Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series Episode One Review

Telltale, if you’ve been living under a rock has created a ton of games. Everything from The Walking Dead franchise, Batman, Game of Thrones, Minecraft: Story Mode, and The Wolf Among Us just to name a few, have been… well in a sense Telltale’d. They have taken popular universes and given each universe a twist and in depth unique story where people grow to love, while giving people a way to find a fondness for the new and old characters to each series. This time around I’ll be covering the new Telltale series Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Since this game is usually structured in 5 episodes this will be a multi part review with the 5th being a video wrap up review and what we thought about everything and how they wrapped it up.

So with the release of Guardians the Galaxy Vol. 2 I’m sure many people are aware of who Guardians are and what they do. If not, then you may want to watch the first movie, second movie optional of course, but at least the first movie should give you a good introduction to the characters of the Marvel universe. If you’re familiar with the characters then you’ll see some artistic adjustments to some of the characters. Character personalities and voices are a little different but they do get fairly close to what they are in the movies which is nice, but they aren’t so different that you’ll hate the re-imagined characters. The look of the characters do differ a little bit but again let’s keep in mind that Telltale likes to give characters a little bit more of a cartoon/animated look to them with minor adjustments to costume design and physical qualities.

Besides the looks of the game and the characters, since the release of the first Guardians movie, music has always played a vital role. The music choices have carried over to the Telltale game, even though the music is definitely an older genre. I must admit it’s very enjoyable and catchy, no wonder why the playlist is labeled as “Rad Mix”. The music selection all kicks back to the 70’s, and the music is upbeat enough to really get your head bobbing and maybe even your foot tapping, just don’t let Drax catch you or he might call you pathetic as Quill knows far too well.

Since some of you may have never played a Telltale game, the controls are a little bit different compared to your traditional games. Depending on the action on the screen, controls are either quick time button presses, or you control the character around the screen to interact with different items or objects in the area where your character is. For myself I played with a mouse and keyboard, so on console it will be a little different. Combination button presses, mousing over, clicking and dragging will catch you off guard sometimes but that’s the greatness of the playing Telltale games. It keeps you really engaged into the game, which in turn keeps you really engaged of the ebbs and flows of the story.

It goes without saying that the game takes place a bit later on in the Guardian’s timeline when they’ve been a team for quite some while. Surprisingly the game starts off with a pretty big bang, like the movies usually do. With a distress call from the Nova Corps asking for assistance to fend off an attack from The Mad Titan Thanos, we get thrown into the chaos which is the Guardians signature introduction as it seems. With about a third of the crew wanting to kill Thanos, I was surprised to see that by half way through the first episode that is exactly what happens. Having one of the universe’s biggest threats checked off the list, I was wondering what angle they would have for the rest of the story and what was going to happen.

I’m not going to go into full detail of where the story will go but nonetheless I’m excited to see how the next chapters will play out. If you’re interested I’d say definitely pick it up and play it for yourself, because the Telltale series of games have always been quiet enjoyable and emotionally it’s always been a big roller coaster ride. Episode 2 is out today, so it’ll give you guys a chance to really get sucked into Telltale’s version of the Guardians of the Galaxy.