unique skills that can shake up a fight or give you precious openings. A flighty jetpack-wearing enemy can be rooted in place with Groot’s vines so the team can whale on them with ease, and with every enemy having a stun state if you inflict enough stagger damage, calling in Drax to inflict heavy amounts of it can crack open the defenses of the more durable foes you face. Your teammates do need time to recharge abilities after use, but battle ends up coming down to a lot of team coordination since your allies can often hit harder or set things up for a more optimal situation, even using pieces of the environment to turn the tables on foes. Star-Lord’s failings as an individual fighter aren’t as important since it is more important to mix the different abilities of the Guardians together so everyone’s strengths can be realized, and when a member is absent for whatever reason, you even get to feel that in a more personal way as the battle options they provided are unavailable and the team’s synergy is thrown off by this disruption.
Your allies can assist you outside of battle too. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy heads to many locations during its story, doing an excellent job of constructing a galaxy of wonders with some remarkable environmental design. The first area you encounter is a scrapyard in space but it is held together by an unusual crystallized pink adhesive, but soon you’re down on a planet with strange alien flora and eventually, even out in open space, you can spot unusual structures that make the universe feel wider than you could possibly experience. There are some simpler interior spaces when you’re on board a spaceship that don’t stand out as much, but the galaxy stills feels like it contains many wonders while also staying locally cohesive, a planet utilizing similar structures and life across it while still varying its distribution so it can add some areas with specific identities. There is a good deal of time spent exploring these spaces, there being useful items for upgrading Peter’s abilities found off to the side and extras like data logs or items that your allies will later discuss with you due to their personal importance. Your Element Guns and even the other Guardians all have abilities to aid in exploration, that power to pull enemies in with the wind also letting you manipulate objects elsewhere for example while Gamora can do things like cut apart objects in your way or help boost you up to high ledges. These moments are when your group talks a lot and they’ll even comment on you going off to search for goodies, but thanks to the beautiful environmental design and the payoff for exploring, it is worth spending the time poking around the immediate area and solving the little ability puzzles in your path. Impressively, you can even find alternate costumes off the beaten path, some based on the films and comics and others original, but they are surprisingly numerous and just a nice reward for your curiosity that lets you customize the team’s appearance a little bit.
THE VERDICT: While the chatter, especially when Mantis is involved, can be a bit overdone at times, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy still provides plenty of character-focused comedy as well as amusing moments across a plot that normally strikes a great balance on how much heart and humor it should present at any one time. Gorgeous environmental design, an exceptional portrayal of Drax, and a story that can intelligently explore the pull of regular family vs. found family despite the sometimes unusual situations and characters that get involved in it makes for a compelling adventure. The combat does suffer some based on how Peter himself controls and the opportunities afforded to him, but the powers of the other Guardians make it more about finding interesting synergies and with their aid even cropping up in regular exploration, an excellent sense of the group dynamic does emerge throughout every aspect of this action game.
And so, I give Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy for Xbox Series X…
A GREAT rating. While showing the value of teamwork through the battle system was effective conceptually, it can feel like that Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is held back a bit by having the player character’s tools be weakened to compensate. Firing your weapons feels a bit too wimpy and the Elements needed their more interesting applications catered towards more, but having four allies you can call on fairly regularly to mix and match their contributions still gives the battles some exciting moments even when the game’s insistence on believable enemy placement lead to it whipping out the regular gunmen a bit too often. You will still get enough situations where you face novel danger and can realize smart applications of your group’s range of abilities, and when you do get the energy to huddle up and boost your group further, the music pumping into the rapid unleash of your group’s powers definitely serves as a satisfying way to turn the tables. If Star-Lord’s basic battle options were perhaps approached more as opportunistic attacks as well things could have been better, the melee often strong and effective but appropriately risky while the Elements have their ammo limited to prevent overuse. The basic laser just feels like it needs something so its use isn’t about buying time mostly. There is a momentum system for staying active in a fight that incentivizes smart play by letting you unleash a devastating team attack so perhaps the weak lasers were to help avoid leaving you without any way to participate as skills are recharging, but a more meaningful alternative could have helped this game become a cohesively excellent experience. The worlds you explore are diverse and realized with impressive detail, the characters are mostly well-realized and also beautifully realized visually even in their more unusual costumes with the amount of detail on something like Rocket’s fur really standing out. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy can be silly and strange when it wants to be but it still has an emotional center it can properly focus on at key parts, and while the frequent conversations can sometimes come too often, they also help flesh out the cast and moments where things are quiet can help contrast the team’s mood and mindset because of it. There still could have been better spacing on them, but there was also a lot of small but appreciated effort put into things like the character costumes, the invented Star-Lord band, and setting variety and consistency that support this space adventure.
There are certainly worse things to be than a bit overstuffed, and perhaps more importantly, the game deals with its themes well both narratively and in its interactive segments. Asking the questions about the comfort of biological family versus the support of a found family of friends becomes more meaningful when that group is actively shown as a strong support network in all facets of life, but it’s not as clear cut either because turbulence can arise in any group of people, especially one as strange as the Guardians of the Galaxy in a universe that is equally unusual. Hilarious at times and heartfelt at others without feeling like it had to overplay the expected parts of the franchise it is adapting, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy does great work on being its own effective interpretation of this band of misfit space mercenaries.