Towards the latter-half of Telltale Games' original run, they were churning out so many titles in such a relatively short span of time that it wouldn't be surprising to hear that many people missed that they even made a Guardians of the Galaxy game, for instance.

Well, they did, and for the most part, it's real good stuff! Not quite peak Telltale, but they without a doubt captured the Guardians spirit and vibes immaculately.

The story takes some time to get going and get engaging, only really kicking into gear by episode 3 of the 5, but once it does, it delivers a narrative that's equal parts emotional and fun in that special Guardians way.

The fun in question is thanks to both some decent comedic writing and solid character writing throughout, as well as the 80s needledrops you've come to expect from the modern, post-Gunn Guardians. This particular iteration also gets extra hipster bonus points from me for going for rather unorthodox song choices ("This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both of Us" by Sparks, "Shambala" by Three Dog Night, etc), which were always delightful to hear and elevated every scene they were featured in.

While I haven't played all of the Telltale series, so perhaps its unfair to pin this on Guardians specifically, it does feel like the entry in their catalogue of titles that's the most like an interactive movie with the least amount of gameplay involved, outside of quick-time events. There are next-to-no puzzles and no real 'adventure game' stuff in there, like interacting with an inventory, for instance.

Though perhaps at this point, especially with how many titles they were churning out, games by Telltale were more of a 'come for the story, stay for the story' type of deal more than anything else. Not to imply that they're bad—far from it, in my opinion—but one should be aware of what they're getting themselves into.

However, to counter myself, the bulk of the player's input in this, as with all Telltale titles, comes from the choice and consequences they hand you at least once per episode. It is the Telltale trademark after all. While in the case of Guardians, it doesn't really come into play until episode 3, once it does, the game really comes into its own.

From here, there's a push-and-pull in regards to your relationship with each Guardian as well as your role as leader. This is made all the more effective by some excellent vocal performances, particularly Scott Porter as Peter Quill and Emily O'Brien as Gamora. The whole cast is great though and they bring depth to an already charming cast of wacky characters.

All in all, while it certainly isn't the best thing that Telltale has put out over the years, at least where gameplay is concerned, it's a great tribute to the Guardians as characters and the franchise with all the wit, charm and fun that comes with them.

7.5/10

Pretty good. The telltale series is the perfect platform for this kind of property. Ensemble cast of characters, Humor, Marvel Universe... It's all fun. If found the decision-making process to be the biggest thing that lacks here. There's barely any decision to make and I couldn't tell if my choices changed the story all that much. I did roll my eyes a bit as the developers were basically take a page off of James Gunn's movie trilogy. The characters personality are almost exactly like they are in the MC. And the attempt at plucking some music that sorta sounds the same as the soundtracks was an OK attempt. If you love the characters, you'll enjoy this off-shoot of a story. I don't expect a continuation.

It was one of the good looking Telltale Games games graphically for its time. The story seemed to be not bad either. As someone who also watched the movie, it seemed interesting to me, but when I started playing it, I realized that I was bored. Maybe the problem was not the game but Telltale itself. They started to make too many games with different concepts but similar to each other and as a genre these games didn't seem worth playing anymore. It would have been much more logical for them to continue with only a few successful games. Even today, they still continue to make games with this ridiculous method. This company definitely doesn't want to learn from their mistakes, they think they can get a good result by continuing this.

While on the surface it feels like an excuse to cash in on the popularity of the movies, Telltale’s version of the Guardians of the Galaxy does have a bit of heart.

To start, Telltale aren’t really known for “gameplay” as they usually stick to point and click but honestly this is some of the best they’ve done. Puzzles are pretty fun, with some nice unique tools that help you solve them. The action is really great with “Combat” (AKA quicktime events) being satisfying to watch, especially with the accompanying music. The very first and final fights deserve a special shout-out, as does the montage in episode 3 despite it not involving any gameplay.

The story, and the way the gameplay interacts with it, is classic Telltale. Choices mostly have minor consequences on the overall plot other than maybe the order some events happen, but there are a few major ones that are quite tough to make. The plot itself is fine. It’s pretty generic and MCU-formulaic but manages to have well written themes and stakes that keep you interested. With any Guardians media, however, the real focus should be on the Guardians themselves.

The team itself is made to replicate the MCU version of the team from Gunn’s Vol. 1, and at times it can feel quite tiresome to just see a rehash of these characters beat for beat. This includes them often just acting like cardboard cut outs of their movie counterparts, as if seeing them at a Disney park. But as the episodes progress, they gain some more complexity as they deal with their pasts and their relationships with one another.

Over the course of the five episodes we see the guardians deal with their traumas and how that affects the way they interact with each other. And at the time of release, for these episodes, many of these pasts/relationships had been either only just recently shown or barely shown at all in the movies (especially Rocket).

That does mean, however, that these complexities are mostly only effective back in 2017. Now six years later, four more movie appearances, a holiday special, and an amazing game by Eidos-Montréal have given us more evolved takes on the characters that I think outshine this game massively.

Overall, this game still did surprise me, it does well with emotional beats and kept me interested throughout. The soundtrack is good and the action is great. I just think that the 2021 game does it all much better, (especially the Guardians themselves) and is the superior choice for anyone to play.

I somewhat enjoyed the game, a pretty cool plot and a very charming cast, definitely on the better end of telltale games. I would've liked it a lot more a few years back. It weights so much that the engine they use is old af, some character designs were just horrible and lazy, every alien you'll meet is just a regular person with a different color skin. The choices bothered me a bit as well, I've been spoiled by better games where the consequences matter, but we know that illusion of choice is what this studio is all about. At least the last chapter has signifincant lasting choices. For the most a lot of the action is quicktime events, some which would look cool if it wasn't so damn slow, seriously everything just slows down to give you a change to get it right. Glad that it is not the case in the last encounter, very quick paced with a sick soundtrack.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series provides players with an episodic adventure featuring the beloved characters from the Marvel universe. While it attempts to capture the essence of the Guardians, the game falls short in several aspects. The narrative, while true to the source material, is somewhat lackluster and fails to engage players deeply. The decision-making system, a hallmark of Telltale games, feels less impactful here, and the consequences of choices often seem insignificant. Gameplay is primarily composed of quick-time events and dialogue options, leaving little room for exploration or engaging interactions. The visuals are passable but don't do justice to the vibrant Marvel universe. In essence, while the game offers a chance to spend more time with the Guardians, it doesn't fully leverage the potential of the source material, resulting in a somewhat underwhelming experience for both Marvel fans and gamers.

For me, the Telltale formula has worn out its welcome a bit and I won't lie - some parts of this game were a bit of a slog to get through. But playing this made me realize that the thing that Telltale games do best - cutscenes and dialogue choices - is what the games should focus on.

The parts of the game where you're walking around and solving very rudimentary puzzles in a perfunctory manner feel like they were there to satisfy some sort of quota of "gameplay", where in reality I don't think anybody actually goes to Telltale games for that stuff.

Having to make actual hard decisions, and having the story and writing be good enough to actually make those decisions hard, is the heart of the game and in those regards I was very on board. I just wish there was less of the things that didn't work well. Admittedly, it feels like the amount of walking around and puzzle solving is very low in this game, but there could've been less.

This is such an underlooked game, yes it got the classic Telltale problems but it's still a great adventure, the characters are great, even though that's because of Marvel cause they are their characters, Telltale does a good job in introducing them and their past. Yeah, Hala is not a epic villain but I think this game is not about her, it's about bonds, about family, about forgiveness, and even Hala has something about that with his son's plot although is not too much explored in the game, it's there so it's better than nothing. I liked this game a lot and for beign from a time when Telltale was releasing games for the renown of their IP's rather than their quality, it's pretty good.

PS: I am Groot