After not liking this game series all that much in the beginning, it started growing on my the past few episodes to the point of where I was actually looking forward to this episode. That was mostly because of the cliffhanger ending to episode 3. When this episode finally came out I was pretty excited and made sure to play right away. You can watch my full playthrough of this episode here. Anyway, on with the review.
Episode 4 picks up right where episode 3 left off. You, as Peter Quill, either decided to power up the forge or destroy it. This can make your episode go in two different directions. Deciding to power up the forge myself, I quickly found it taken away by Hala, leader of the Kree. She’s going to use the forge to basically wake up an entire Kree army and take over the galaxy. After that you’ll find yourself in another choose me no choose me situation between Gamora and Rocket. You’ll once again have to make the choice of following your friend or following your potential love interest. It’s another no win situation as no matter what you’ll do you’ll piss off someone and potentially break up the guardians for good.
This was a pretty heavy episode that was pretty awesome. It had the crucial death of possibly two characters, which was shocking during my first playthrough, and it also told the tale of Drax and his daughter. The scene with Peter seeing inside of Drax’s memory was very poignant and it made a decision later on in the game either become very complicated or very simple depending on your own opinion and how your scene with Drax played out. This was probably the highlight of the episode as the rest of the episode was the usual deciding between Gamora and Rocket which seems to have become a staple point in this series. While this is getting a little over played and gives you some sigh worthy moments, the rest of the episode makes up for it with its action and adventure sequences. I think Telltale is best for really botching up their forth episodes and they don’t really do a good job of setting up the fifth and final episode, but this episode wasn’t like that and it was a pleasant surprise.
Unlike the decision problems that have been plaguing Batman: The Enemy Within and Minecraft: Story Mode – Season 2, this episode had no problem keeping up with the decisions that were made in previous episodes. This was a good thing and in a game where decisions matter, this is really crucial in the gameplay and playability of the game. The Quicktime events, like the episodes before worked great, even though one final Quicktime event did trip me up because it happened really quickly and I wasn’t sure what it wanted. There was a bit of a problem with the loading times unfortunately with this episode and loading times were longer and the game felt like it was going to stall during these times. By now you would think that these issues would be non-existent, but it seems like while the first few episodes come up strong and have stellar performance, the later ones suffer. I don’t know why it doesn’t this and can’t offer any insight, but it’s a problem that needs to be addressed. Other than that the game ran bug and glitch free.
While playing I felt a little less critical of the graphics this time around. They’re the same graphics that have been there since the first episode, but by this time I’ve pretty much gotten used to them to the point where they haven’t been affecting my gameplay at all. So for the first time in three other reviews, I won’t be complaining about them and just taking them for what they are.
Finish this episode and you’ll get yourself another 6 trophies closer to getting the platinum trophy for this game. Just one more episode to go and you’ll finally have the platinum. Just play how you want and follow the story and you’ll be good to go. I know these are easy trophies, but I feel like they’re easy because Telltale wants you to actually concentrate on the story they’re trying to tell and not worry about the trophies. The trophies are just an added bonus for playing. If you think of it like that then it makes the platinum trophies seem less cheap.
As always, there is no multiplayer, but there is crowd play. Use it if you want or go the route that I do and completely ignore it all together. Either way the choice is yours.
Overall I give this episode a 4.5 out of 5.
What’s Great:
+ Great story for this episode that ends on a what the hell kind of moment and sets up the final episode for this series.
+ Your decisions for this game actually matter as they carry over successfully from episode to episode.
+ Also the scene with Drax and his daughter was just done to perfection and setups one of the most toughest decisions of the series.
What’s Not So Great:
– The loading times have taken a turn for the worst as not only was there an overload of them, but they seemed like they were going to stall the whole game out at any moment.
– The constant choose me no choose me moments between Gamora and Rocket are becoming a little tiring.
I really did enjoy this episode though and am looking forward to the conclusion for what I’m assuming is only season one of this game. I think that it’s been successful enough that they’ll be making another season and there are so many possibilities to explore that it seems feasible that this will happen in the near future especially with The Walking Dead coming to an end. Anyway, since this game is so close to being finished, I would say that if you want to give this game a try this is probably the perfect time since if you take each episode slowly by the time you finish you’ll probably be getting ready to play the fifth episode since each episode release for this series has been consistent. If you want to wait for all five episodes to be released before playing, that’s totally understandable. I would say that if you’re a Guardians of the Galaxy fan you’ll want to pick this one up and even if you aren’t, like I was at first, you still might want to give this one a try.
Spoilers! Below are the choices that I made for the fourth episode.
1 Broke Gamer Girl 