Eidos Montréal's Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is an action-adventure game in which you play as Peter Quill (Star-Lord) from a third-person perspective. Aside from Star-Lord, none of the titular characters can be controlled by the player; instead, they're controlled by AI. On the plus side, you can give them orders during combat. But that doesn't change the fact that it's one of the most enjoyable single-player story games I've played this year. So ultimately, after a few sessions averaging 16 hours each and multiple save files, I've seen everything the game has to offer. Let's take a look at why Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is likely to be a gem in single-player games this year, and why you should check it out, in our review.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy game didn’t really grab my attention when it was revealed, as my expectations were shattered when the Avengers game was released. But this time around, Square Enix managed to do it right by removing unwanted online content and boring, repetitive online missions. So to address the elephant in the room: no, the game has nothing to do with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is also not a GoTG origin story where everyone meets each other. In the game, the Guardians are already an established team, known for their achievements in their industry. But staying true to their comic book roots, Peter and his team don’t shy away from doing a little smuggling and some non-lethal illegal work here and there.

The story starts off with the Guardians completely broke and looking to make some quick cash by venturing into the illegal areas of the galaxy to capture a rare monster and sell it to someone they know will pay big bucks for it. But Guardians being Guardians things get out of hand and long story short they get arrested by Nova Corps and given a fine for trespassing. But that’s not even the main part of the main story. This session is just to introduce you to characters you may not be familiar with. These new characters are familiar to comic book fans but have yet to see screen time in the MCU. So without giving away any spoilers, the story covers everything from a happy, crazy space llama to the powerful soul stone and everything in between. Anything more than that will be considered spoilers and I encourage you to enjoy the story for yourself.

The player can use Star-Lord’s elemental weapons to fire at the enemies. Star-Lord is nowhere near as powerful as his MCU counterpart. Even though the game shows us that they acknowledge and refer to Ego as Peter’s father, the gameplay makes you feel like Peter is just another generic space marine in a known universe. And that’s exactly how it should work, and I can see why. The main goal of the game isn’t to be a one-man army with just Star-Lord, but you need to focus on your teammates. And the real magic happens when you give commands to your AI controller teammates. With each character taking on the special roles of a tank, assassin, and ranged attack with four abilities each, you can string together some pretty awesome combos and attack patterns once you get the hang of it. The gameplay can be described in one sentence as Gear of War 4 gunplay meets Mass Effect squadmates gameplay, but without the option to take cover. It’s fun for a single-player focused game.