Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy is on Game Pass at the time of writing this post so I thought I’d give it a go. I’ve gotten through the first chapter and a cutscene at the start of the second.

We get an introduction to young Peter Quill, interacting with things in his bedroom as we get to know him a little. Drax then gets the full grown Quill out of his resting place, sending us on an adventure on a pile of junk stuck together with pink gunk.

Playing as Peter ‘Star Lord’ Quill play in third person and are accompanied by Rocket Raccoon and Groot as we make our way across the wreck. Dedicated Guardians fans might love this as there’s a lot of conversation going on between the English speaking characters. It’s quite a boring start to a game about some of the cooler Marvel heroes. The player can direct conversations sometimes with choice buttons that are occasionally offered but it’s nothing too special.

When we are allowed to do something other than walk and jump the game picks up a little bit. Star Lord uses his twin pistols to shoot enemies, giving them a good kick when you hit the melee button (which I really liked the animation of) while the teammates do their own thing. The active team members can be commanded to perform more powerful attacks and outside of combat they can effect objects in the world, Star Lord being the commander makes sense for this group. There’s also a team attack that uses all the Guardians together.

The other stuff is fairly standard with a scan vision mode, resources for upgrades, fairly linear levels and chatter to offscreen characters. A story about monsters, bounties and being on the wrong side of the law before somehow saving the world by the end of the game. Even an old style plane flight object dodging section.

I was surprised by the Gears Of War style reaction based reloading mechanic.

A fairly average first impression, a bit boring but it could build into a good full game. It’s simple but could be fun if it gets things right. The characters seem accurate in movement and personality which is the main draw of this sort of game. Could be some dumb fun with a few quirks.