Marvel’s Avengers hasn’t set the world on fire. Since it launched last September, the live service superhero adventure from Crystal Dynamics has struggled to attract a decent audience of players, with even the largest of expansions seldom drawing much more than a casual glance of attention. Black Panther: War for Wakanda was a clear step in the right direction, with a campaign that replicated the finer parts of the base game, but was too little too late for an online experience that had already faded into obscurity.
It feels like a matter of time until major updates cease and the studio moves on to something new. The project that was always doomed to struggle, entering a world of live-service experiences all vying for the attention of a too-small pool of players. With its vague attempts to imitate the MCU while simultaneously failing to distance itself from the cinematic juggernauts, Marvel’s Avengers occupied a weird place in the cultural zeitgeist where it was either seen as a perpetual joke or an object of pity.
Eidos-Montreal’s Guardians of the Galaxy seems eager to address these mistakes, even if the studio never intended to do so in such a way. It’s a single-player RPG where you take control of Star-Lord and form meaningful relationships with Rocket Raccoon, Drax, Gamora, Groot, and a number of other characters from the films and comics. From the two hours I’ve played as part of a recent preview, it’s on the right track to be the first great game from Square’s Enix’ lucrative partnership with Marvel. It has a few kinks to work out, but those aside, this is a title that understands why players love these characters so much.
Unlike Marvel’s Avengers, repetitive combat encounters and exploration are no longer bulked up with the reward of needless currency and ugly cosmetics, providing a breadcrumb trail for us to keep playing beyond the main campaign - which itself is rather short and inconsistent. The second I step foot onto the Milano, this living, breathing world is alive with character and possibilities for me to communicate with heroes and delve beyond their cinematic counterparts. Gamora will regale me with tales of her past, touching on trauma associated with her sister, Thanos and the resistance. Star-Lord can lend an ear, choosing dialogue options to probe deeper or shift the conversation into a more optimistic direction. Drax will speak plainly about his past while failing to understand obvious jokes and jabs, as Rocket Raccoon and Groot will bicker in a way that only the close-knit duo can understand. Right away, there’s a sense of chemistry that Crystal Dynamics’ Avengers were sorely lacking, and something they needed to succeed when compared to films that are absolutely dripping with the stuff.
Exploration and combat are laced with similar improvements. Your allies in Marvel’s Avengers, if not controlled by other players, felt oddly buggy. They would batter foes to pieces and rush towards the objective in a laughably robotic fashion, rarely stopping to communicate with you or comment on the context of the ongoing mission. It never felt like you were working together as The Avengers, a team so legendary that even the mightiest of villains fear them. They felt like a bootleg version of the superhero staples, something you’d find in Primark for a couple of quid that shrinks in the wash after a single use.
Guardians is more natural. When you board Nova Corps Station, all of them have bespoke animations and dialogue tailored for the situation. It isn’t an online game, so Eidos-Montreal is able to write these scenarios to be unique, with each and every character reacting in a way that lends the narrative a level of weight that Marvel’s Avengers is never really able to reach. An online game with your own personal characters that were built from nothing would work with a formula like this, but when you’re stepping into the shoes of icons, they need to feel genuine or it all falls apart.
No amount of skins or references can save a game that doesn’t achieve its core premise on the most fundamental level. Guardians has cosmetics, but they’re mere bonuses to a game that already works, with story, characters, and combat boasting a level of fidelity that ensures the player is on board from the opening moments. Having only played a few hours of the campaign, my optimism could be misplaced, but Eidos-Montreal understands the charm and camaraderie required to make a superhero adventure of this magnitude work, especially one as beloved as Guardians of the Galaxy.
Part of me does worry that the chalice has already been poisoned by Marvel’s Avengers, and the majority of people will overlook Guardians of the Galaxy because it’s been marred by the reputation of a game that wasn’t what they wanted it to be. Enthusiasts like me who work in the industry will be able to tell the difference, but Johnny Gamer is none the wiser. The last one was shite, so why would they expect this one to be any better? It’s out in just over a month, so I guess we don’t have long to find out.