REVIEW – Once upon a time Guardians Of The Galaxy was a niche comic book series from the late 1960s and had a good run in the 2000’s when the second volume was created. The team never actually gained enough traction in the comics, and even then their spin-off series was linked to two Marvel Cosmic crossover events, and the main comic book series only had 25 issues (2008-2010) before being canceled. They were mostly an odd group of aliens and Peter Quill that would appear in cameos, or one-off episodes in different cartoons.

So they were far from being a mega super hit such as Spiderman or Wolverine, but they were an interesting bunch of characters. After Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 had become a success, the comic book iteration was revived, and now with the second movie coming in hot next May of 2017, another iteration has appeared this time in video game format helmed by Telltale Games. An all new original story and fans of the franchise are ready to activate their rockets, but sadly maybe the keys to the ignition should have been given to another developer.

An angry Thanos is here

The story of Episode 1: Tangled Up In Blue is not linked in any way to the movies, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead, it is an entirely original plot, that takes some of the design elements, and character traits from the movies, and meshes them up with the comic books. It starts off with The Mad Titan aka Thanos decimating the peacekeepers of the galaxy – The Nova Corps. They ask the Guardians to take down Thanos once and for all. A few dialogue choices later, we decide to assist the Nova Corps, and we crash land on an old Kree planet, on which there is something that Thanos desires.

From this point, the player takes control of Peter entirely and gets to make important decisions, and how the rest of the crew relate to him over the course of the adventure will be up to his choices. Compared to previous Telltale games you are given a more defined path on whose side you can pick, and you also have to manage the expectations of your team.

The overall story has multiple points where you will end up disappointing or supporting one team member over another – which will lead to further consequences down the road for Peter Quill – and for the player. We have choices just like in every other Telltale game, but here at this point in 2017, you can pretty much guess that certain choices would have resulted in the same outcome. So even though Telltale advertises this as a choose your own adventure game, it is not at a depth of Life is Strange – or any other Telltale games for that matter.

That would not be a problem if the game had a plot worthy of following, or if the jokes were great. Telltale took elements from the movie – aka quippy Guardians – but also tried to deal with some serious plot points that were from the old comic books.

The game decides to introduce us to several key characters and spreads them out over a two-hour running time. It does so at such a breakneck pace that in a blink of an eye, you’ll be already dealing with some other problem, from another villain that suddenly appears out of nowhere. You get Thanos, Hala, Nova Corps, the Collector, and also several flashbacks, plus team member specific important conversations that have heavy implications for the future episodes’ plotlines. As someone who loves the comics and the movie, this game’s episode would have needed an extra hour or two, and better scenes for transitions between locations.

These Guardians are ugly

Telltale uses a unique engine for the games, and while it was novel back in the Sam and Max days, here it just looks downright dreadful. Drax looks hilariously bad and incorrectly modeled. Gamora has washed out green skin. The textures are not the best, and some of them felt muddy or lacked sharpness.

Oh and the animation was just borderline horrible, and really lacks the effort and showcases the limitation of Telltale’s engine. There are no epic outdoor locations or beautiful sci-fi vistas, and most of the places in the first episode were just plain boring. No sense of adventure or exploration in a franchise that goes to weird and alien places. Due to this – as mentioned earlier – the environmental designs are just bland and average with nothing extra to excite the player.

The voice acting is mixed regarding quality as Peter Quill, and Gamora is terrible, Drax is okay, and Rocket is great since Nolan North voices him. Yet, there is an overall stiffness in their voices, and a lot of times it felt like they were reading from a script. The jokes can be summed up with one word: “Meh,” and almost 90% of them just fall flat. It is not insulting, but rather just does not do anything with the material provided, and in the end Guardians of the Galaxy is not exactly a full blown comedy (especially when reading the comics).

Low budget Guardians

Ah well, I should not have expected too much from Telltale, as they seem to be just creating okay games recently. They did add a crowd play feature here, in which if you log online the system will choose the most chosen dialogue and action, just to see how it plays out in the end. Still, this is not the most revolutionary thing, and the core gameplay is still the same as all the other Telltale game – choose an answer, and sometimes here is a quick time event.

Sadly these quick time events besides the first one with Thanos, lack any tension or excitement (mostly due to how horrible the game looks). Tales of the Borderlands was great, but everything since then has been just plain average. If you love The Guardians of the Galaxy, and cannot wait for the second movie to hit the movie theaters, then go and try out the first episode. Just do not expect too much.

-Dante-

Publisher: Telltale Games, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Developer: Telltale Games

Genre: Action

Release date: April 18, 2017