Guardians Of The Galaxy Telltale Series Episode Two: Under Pressure Review

The second episode of Telltale’s newest series Guardians of the Galaxy was fun, but not without its issues.

Starting with the story (but without giving too much away) – The members of the team continue to be at odds, and it is up to the newly revived Peter Quill to smooth out some of the drama. This is heightened by the fact that the Guardians are being chased by a new villain because they are holding an ancient Kree artifact, the Infinity Forge. Depending on the decisions the player makes, you can learn a lot about some of the characters that do not get much backstory in the films. There is a particularly heart wrenching sequence involving Rocket Raccoon that is worth any fan’s time.

Where the first episode crafted a huge new world and a seriously interesting plot, this episode kind of feels like Scooby-Doo. Each character has a little side mystery for them to do, but when it’s all said and done, nothing really changes in the grand scheme of things. While the side missions are fun and include some characters we did not really see in the first episode (i.e. Nebula and Yondu), at times it can feel taxing to carry on because we deviated so far from what makes you actually interested in the game.

Where the story has its goods and bads, so did the graphics and sound. At times the game looked really cringe-worthy, losing its frame rate and not running smoothly, but when you compare it to the previous Telltale games, it looks great. Switching over to the game’s audio, the score was really bad. Players should expect to hear a lot of the same uninspiring music throughout this episode, and that was not a complaint many had with the first iteration. Also, the sound effects were extremely hit or miss, sometimes being fine, while others are surprisingly unconvincing. With that being said, the soundtrack and voice acting were phenomenal.  The songs the developers chose really did feel like the movies, and coupled with the very faithful voice acting, does give off a fairly cinematic feel.

Lastly, the gameplay was actually pretty good. Although this episode had less action scenes than the first, the mechanics were fluid and enjoyable to play. The worst part about the previous episode was without a doubt the point and explore sections, and although this episode does have them, they seemed to be way more fleshed out and easy/fun to navigate.

Overall, if you played the first episode there is no reason to stop, and it is definitely worth it to continue down this narrative Telltale is building. Although the story was at times shaky, there are some really great moments hidden inside, and when the music kicks in: this game can be a lot of fun.