Blog 27: Heavy Metal Guardians

*This blog contains spoilers from the Guardians of the Galaxy video game!!*

I don’t do a lot of video game reviews, but this game was so great that it deserves one. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy game, developed by SQUARE ENIX (the same people who made the crappy Avengers game), was such a fun experience. This single-player action/adventure video game is the first game I’ve played/completed on my PS5, and I am so lucky that I was able to take part in something so epic. Thank goodness that I knew nothing about the game before I started playing it.

The Characters

Despite the fact that this game has the full Guardians team by the first level, you can only play as Star-Lord, the team’s leader. I found it a little weird at first, but I suddenly learned that you can actually command the other Guardians to perform attacks on enemies and to help solve puzzles. This was an intriguing developer move since it prompted me to start developing different strategies and trulyplacing the player in the role of the leader. This gets more exciting when you understand that each team member has a specific role to play.

Gamora, Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy: Formely the adopted daughter of Thanos, she is the newest member to the team. She’s an assassin that makes very swift attacks with her sword. Her attack commands are quick and rely on close-combat.
Drax, the Destoryer: A true galactic warrior who fights with honor and brutality. He’s like a tank when he charges into battle. His attack commands rely on him dealing heavy damage to groups of enemies with his sheer strength and daggers.
Rocket, definitely not a Racoon: A tech genius with a whole lot of angry sarcasm. He likes to do damage from afar with his trusty laser cannon and bombs. His attack command mainly involves grenades that can deal splash damage to groups of enemies, and can pull enemies together for the team to surround them.
Groot, a reliable tree: He may be the last of his kind, but that never stopped his optimism. His plant manipulation powers allow him to take over the whole battlefield, and to provide support for his teammates. His attack commands focus on crowd control by using his vines to trap enemies in their place, and said vines can become spikes that throw enemies into the air.
Star-Lord (aka Peter Quill), the human leader: He’s not the strongest person on the team, but he is the glue that holds them together. All of his attacks are a mix of shooting his element blasters, flying with his rocket boots, punching the crap out of aliens, and commanding the team on how to fight.

Not only are the combat mechanics astonishing, but this paticular version of the Guardians might be better than their MCU counterparts. Star-Lord actually makes an effort to make the team work together, Gamora progessively opens-up about her past over the course of the game, Drax is both funny and wise (unlike the simple minded one we get in the movies), Rocket is crankier and more empathetic than his MCU counterpart, and Groot is more vocal in the game than he was in the movies (which says a lot given his limited vocabulary). The team starts off a little rigid and annoyed with each other, but they slowly become more of a dysfunctional and loving family towards the end of the game, which again is something we never really got from the movies. Everyone is funny and little quirky, but they all get serious when things start to get intense.

Hell, even videogame Mantis is taken more seriously than her MCU counterpart. She still has that goofy and strange personality, but she plays a critical role in helping the Guardians within the final levels. The game also took the time to expand on her psychic abilities by also granting her the ability to see other timelines, which does baffle and unnerve the Guardians during one level where she is guiding them through a mystical and deadly cave to help free Drax from being brainwashed by an evil cult.

The Story

Speaking of am evil cult, they are the main enemies for this game. A group of people called “The Universal Church of Truth” (UCT) are slowly brainwashing the entire galaxy by using the soul stone (yes, the infinity stone) to trap their minds in a fantasy world while their souls are being sucked out of them. This whole mess started when the Guardians were hunting down a monster bounty in the “Quarantine Zone” (a sectioned off battlefield from a great Galactic War), and got busted by Nova Corp. As the Guardians were on a Nova battleship getting arrested, an explosion is set off by the UCT, and the team gets seperated. Star-Lord did save a young Nova girl, Nikki, from certain doom. He later finds out that her mom is the captain of the battleship, which complicates things because Star-Lord had a pretty intimate relationship with the ship’s captain, Ko-Rel, a long time ago. It’s implied here that Nikki might actually be his daughter since he hasn’t been with Ko-Rel for 12 years, and Nikki is 12 years old.

Fast Forward through an awkward reunion between Quill and Ko-Rel, the Guardians get fined and have to figure out how to raise the money to pay it off. I won’t go into detail about how they plan to do this because the game prompts you to make choices that will alter certain events in the game, so I’ll just skip to the part where they made enough money to pay their fee. They fly to a Nova checkpoint to find it almost abandoned, and they discover that UCT has taken over Nova Corp by using Nikki as the new host for the soul stone, turning her into their new god “The Matriarch”.

The rest of the game is about traveling to different planets to seek help to battle the UCT, and the final level battle all hinges on the decisions and actions you make throughout the game. The final level consists of an epic final battle with the UCT, and the difficulty of that battle depends on how your decisions affected the chances of you getting help or not, but even if the odds are stacked against you, you’ll triumph over evil because that’s what heroes do!!!

The game ends on a happy note with the Guardians saving the galaxy, and the ending is open to a possible sequel game, which I hope comes to fruition.

Final Thoughts

I can happily say that I can add this game into my list of all-time favorite games, and I don’t care who knows it. The fighting, the story, and the writing are all exceptional. The game’s soundtrack is like a chef’s kiss to this almost perfect game. This soundtrack, dare I say, is better than the Awesome Mix Vol 1 and 2 because it consists of classic eighties rock and metal. Hell, this game even has a fake metal band called “Star-Lord” that plays absolute bangers(the band is the reason Peter calls himself Star-Lord)!! All the songs are bangers, and this game should have gotten the “Game of the Year” Award just for having this song play during a fight. Check out this clips: https://youtu.be/HjyEEwlgx9c

I give this game a 9.5/10 only because there are a few dialog glitches in the game, but other than that the game is awesome. If you’re looking for something new to play that involves your favorite intergalactic heroes, you should give Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy a try.

That’s all I have for you today, I hope you all enjoyed my first video game review. This is your friendly neighborhood cosplayer saying goodbye, and until next time.