I never thought I would root for "Guardians of the Galaxy" so much. The pre-release cycle was weighed down by too many stagnant atmospheres. In particular, the shadow of Square Enix's 2020 announcement of "Marvel's Avengers," an attempt to translate the overall media dominance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a living co-op video game, loomed large. The Hollywood copycats in that game (all fake Chris Hemsworths) left customers cold, and while the core scenario was decent, no one enjoyed the nonsensical currency play.

"Guardians," released by the same publisher and seemingly made from the same material, but this time with a single-player-only campaign that limited players to the least interesting Star-Lord of the troupe, corrupting many products bearing the Marvel name in 2021. The coldness of the situation was pervasive, like a test of concentration, and I was not optimistic that Eidos Montreal could overcome its taint.

Until a psychedelic space-rama solved the puzzle. As the beasts were either mesmerized or repulsed by each crew member's singing, whether approaching the melody of Star-Lord or fleeing the melody of Rocket Raccoon, we took turns belting out Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry Be Happy" as we finally guided the whimsical llama into place. There are many sequences in "Guardians" that capture the weird, hilarious, and light side of Marvel's cosmic expanse. I came across a Soviet test-flight golden retriever endowed with a celestial superintelligence, who confessed to me in a moment how much he missed his once puny doglike intelligence. There was a fourth wall-breaking left hook, taken from the Arkham playbook, that led to a surprising twist that caught me delightfully off guard. At the end of the game, thanks to the encouragement and support of my teammates, I watched the forever scarred Rocket Raccoons deal with their lingering trauma. This scene served as more of an emotional payoff than anything I've seen this character do in the movies. The heart of "Guardians of the Galaxy" is in the right place: ...... If only the game itself didn't constantly sabotage its efforts with exhausting technical shenanigans.

Like "The Avengers" before it, "Guardians of the Galaxy" is deeply rooted in the tradition of character action. As mentioned earlier, you control Star-Lord, who unleashes an endless stream of photon beams at everything in his path, including toothy beasts, corrupt interplanetary cops, and insane cultists. As players take damage, the bar on the left side of the screen fills up." Creepy." The remaining Guardians appear with the Rolodex of special powers that can be unlocked. You can ask Groot to tie enemies to the floor by their roots, or you can invoke Drax to hit the ground. Outside of such instances, however, fellow superheroes are relegated to the nameless faces that are common in "Call of Duty" levels, giving only a faint image of battlefield solidarity, but not really doing anything that productive.

Now the job is done. Combat is not where "Guardians of the Galaxy" shines, but it is flashy and simple enough to support the more active parts of the plot. I found the battles with the villains to become more engaging as we approached the conclusion of the game. At first, armed with only a peashooter and a handful of basic attacks, Guardians is a pulse-pounding shooting gallery. But as you pop off multiple cooldowns at once and begin to enjoy the fully optimized arsenal, the design approaches the overwhelming splash panels and multicolored eye candy that is often prioritized in movies. Lasers, bombs, swords, and even a Drax diving off the top rope looks like a "Marvel vs Capcom" assist. One of the best features of "Guardians of the Galaxy" is the "huddle up" feature. Occasionally, the team can be called upon to offer words of encouragement and re-enter the fray with damage buffs cued by pulpy 80's classics pulled from the game's treasure trove of licensed soundtracks. (Gary Numan's "Cars," Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," Soft Cell's "Tainted Love," etc.). Pure white-hot.

The story centers on Marvel's usual universe-threatening catastrophe. Some sort of super-religious stellar church is corrupting the spirit of the Andromeda Galaxy. Our motley crew is here to stop it, despite the odds being stacked against us. The Guardians may be greedy malcontents wanderers, but at least they have hearts of gold.

Although the broad storyline didn't really grab my attention, "Guardians" manages to blend the ultra-high stakes with the heroes' own reclusive insecurities. One of the cult's first victims. A girl who may or may not be Star-Lord's illegitimate child. How could the worshipful geeks have seduced such a chiseled meathead as Drax? Perhaps they seduced it by bringing memories of their dead wives and daughters.

All of this is supported by the foundation of the Guardians' moral choices, which are clearly ripped straight from Telltale conventions. Along the way, Star-Lord is involved in shaping the team's plans and attitudes, and has a mild influence on the narrative. During breaks between missions, he is able to talk with the team on board, as in the elliptical therapy sessions hosted by Commander Shepherd on the Normandy. The writers of this film are clearly tied to the Marvel canon, but it was still cool to see some of their own direction. (Gamora, for example, is a big collector of action figures in this timeline.)

Once again, "Guardians of the Galaxy" is very single-player oriented and plot-driven. You move from chapter to chapter, descend into all sorts of famous Marvel locales, and fight your way through beautiful corridors punctuated by the occasional intense cut scene. As such, the game is a bit of a dinosaur, in a good way. Many of the attack unlocks are tied to specific wrinkles in the dramatic arc, rather than to meeting resource thresholds. The time spent staring at the talent tree and defensive integers is exactly zero. When I saw that all of the characters were provided with a set of grayed-out costumes, I thought for sure that I was going to be locked up in some sort of depressing meta-grind and real money store in the game. Not so, I simply find them hidden away in a corner of geography as a reward for taking the time to explore. Reminiscent of the storytelling conventions of the Uncharted and God of War series, Eidos doesn't pack quite that much of a punch, but it's good enough to be mentioned alongside those influences.

Which brings us to the core, debilitating problem of "Guardians." The game breaks down frequently and measurably. On one occasion, I encountered three different crashes in an hour of play. One was a weird soft lock, and the other two were hardcore freezes that required an alt-F4 to escape. The first boss I fought stopped moving several times. The boss remained stationary while I blew out his tentacles and did tons of cheap damage. The game routinely assumed that Star Lord had fallen into a phantom pit, teleporting me into a crucible of danger. I had to reload checkpoints to trigger certain progression junctures.

This was terrible, and Square Enix knows it. When I first downloaded the review code for "Guardians," it was a whopping 150 GB. A few days later, Square Enix released a new version with a smaller file size and improved stability. However, all of the crashes I mentioned earlier occurred after that large patch. However, the probability that all physical anomalies and crashes will be resolved in the first few days after release is low.

This makes "Guardians of the Galaxy" a difficult game to recommend right now. It is odd that a single-player, linear game would have so many strange performance issues, so it is clear that something went wrong during development. In the high entropy continent of Tamriel, this level of junk is to be expected, but not in a series of combat arenas and consolidated organizations. The closest analogy I can think of is the Jedi Fallen Order. This was another Disney production, with a well-crafted story, some clever combat tricks, and plenty of technical hang-ups. Unfortunately, I don't think "Guardians" is as good as "Respawn" at offsetting these problems.

However, recalling an early sequence, Star-Lord runs into an old drinking buddy named Ripless at a slimy dive bar in Nowhere. The two of them belch out a tedious hair-metal anthem that the protagonist is too blacked out to remember writing. The player chooses each line of the song, and Star-Lord tries his best to mumble the lyrics to keep Lipless in a good mood. Guardians of the Galaxy is a technicolor, star-spanning adventure that sincerely hopes to be worthy of the multimedia powerhouse that it shares its name with. It achieves this with its story, voice acting, and wonderfully cheeky 80s puckishness. If only the technical side of things could keep up with its ambitions better. .......