It's not the fact that this, like the Batman games, is Telltale's own universe rather than either film or comic canon. It's just that, realistically, there's no hope of convincing myself this is the real deal. In hindsight, perhaps this was a mistake, because it threw the realisation that, compared to the original act, this game is basically a pub cover band into sharp relief. I watched GOTG1 on the telly the day before playing this, so I was all primed for another bout of jokes, incompetence, squabbling, spaceships and contrived friendship-saves-the-day resolutions. I'm not telling this videdogame that it should be a completely different sort of videogame - I just wanted to be clear that you should play this because you want another story about Star Lord and his mates, not because you hope it's some grand exercise in either action or choice and consequence. I've made my peace with this in Telltale games, though I do appreciate it when they try something a little more ambitious, such as the ambush-planning in their Batman series. Sometimes, being handed a crumb of control felt like almost an afterthought - a grudging acknowledgement that this wasn't just an excuse for writers, artists and actors to play in one of Marvel's most colourful playgrounds.

If anything, there's an even keener sense than usual that this was created as script first, interactive elements second. GOTG turns the polish dial up a little (lovely lighting! proper anti-aliasing!), and in one key action/quicktime event sequence has your control grasshopper-leaping between the five main characters, but otherwise it's the interactive movie that this studio is so known for - yer Walking Dead, yer Batman, yer Game Of Thrones, yer Wolf Among Us. It's essentially a string of attractive cutscenes interspersed with a few mild quicktime events to direct the action, and conversational options that in theory have major effects on the outcome but more realistically simply enable you to modulate your character's personality to a greater or lesser extent.

To get it out of the way right at the start, don't look to this to break with the now-familiar Telltale formula - not in this first episode at least.

I.e., that it really, really wants to be be just like what is arguably the most purely entertaining superhero film on the past decade, but it can't quite pull it off. The cassette tape in Telltale's Guardians of the Galaxy is called 'Rad Mix' instead of 'Awesome Mix.' A crueller man than I might observe that this is all we really need to know about Telltale's not-based-on-the-film-and-yet-kinda-is spin on the adventures of Rocket, Groot and chums.

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