Zadzooks: Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series review

Gamers smitten with the quirkiest intergalactic superhero team in comic books can now dive into their intricate lives through Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series (Telltale Games, rated Teen, reviewed on PlayStation 4, $29.99 for a season’s pass to own all episodes).

Expanding the sequential-art history of the team as well as their cinematic exploits, the interactive drama features the familiar group of the pompous but goofy Star-Lord (Peter Quill), revenge-obsessed Drax the Destroyer, cool assassin Gamora, the tree-like Groot and grumpy genius Rocket Racoon.

A player currently has access to the first of five episodes, titled “Tangled Up In Blue,” which spends roughly two hours reinforcing the complexities of family and features some finger-fumbling encounters with the Mad Titan Thanos and a Kree female warrior named Hala.

Specifically, after Peter receives a distress call from the famed intergalactic police force Nova Corps, he agrees to send his team on a mission to stop a supervillain who is searching for a reality-altering artifact called the Eternal Forge.

The result of the encounter sends the team into an emotional tailspin where each must decide their alliance to the Guardians before engaging in a frantic fight for the artifact.

Much like other Telltale games, this ode to “Guardians of the Galaxy” requires that a player converse with characters to influence decisions and the story; mildly interact with the environment; and occasionally get into abbreviated skirmishes.

A player might need to use the controller’s analog stick to follow an onscreen arrow prompt and allow Peter to avoid danger; or use the directional pad to have him to fly up and down using his jet boots; or tap the right and left trigger buttons for the hero to shoot his dual-element pistols.

However, timed conversational responses are the meat of the game and make for a much better and informative experience than when Telltale tries to shoehorn in more of those traditional game mechanics.

When necessary to propel the narrative, dialogue or behavior choices appear on a circular menu in the lower part of the screen and feature up to four prompts tied to the controller’s buttons.

An innocuous example is Star-Lord seemingly forever standing on an elevator with the team. A player can have him whistle, say nothing or remark “slowest elevator ever,” or “somebody say something,” based on the choices.

Now, more crucial decisions abound, such as agreeing to select Gamora rather than Drax on a mission or whether to challenge an alien thug in a rowdy bar.

Though, never as dire as to whether a character lives or dies, as in Telltales’ “The Walking Dead” series, the decisions are often confined to really aggravating one of the Guardians.

Take the critical case of Peter agreeing to sell a dead body to Nova Corps rather than the Collector, a financial move that upsets Rocket Raccoon enough to want to quit the team.

Despite some rather lumbering gameplay, I was quite bored looking for an ID chip from a Nova Corps officer; the overall story and visuals are great, and supplemented by solid voice-over acting and a soundtrack featuring ELO, the Buzzcocks and Hall and Oates.

I found the narrative strings of Gamora’s ongoing battle to reconnect with her adopted sister Nebula (sharing the father Thanos), as well as a flashback between a young Peter and his mom, smartly written and slightly tugging at the heartstrings, a rare event in most video games.

For the comic geek, it was equally fun to flip through a computer menu on the Guardians’ ship and read 14 entries in Peter’s diary (with backgrounds on all of the main characters and locations) as well as bunch of messages that included one from Howard the Duck and Cosmo the Spacedog.

Best of all, the gorgeous visual designs easily made me forget about some of the game engine’s occasional stuttering of the action and load times.

Character models look spectacular, evolving from the more cell-shaded, comic book roots of Telltale’s “The Wolf Among Us” and “Batman.”

The three-dimensional models deliver excellent detail such as creases in Star-Lord’s red leather jacket; Groot’s full-sized, wood-carved bark body; Rocket’s moist, glistening nose; shading on Gamora’s reflective black armor outlined by blue strapping and scuffed shoulder pads; and the red body paint on Drax’s light-green muscular body.

The top-notch creations, complete with wood-chiseled-looking hair, reminded me of the computer-animated stylings of the “Star Wars” cartoon series “The Clone Wars.”

Suffice it to report, “Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series” is off to a solid start. Not only am I chomping at the bit for the next episode, but also players will find it the perfect counterpart to the new live-action movie arriving in theaters at the end of this week.