With its first comic going all the way back to 1939, it’s fair to say that Marvel has been in the game for quite some time. Over the past 80 years, Marvel has become one of the most influential companies of all time, with its products spanning all spectrums of the pop culture world. From movies to comics to TV shows, Marvel has a strong presence in just about every entertainment industry, and the video game market is no different. While Marvel games have been around since the industry’s inception, one of the company’s most recent releases is, Marvel’s Guardians of the Universeis perhaps the most unique title to date.
Released last year to a healthy amount of critical acclaim, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy managed to win the Game Award for Best Story and impressed both casual and die-hard Marvel fans with a thrilling, surprisingly emotional space adventure. While there have been countless Marvel games in the past, some of which are still loved today, Guardians of the Universe is a particularly special title, with a handful of elements that make it undeniably unique.
Guardians of the Galaxy focuses on complex characters
The core element of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and the biggest feature that sets it apart from the rest of Marvel’s game catalog, is its main cast of complex characters. Before 2014, the Guardians of the Galaxy were one of Marvel’s lesser known teams. While Marvel fans have known about the dysfunctional space family for a long time, casual fans had probably never heard of the group, and when they found out there was a movie in the works, many were a little skeptical, which is pretty easy to understand when a third of the team consists of a walking tree and a talking raccoon.
But 2014’s Guardians of the Universe went on to become one of the greatest MCU movies of all time and one of the most commercially successful. Before long, characters like Groot and Rocket were household names, and the Guardians of the Galaxy quickly became one of the most beloved comic book teams of the modern generation. So, Eidos Montreal’s Guardians of the Universe had quite the legacy to live up to, and somehow it managed to not only reach the heights of its movie counterpart, but surpass it in some ways.
After only a few months in the formation of the group, Marvel’s Guardians of the Universe gives fans a glimpse into the group that is even more dysfunctional than usual. The game begins with the team constantly arguing with each other, with Peter Quill being the glue that barely keeps everyone together. But over the course of the game, players see the team come together one at a time, until they eventually become a family, and that journey is one of the most emotionally investing stories in a Marvel video game.
In the course of Guardians of the UniverseWith a 20-hour runtime, players have the opportunity to engage in a plethora of conversations with their teammates, each adding more depth to the character. By the end of the game, players must have an extensive knowledge of each character’s backstory, motivations, and personality, all of which leads to each member feeling three-dimensional, which in turn forms a strong bond between the player and the rest of the Guardians. For some fans, this version of the Guardians of the Galaxy is the definitive version, being comically accurate while also offering some of the most complex character relationships the Marvel team has ever seen across all forms of media. This emphasis on creating recognizable and complex characters is perhaps the greatest way Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy knows how to stand out.
Guardians of the Galaxy has a unique blend of gameplay
In the past, Marvel games often stuck to just one primary type of gameplay. The vast majority of Marvel’s back catalog of games tends to be mostly third-person action games, often closely aligned with the third-person shooter genre, for titles like Iron Manor the beat-em-up genre, for titles like X2: Wolverine’s Revenge, Fantastic fourand Captain America: Super Soldier. While some Marvel games have mini-games or other additional modes that offer a different type of gameplay, for most of the title the player will experience only one gameplay genre.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, on the other hand, combines a range of gameplay genres, another big factor in classifying it as one of the most unique Marvel games to date. although Guardians of the Universe as a whole remains a third-person action game, the gameplay itself varies quite a bit over the time. The battle encounters in Guardians of the Universe are third-person shooter segments, in which the player controls Star-Lord as they blast enemies away with their elemental pistols. At the same time, the player can give a series of squad commands to his teammates, each of which helps in battle in one way or another. As players progress through the game, more squad skills are unlocked, making these encounters more complex and engaging.
But on top of this complex third-person action gameplay, Guardians of the Universe also breaks down the action with a handful of environmental puzzles. While they are quite simple and can slow down the pace of the game quite a bit, these puzzle sections do add some variety to the gameplay and are often packed with funny and engaging dialogue.
Ship battle sections are also packed in Guardians of the Universe, which adds a shoot-em-up gameplay to the mix. And on top of everything else, Guardians of the Universe also has some story and dialogue choices that affect the outcome of story and gameplay segments, adding in some RPG elements for the record. Unlike the rest of Marvel’s back catalog, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy isn’t afraid to constantly mix things up, making it arguably the most unique Marvel game yet.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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