Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy are back in a game from Square Enix, building on the movies while telling a new story in an original timeline.

Players play as Peter Quill (or as he prefers to be called,  “Starlord”)  through multiple chapters as the team hurtles through one mishap after another. Playing from a third person perspective, players solve puzzles, give instructions to the other members of the team, and select various dialogue options to advance the story. You can also have Rocket upgrade the team’s weapons and abilities by using components gathered during the course of the missions.

While the look and voices of the characters differ greatly from their cinematic counterparts, the story is engaging and loaded with lots of humor and depth. This helps immerse players into the characters and events.

Missions are broken down into chapters and can involve events like pulling a heist, search and recovery, and exploration. Many of the areas in the game are extremely detailed. There’s a lot to explore, and a lot of fan service in the location settings.

The game has plenty of combat, but for me this sometimes got tedious as battles dragged on longer than expected despite my best efforts. The game also offers a “Huddle Up” option where the team can gather to rally during a battle. While it was interesting at first, it became a bit annoying to me as all it really did was provide a break in the action.

The game does a great job of offering abundant tunes for Peter to enjoy during the game, and having a trove of classic to select from or randomly play is a nice touch.

The interchanges between the characters are high point of the game. The dialog offers plenty of humor while it advances the storyline, and it does help fill in the time when travelling the very large maps and that players will face.

Some of the action sequences are a bit frustrating as they require players to rapidly strike a specific key to survive the moment and advance to a new scenario. The issue is that many of these situations happen very fast and involve dying a few times before you get an idea of what is needed to get through them.

While elements of the game may frustrate some players; the winning storyline and highly-detailed locales with numerous opportunities to customize and explore make Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy one of the better Marvel based games and one that fans will not want to miss.

4 stars out of 5

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