Telltale's Guardians Of The Galaxy Episode 1 Review: 4 Ups & 6 Downs

Downs

6. The Visuals Are... Not Great

Despite Telltale's game engine getting a visual upgrade for last year's Batman series, it's still desperately showing its age, and considering the immense aesthetic possibilities of a Guardians video game, it's a damn shame this one has ended up looking so frequently dull and even occasionally downright ugly.

The faces of Thanos and the Guardians themselves are especially egregious, lacking any clear detail at all and basically resembling something you'd expect to see in a mid-cycle PS3 game. Textures in the various locales are also mostly flat, which is a shame given the gorgeous and diverse palette of the MCU Guardians films.

Technically, it's also rather on the sloppy side, with frame-rate hitches proving frequent on at least the PS4 version of the game. While it doesn't look as bland overall as, say, Game of Thrones and it doesn't feel straight-up broken like Batman, it's still ridiculous that Telltale can't put their immense profits towards making these games look closer in quality to something like Life is Strange.

The fans deserve it, and they could definitely do it if they really wanted to.