First off, I want to go ahead and qualify that I am a big Telltale fan. I've played every one of their story games since Back to the Future.

I can't, in any good conscience, recommend this Telltale title. I'm not really sure what happened here, but I feel like the Telltale team (sorry guys) really phoned this one in. It feels like nothing you do or say matters like previous titles, and overall the story isn’t even that spectacular. Telltale’s games have been getting better and better with each new title, but I feel like something happened here. Something internal to the company changed and things went haywire. There’s no other way to describe the poor writing, poor dialogue, and overall poor gameplay. Each episode lasts about 45-70 minutes which is WAY below their previous titles. I remember Wolf Among Us taking roughly 2-3 hours per episode. Every single time an episode would conclude in Guardians of the Galaxy I would feel massive disappointment. “Wait… that’s it?” was a pretty common phrase that I uttered.

I’m not recommending this title simply because I’d like it to be brushed under the rug. I don’t want people new to Telltale to think that this is how these games usually are. So I want the reviews to reflect this. I want to detour anyone thinking that this is where they should start for Telltale. I also want to warn any diehard fans to keep their money and wait for something more up to the quality that we’ve come to expect from Telltale.
Could it be that Telltale has decided to take on too many projects at a time? It does seem like they’re juggling an awful lot of other titles and I would hate to think that those titles were suffering all in the same way because of some financial bottom line they hoped to meet.

I’m so sorry Telltale. I never thought I’d see the day I’d say “No” to one of your games. You can do better, you have done better, and I still look forward to whatever comes next. We’re still on your side. Just don’t lose whatever goodness you started with.

I don't quite know what to say. It seems as if there is less and less effort being put into these games as time goes on. It's heavily reliant on QTE more than real storytelling now. The episodes themselves are growing much shorter and for a first episode I found this truly weak. I'm not saying it was bad I just wouldn't reccomend it until the rest of the series is out.

First things first: The story and writing for this one are pretty good, so on that front no complaints.
I had the scripting break on me twice where after I picked a conversation option it took me out of the onversation, nothing happened, and I couldn't interact with anything anymore. A client restart fixed that both times.

So why don't I recommend this game? Because it has gone overboard with the qte's, and telltale made some really bad choices:

A lot of the qte's now require more than one button at a time (Hold ♥♥♥♥+q/e), and that is a big problem for accessibility reasons. Not everyone is capable of doing this, and it also punishes people with slower reaction time.

The other big issue is that they have gone for style over function. A lot of the button prompts aren't in a fixed, easy to read place, but are angled, or on (moving) objects. This makes them a good deal harder to read.

Between this, and the batman game I won't be picking up any more telltale games. For no other reason than no longer being able to play them myself without someone else doing the qte's for me. Please fix this. Offer an easy mode where you give players longer to input commands, and only require single button inputs. Or go even further and offer a story mode where we can skip the qte's entirely.

After the movie - and animated series - this game doesn't cut it.
The personalities of the characters are pretty two-dimensional, even more so than in the 2nd movie. It is as if several 12-15 y.o. boys and girl were given superhuman durability and strength and sent out to do unto the cosmic threats as they'd have done unto the poor, unsuspecting earthings. Probably teenagers can believe that, but it is difficult to see artificial polarities and reactions dictated by typical schoolboy mentality in characters who are supposed to have at least a bit of background and soul.

The dynamics of the game are all wrong, even as the narratives are somewhat intriguing, but much has been said about this already.

But the real flaw of the game comes from the fact that it isn't as much a game as it is an A-B test. And unlike the Batman sequel, the test largely fails, because it gauges the selfishness-vs-altruism and sex-vs-friendship responces, as opposed to the diplomacy-violence gauge of the Batman telltale game. Hence the artificial boxing in of the characters into particular responces that aren't, by and large, natural. And the testing itself isn't very well worked into the game itself.

So, in short - watch the first movie. It's great. Take a look at he second one - it's good. As for the game - make a pass.

It actually isn't that bad of a game. It is the buggiest Telltale release, though. it constantly crashes. The save points are really far apart too. Multiple times I sat through the same 10 minute cut scene because Telltale didn't stick an automated save point at the end of it, which meant that when it crashed I had to go through everything again. This is basically like the Back to the Future game only when you travel back in time ya can't change anything.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series is definitely on the lower end of the Telltale game experiences. While I did like the characters and how they were implemented, there was a lot more I didn't like about this game than I did like.

Story and Characters:
My favorite part about GOTG: TTS was definitely the titular Guardians. I'm not much of a GOTG fan or even of a Marvel fan, but I enjoyed the interactions between the team members. The actual story was pretty weak and just felt like a straight line with no plot twists, just expected occurrences; this feels like it is due to Telltale having wanted to tell both an origin story of the Guardians and a story when they're already pretty deep in. The story is just inferior compared to other Telltale stories - not as emotionally devastating as The Walking Dead, not as funny as Sam and Max, and not as intriguing as Wolf Among Us. It's just a b-grade action movie with very little stakes.

Gameplay:
This is probably the most action-focused Telltale game in the catalog, and while I do think the action was good enough, all the other elements become bad just by comparison. The point and click puzzle segments feel like they're just a formality and annoying to do - the puzzles are nonexistent and you go around at the pace of of a brisk speed-walk with no urgency.

Technical:
Since Telltale was using its story engine it had been using for all its games, GOTG has flaws that were likely present in those games, as well. I got stuck in a segment of the game, repeating it until I looked up that this bug had to be dodged by restarting the game entirely. The game doesn't look too great either, and is pretty dependent on its decent audio quality to sell it. I'm not sure the choices the player makes are well thought out either, as characters and the previously-on segments act as if I had made one choice when I most certainly made the other. This game definitely needs more polish.

TLDR: Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series is honestly likely one of the worst Telltale games in the catalog.

It's a good game though, but I don't appreciate the fact that the new Telltale games stories (this one, Batman, 3rd Walking Dead) do not call those emotions and intrigue like their predecessors (The Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, Tales of the Borderlands ...) and are rather blunt and boring.

Decent game, but the fact that there's a game breaking bug that forces you to choose certain options to keep the game from getting stuck is terrible QA on Telltale's part. The fact that it is still in the game months later is completely unacceptable for a "finished product". Buyer beware.

Short review

Only get this game if it's on sale and you have any interest in the Guardians themselves (but aren't expecting anything too amazing) and want to burn some time with a few chuckles here and there.

Long review (no spoilers)

First off this game follows its own timeline. Taking character traits and backstories from both the films and the comics but attempts to be its own world, which on its own is fine but might be confusing to anyone who gets the game on a whim (which I don't recommend) expecting it to be

A. Purely the comic's universe (concerning the character designs that heavily resemble the comic versions) or
B. A side story in the film's universe (the characters are written to resemble their movie counterparts heavily, and the obvious use of a walkman and 70's music) of which the story isn't set in either.

The writing in the game is alright most of the time, it's got some heart here and there and a few chuckles but they're few and far between. Some of the characters tend to turn on you at the slightest provocation even if you side with them the whole game. (which I consider to just be a problem that plagues Telltale games in general but I digress)
There's moments where you have a ton of dialogue options and other moments where characters just repeat the same things you already know over and over, which can get boring.

The main story itself is fine, but it could've benefitted from a bit more suspense towards the end, since the finale sort of just... stops, even after a big grand final decision is made in story the characters sort of all just blank out and go "well that's all folks!" and it just ends.

The gameplay is typical Telltale fare, walk around and pick up or examine items to solve "puzzles" etc. There is the addition of a sort of communication system you can use to speak with other memebers of the Guardians during certain segments via ear piece, but if you're in the middle of a conversation and decide to examine something (like a totally useless rock that takes four seconds to look at) you'll end the conversation prematurely and won't be able to start it back up again unless you reload a save. There's also the addition of Star-Lord's rocket boots that can allow him to hover to different levels in very few rooms that have multiple floors, but the mechanice is used not often enough and I feel like they missed out on creating some fun level designs involving the boots.

The music that plays throughout the game is also fine but the budget really shows since most of the song choices are all from B or C list bands, and each song gets used multiple times throughout the game. (with only two exceptions) But most of the game's budget must have went towards buying the music licenses because... hoo boy, it really shows once we get to my next and biggest complaint;

THIS GAME IS SO UGLY.
There's a few colorful moments here and there, but the textures for everything look so muddy and, barring the Guardians themselves, most of the character designs range from same-face to straight up ugly or generic. The enviroments too are rather bad, with all of them feeling like extremely small rooms to walk (slowly mind you) around with very little to examine. On top of this the game runs horribly laggy when on any other graphic setttings that aren't the lowest they can go, which only makes the ugly aspects worse.

I really love the Guardians franchise, and I'm somewhat disappointed in Telltale for only making a lackluster game. It isn't awful, but it's not amazing either. I hope that if Telltale makes another season of the game they change some things and push other aspects further, but as this season stands on its own I can only give it a 4.5 out of 10.

The basic idea of this is that as captain of the ship you can't make everyone happy. I think that's a good idea for the Telltale system, but for me, at least, it doesn't work for Guardians of the Galaxy. It kinda makes the entire crew into fussy prima donnas who can't actually make any decisions for themselves, but sure know how to complain about how things end up going. Also, the jokes tend not to land. A bit of a surprise after finishing the hilarious Tales from the Borderlands, but looking it up, I guess this has different script writers. With the fun atmosphere is lost, I kinda thought the Guardians should break up, actually. Maybe Gamora and Drax can rejoin the Infinity Watch :P