I fully expected my article this week to be all about the mix of games showcased at E3 this past weekend but to my surprise there’s one game that I need to give my full attention to and that is of course Guardians of the Galaxy. Now I realise there were arguably some bigger games shown off but given that I’m a big old Marvel nerd and Guardians has somehow come out of nowhere AND is coming out this year, this is the one that’s grabbed my attention. I want to go over everything we know so far as well as what I hope to see and not see from the game come October. Right, let’s crack on!
As always you can check out the video version of this article in the link below!
Firstly it was confirmed that despite it being a game about the Guardians of the Galaxy, this will not be multiplayer and we will instead only play as Star Lord in what is promised to be a proper story driven single player experience. Anyone who knows my taste in games will already know how hyped I am about this, especially after having to deal with Square Enix’s last Marvel game, The Avengers.
I still stand by my review of Marvel’s Avengers that the story and gameplay were both really fun but the whole experience was let down by all the online live service bollocks that came with it. So it’s refreshing to see Square Enix focus on a proper single player story rather than forcing a horrible cash grab. Now my first concern was that this was probably supposed to be just that but given the backlash Avengers received, they may have made a last minute U-turn resulting in Guardians maybe ending up with a weird uneven feel to it..
Thankfully though that doesn’t seem to be the case, at least according to the games Senior Creative Director. When speaking to IGN he said that the team did consider making the game multiplayer but made the decision to have the player only control Star Lord and just be able to interact with the other Guardians instead. Jason Schreier also confirmed on Twitter that the decision to go single player was made long before Avengers was a flop and is in no way a reaction to that. So yeah, it sounds as if this game was built as a proper single player experience from the ground up so I am very VERY excited to get my hands on this!
Gameplay wise I think we have a good idea of what to expect from the 11 minute gameplay trailer that was shown off by Square Enix. It looks like a lot of fun and although we’re only in control of Star Lord you can still give orders to the other Guardians with relative ease by the looks of it. My only concern is that even in their cherry picked footage it looked as if the game was struggling to keep up with all the carnage on screen so that could be an issue with frame rates and such, especially on last gen consoles. Though we still have 4 months until release so there’s more than enough time for these kinks to be ironed out.
Elsewhere we also got treated to some character interactions between the group where more than once you have to help settle an argument between your team by picking a side. On one occasion it even popped up in the corner that “Rocket is furious” after Quill let Drax launch him across a giant gap on Quill’s advice showing that your decisions will hopefully have real consequences and will likely mean that balancing your team’s morale will be just as important as shooting aliens. I absolutely love this and hope it’s a real deep mechanic that reflects something like a Quantic Dream or Telltale game but we won’t truly know until we have our hands on it.
Another thing I am truly hyped for is the soundtrack. Having licensed songs for a Guardians of the Galaxy game feels like a must and judging by the gameplay trailer it looks like they’ve nailed it! Having a song like Bad Reputation blasting while you shoot up an alien planet is all I really need in this game. I’m hoping it’s not just for the trailer and real life songs will actually kick in for big boss fights and epic cutscenes during the game as that’s something that is a rarity in video games and will definitely set this aside from the pack!
Lastly I want to quickly touch on the characters themselves and the voice acting that will likely make or break the atmosphere of this game. Going back to Marvel’s Avengers, one of the big turn offs for a lot of people was that the cast of heroes felt like a Wish version of their MCU counterparts despite them being voiced by some of the biggest talents in gaming. Given that the majority of players, outside of a few hardcore Marvel fans, will only know the Guardians from the MCU, there is a real worry that the same issue may accur here. This doesn’t have to be the case though, look at the way Insomniac have handled their Spider-Man. He feels like the perfect mix of what we expect the character to be with Insomniacs own unique flair which is perfectly executed by the wonderful Yuri Lowenthal. Admittedly our expectations for Spider-Man come from a mix of movies, comics, animated shows and even other games whereas, like I said earlier, Guardians only really have the MCU as a comparison but it’s still possible to pull this off and I honestly believe they will. The brief interactions we saw in the trailer definitely had an MCU feel to it, but was unique and funny enough in its own right to be classed as its own take on the characters. Hopefully this extends throughout the rest of the game and I can’t see why it wouldn’t.
Overall I’m really excited to get my hands on Guardians of the Galaxy. After being burned by Marvel’s Avengers, this feels like the perfect way for Square Enix to show what they can really do with this property and if it’s received well, could well be the blueprint for all other Marvel games going forward. Roll on October 26th!