G A M E S E 3 S P E C Four pages of gaming expo highlights
DUE 26OCT
ISN’T IT MARVELLOUS?
MARVEL’S GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY PS5, PS4, Xbox, PC, Switch (via cloud) When a publisher like Square Enix gets hold of the Marvel licence, you naturally expect big things – and even more so when the word ‘Avengers’ is uttered. But it’s fair to say last year’s video-game take on everyone’s favourite superhero collective was a mixed bag, with a host of performance issues hurting the live-service title at launch, and grindy post-game content failing to give players much incentive to stick around once the entertaining campaign was done with. So what’s next? Well, it’s perhaps not surprising that we’re getting a Guardians of the Galaxy game this year… but we wouldn’t have put any 20
money on it being the story-driven, entirely single-player title unveiled at E3. In Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy you play as Peter Quill, better known as Star-Lord, the self-appointed leader of those intergalactic outlaws, in an original comics-inspired adventure that looks very promising indeed. And we hope Star-Lord is your favourite Guardian, because you only play as him. When beating up aliens in the game’s third-person combat sections, Quill is able to issue instructions to the other AI-controlled Guardians in real time, while there will be dialogue choices that affect how the story plays out. For example, in the fairly
lengthy E3 gameplay demo, we saw the Guardians squabbling over whether to sell Rocket or Groot in an attempt to make a bit of fast cash, with the final decision being left to Star-Lord. It’s a fun idea that seems well suited to a game featuring the Guardians, whose strange alliance is what makes them so watchable. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Guardians of the Galaxy game without a soundtrack rammed full of ’80s bangers, and here they’ll kick in when you trigger certain special attacks – because what fight in space can’t be improved by a bit of Bonnie Tyler? It’s due out in October.
