After the release of Marvel’s Avengers in August of last year a lot of fans were left with a bitter taste in their mouths towards Square Enix. Although the concept was good, the game lacked the potential it was promised with only the story being its saving grace, but even then a mix of game stopping bugs, repetitive battle missions that all blended into one generic battle after another and the introduction of ‘pay-to-win’ features certainly put an end to the Avengers superhero entrance into Marvel Games.
Fast forward a year and we were given a trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy, although beautiful fans were rightfully wary on the project. The reveal of developers Eidos-Montréal taking the helm was a little comfort however, the minds behind Deus Ex is a drastic change from the Tomb Raider crew. The reveal was well received and with the story and pre-release footage looking strong all that was left was the wait.
Being both a huge fan of the comics and MCU I was very eager to get started and experience The Milano and see what’s what. Straight off the bat the graphics were to be expected from a next generation game. Playing on a Series X definitely showed the game in all its glory. The detail throughout the ship and the character design although taking its own spin shows heavy inspiration from both comics and movies, giving us just what we would expect from our motley crew.
Unlike Avengers this game is extremely linear in story which is exactly what Marvel’s games should be, much like Sony’s exclusive Spider-Man series, giving us a hard hitting stories which is what the universe is all about. After a short flashback taking us to Peter Quill on his 13th birthday we are launched into a world of familiarity with an aggressive Drax looming over. The licensed soundtrack really helps build the setting as we can hear ‘Turn Up the Radio’ by Autograph echoing throughout the ship not to mention the games very own band ‘Star Lord’ with an impressive soundtrack. The ability to change songs on board is a nice touch with certain characters responding to song choices at times.
Although there is not a lot of free roam, you are able to explore extra paths to collect scraps for upgrades and some nice outfits that each have information regarding what comic series they are from. The fighting mechanics albeit repetitive at times can be made quite fun with the companion system with the other guardians helping make big battles easier to handle, the ‘huddle up’ feature which boosts the team is also a nice feature, the team will act either defeated or overly cocky, you will be given dialogue options and if chosen right will boost the entire team whereas choosing wrong will only boost yourself, but having Hot Chocolates ‘Ever 1s a Winner’ playing while killing some alien slime is quite entertaining.
With a rising increase in virtual photography, photo modes have started becoming a staple in games with that said Guardians have gave the community a lot of options in getting those perfect shots.
In whole, This is Marvel Games at its best focusing on story aspects more than complex RPG mechanics like Avengers. The story brings a whole new take on the Guardians while keeping the familiar setting of the MCU and also bringing in characters that are overlooked from the comics given them the light they deserve. Video games are the perfect setting for superhero stories at this very moment in time, being able to deliver longer and in depth stories which we are in control of and giving us visual settings that we rarely see in media.
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Mary DeMarle led narrative on modern Deus Ex games and Guardians of the Galaxy.
Hopefully it's for lead writer on Mass effect. But that would mean it's way off.
Regardless...i mostly loved Guardians for the story so it's a good get from Bioware.
I wonder if Embracer group is slimming down Crystal Dynamics...
Well Bioware has fallen so far off, its finally good to see them getting some talent where they need it most. First order of business: FIX MASS EFFECT story....immediately
The two Marvel games lost Square Enix $200 million in a little under two years and were responsible for the sale of western studios to Embracer, according to an analyst.
I'm sorry but if guardians of the Galaxy didn't sell enough they paid too much for royalties to Disney I'm thinking. In any case square is a terrible manager if their dev cost and marketing cost isn't offset by how well gotg sold.
Edit: I did some research and it sold at least one million five hundred thousand as of last October. Not to mention 5 to 10 million dollars from Microsoft for game pass. Square is crap at budgeting imo after finding this out.
2nd edit: I fear for the final fantasy franchise and square as a company if they're this incompetent
The cost of making AAA games has skyrocketed. 1.5 million copied is not enough to cover the cost of production, and advertising. Yes 100 million is pretty standard (if not low) for a AAA game. And selling 1.5 million won't even cover the cost.
And i remember the game was half off in Canada for Black Friday. One month after release. So most of those sales aren't even at 60.
After years and years, many years, I'm just more convinced that SE is just incompetent at time management and development.
1.5m is pretty bad for a game that probably exceeded 100m in development costs. It is a shame as GOTG is good a game. Given how often both CD and Eidos underperformed according to SQNX their sale was inevitable.
If I remember correctly they have been losing money on FF games after ether FF10 or 12. It's the main reason why they doing the FF7 remake which cover's practically every game that is connected with FF7. Its the one of the main games in the FF franchise that made the most money for them. Not including FF11 and FF14 i think thats done quite well for them financially.
Guardians of the galaxy is a great game but sadly 90% of gamers only play f2p, GaaS games these days.
So of course games will suffer. I've said it many times "be careful what you wish for". And in a few years gaming will be shite full of nothing but GaaS and f2p nonsense and gamers will wonder where it all went wrong.
5-10 mill from MS? is that a factual #?
SE is becoming a shell of their former selves, they need to sell to Sony and get some direction.
Well maybe Guardians would have sold more if people weren’t put off with how shit the Avengers was
It never does. People moan about all sorts of things nowadays. The same people would have moaned about them looking too much like the actors.
@godmars you have to understand guardians even on the comics is a obscured comics and it got to a small spotlight by the movie they thought that since the movie did good the game would too but the truth is that marvel space opera is very niche in the comics with multiple cancellations over the years and returns with different members same for the avengers comics
The avengers should have used the comic book character looks instead of the butt ugly ones they used trying to copy the movie look. It works well in the cartoons and no one complains about it.
The games voice actors were as good as the movies in their own right. The interactions were wonderful.
I actually prefer the game characters over the actors for Guardians, but I’m sure I’m in the minority on that one.
It wasn't clear what it was either. Was it a action game was it a online only clone that killed it into and turned me off the game until it was out for a year and appearing on countless goty lists
This, for sure. I avoided Guardians after playing Avengers. I did eventually buy it on a sale due to the great reviews. Way better than the monotonous Avengers live-service game.
while I agree there is more to it. I think a large part of the problem is simply that Guardians doesn't have the same following as your typical Marvel hero/groups. Personally speaking many of my friends who game have never even watched the two movies. I sent one friend a copy of the game free of charge and he hasn't even bothered checking it out. I love the IP, the movies, characters, etc, but it simply doesn't have the broad appeal nor does it have time on market like other super hero's. Though dropping what was Avengers was undoubtably a major blow to any success Guardians may have had otherwise but there's more to it. I picked Avengers up for $10 after playing Guardians and good grief was it mediocre at best and the live service/leveling/rewards system was disgusting.
Lastly, I do have a feeling Disney is charging too heavy of a price for use of their IPs but that is obviously just a guess. I would be interested to know what kind of money Disney requires for use of their IPs though. But look at, say, Good Smile Company and their Nendoroid line of figures. Venom is something like $95!! Most, if not all Marvel characters are quite a bit more than most other nendoroids. And something tells me Goodsmile isn't setting the prices higher simply because they can.
Guardians got the short end of the shtick, all thanks to the shit show that was The Avengers.
For real, it’s a darn shame too because Guardians has some of the best and most entertaining in-game dialogue (while you’re just walking around with your crew mates in different areas) that I’ve seen since Uncharted and the Last of Us. Avengers was crap.
Not even just that, the story overall is so freaking great, with tons of laughs and emotional moments throughout the well done campaign.
I agree... but the gameplay was so meh to me that i finda wished it was a telltale type game. It was a chore.
@VersusDMC
I understand that, I do. The gameplay is the one area that I felt needed A LOT more work! It got stale quickly and if the story was just “OK” I honestly wouldn’t have kept going, but I really came to like these characters early on and for story I felt was neat and headed somewhere interesting, and my goodness it all shocked me with how much I came to love the characters and story as everything progressed.
I love telltale and their past games, but I love the game how it turned out, for the most part lol. But I get what your saying. But I’m glad it wasn’t made in that form of style. Did you play the telltale Guardians of the Galaxy game?
A real blast and gem of a game.
Gotg combat section would have been much more entertaining if you can switch to other party members like tails or tri-Ace games. Their combat repertoires are already limited (just 5 members total) and unable to switch make it even more repetitive (you hardly notice others effect when u just focusing on your own attack). I guess they going more like Mass Effect types of combat? Either way, everything else were actually pretty solid, especially all the quarrels between parties members were brilliantly hilarious.
It is, they have already said they have already finished the story for post Endwalker and now working on the story for the next expansion.
Looks like FFXV, so not that good. They should make JRPG's games like they did back in the 90's. But quality and creativity has been long gone from gaming with a few exceptions.
Games nowadays are made by money an investors who tell developers what to do. Sad really.
Got on the hype band vagon of Guardian and I surelly enjoyed its writing and story, which I thought was quite convoluted and fun overall. The excution was a little MEh even thought the models were alright and the environments not bad at all. Movements felt a bit tiff but ok overall. It was a decent game with a big budget soul. I did not play Avengers but I guess it felt into the "wanna be AAA at all costs" trap !
I love everything about the game, except the combat that got stale.
But it sure is a gorgeous game, especially with ray tracing on.
Yeah, the combat was stale (got that way rather quickly) but man, that story, the characters, that helped me push through the gameplay and at times, the dialogue in the combat at points in the campaign had me enjoying certain fights again and again, regardless of the repetitiveness, put a little spark back into it’s diminishing flame in that one specific weak area in the game.
I bought into the hype. Everyone was talking it up like it was such a great game. Got it and felt very underwhelmed. Didn't really care for the combat at all. Everyone just felt so underpowered and like you said, it felt a bit clunky. Allowing you to pick who you played as in combat would have helped. Drax just didn't feel like the Drax from the movie very much and I tired of Rocket's whining. The story didn't hit with me. I mentioned it somewhere a couple months ago and someone commented "oh, wait until chapter X" and that was still like 3 chapters away from where I was, and way past the halfway point. With all the other games that came out recently, I just never went back.
Totally understand. As for the story I guess it can be fairly subjective to personal taste. Overall teh game has decent to good production value. I can tell a decent amount of time was used to create the models of everything in the game; locations, characters, objects etc. Texture work is also quite nice with lighting that could use a bit of improvement. My biggest problem are the animations which are fairly robotic. I loved the fact that the characters talk among themselves during teh gameplay and make the whole thing a little more beliavable, nad jokes included. I personally liked tha game despite these minor issues, I don't think I would go back to play it again to get all the collectables like I would do with Spidermand or Ratchen and Clank for example. Too bad the dev and publisher lost money as we might not see another iteration of these game anytime soon. Take care
