Better than the movie

Marvelrsquos Guardians of the GalaxyRating 455Developer Eidos InteractivePublisher Square EnixPlatform PC PS3 XBO PS5 XBSPrice PC Rs 2999Consoles Rs 2999After the disaster that was Eidosrsquos Avengers game I wasnrsquot too sure how Guardians of the Galaxy was going to turn out It is an understatement to say that I was happy with the outcome The storyline is a little different from the MCU version It has Peter Quill aka Starlord abducted at a slightly older age He is still an lsquo80s obsessed manchild but there is more nuance to his character compared to the MCU versionThe story from the start is peppered with lots of humour emotion and camaraderie This changes over time depending on the dialogues you choose as Starlord Team members can either trust you or they can lose faith in you depending on what you select The most immediate effect of dialogues can be seen in Huddle mode that happens in the heat of battle If you accidentally trigger Huddle while your team is kicking a chances are you will be told off by your teammates and the temporary adrenalin perk from a Huddle doesnrsquot get activated If you time it right everyone gets pumped up leading to faster power moves and louder music The dialogues throughout the game are well written and there are times in the game where the emotional connection between the characters shines through You even miss them when some characters are not available during the playthroughFor most of the game you will be shooting and arguing your way out of sticky situations The constant chatter and team style combat is a lot of fun You can have Gamora and Drax execute devastating attacks while Rocket can blow them up Groot of course helps keep enemies in place while you execute your attacks It feels like a welloiled machine and chaotic at the same time That being said there are times where you will end up playing the same combat over and over again because even at the least difficult moment things can get tough In some instances the checkpoint in the game is farther behind than you thought When this happens you will end up going through all the dialogues and cut sequences before the combat begins again There was one particular instance where I was fighting an octopustype tentacle monster I had one last tentacle to deal with when Peter died in combat and after the automatic save point loaded I suddenly had two tentacles Needless to say that was annoyingThe team also has its uses in the environmental puzzles Drax can be used to lift heavy objects Rocket can handle electronics Groot can build bridges and lift things while Gamora can slice through things These are elaborate but fairly repetitive which means after the first few puzzles it got old quickly The music like in the movie is brilliantly chosen There are lots of lsquo80s hits all ready to be blasted on Peter Quillrsquos walkman and boom box The original sound track is good enough to have on your phone playing all day There are also a bunch of custom tracks created for the game which match the lsquo80s rock vibe In case you are a streamer you can turn off the proprietary music to listen to the custom original sound track of the gameGuardians is mostly bugfree on the Xbox Series S Though a few things got me a little irritated The most annoying bit was picking up an object from the ground going too close or too far away and the indication to pick it up goes away I spent a lot of time just moving back and forth to pick something up Considering you need to pick up components for upgrades this can get annoying very fast I also got stuck and couldnrsquot get out or die in one of the missions so I had to restart from a checkpoint There were a few frame skips as well that I noticed while playing the game but these were rareMarvelrsquos Guardians of the Galaxy is a surprisingly good game with a fun storyline that will have you emotionally invested in the game While there are a few technical bugs still to be ironed out I think the game overall was a treat to play It just goes to show how a wellwritten story and properly defined characters can influence the final product I might even replay the game just to choose a different set of dialogues and see how things turn out