Episode 1 of Guardians of the Galaxy’s Telltale Games series hit digital stores last night and provide a nice thirst quencher before the upcoming film hits theaters in May. So far, although there are elements taken from the film and comics, the storytelling seems to be going in a slightly different path. Telltale took a similar approach with Batman’s origin story in the Batman Telltale series game.
The story brings Rocket, Groot, Drax, Star-Lord and Gamora all together as they must face off against Thanos and other threads among the galaxy, all while keeping civility among each other. Your actions and choices in the game affect the final outcome of the story.
We played Episode 1 last night in all of its glory. Be cautious though, If you haven’t played it yet, this video does contain spoilers.
*Note: I had to pause a few times as the “Twitch stream” toolbar on Xbox One was hiding the bottom decision option. If any other streamers have the same problem, enabling captions resolved this.
The voice acting is impressive, for a brief moment, I thought Rocket could have actually been voiced by Bradley Cooper. Of course I looked it up to realize the brilliant Nolan North knocked it out of the park once again.
The gameplay is very similar to previous Telltale titles. You maneuver your character throughout the level searching for items, interactive with other characters and making your decisions based on that. One new feature that was added was the ability to use Star-Lord’s rocket boots to navigate between different floor levels.
The cinematic and fight scenes are gorgeous, and perfectly balanced throughout the team.  What better way to start the first episode than to have this ragtag bunch of misfits go against the Mad Titan himself, Thanos. Although the threat is very apparent, this episode does add it’s fair share of comedic value.
The soundtrack was one of the best moments of the episode as fans are treated with music from acts such as Hall and Oates and Electric Light Orchestra.
So far, Guardians of the Galaxy from Telltale Games is off to a fantastic start.