PC Critic Reviews

Family has always been at the crux of Guardian stories, and as Gamora puts it before the episode comes to a close, sometimes family sucks. With one episode left, I am at an absolute loss as to how this adventure is going to come to a close, and how, with who has been lost along the way, any kind of status quo can be reached. I was shocked when we killed Thanos in episode 1, and am still shaken by Episode 4’s conclusion. How do Peter and the rest of the Guardians come back from this? Episode 4, Who Needs You, has done its job. Now all that left is to see if Telltale can finish with a season finale worthy of this fantastic buildup.

I can definitely feel that end-of-series crunch happening in Who Needs You, where all the many choices I’ve made have to converge back together to fit a limited number of endings. It comes across a bit heavy-handed in setting the stage for what seems like a somewhat predictable final chapter, but Telltale has surprised me before. As a standalone adventure, it’s definitely up there with Episode 1 as something I’d play over a couple more times, not just to explore different choices but because it’s simply fun and exciting. The fact that it pulls very few emotional punches left me feeling a bit worn out, but also with a glowing sense of anticipation for the sprint to the finish and tying it all together.

We're approaching our journey's end with Telltale's GotG series, and the stakes are higher than ever for the Guardians. Player choices bring with them increasingly severe repercussions, and relationships affected by them have strained to the point of breaking. If Episode Three was GotG's low point, Episode Four swoops in to resuscitate and revitalize the series as an entry I personally found the best of the bunch. Let's hope that Telltale comes through on a season finale stacked with great potential.

Despite the quality of the episode, one complaint does remain, and it's one that Guardians hasn't shaken the whole season so far. Mainly it comes down to tone, in which, unlike other Telltale games, there really does feel like a "right" way for things to end up at the end of Who Needs You.

Although Who Needs You provides some of the season’s most emotionally charged scenes, the episode’s inconsistency with its tone and story progression, and all-too-familiar gameplay and technical issues make for a lackluster penultimate chapter that only looks to harm the upcoming season finale. Telltale may need to find its own Eternity Forge to revive the series’ attempt at wrapping up this dysfunctional space family’s premiere story.

Though it drags a little during the middle, episode four did manage to hook me back in by the end. I’m intrigued to see exactly how the series pans out considering the state of the Guardians by the episode’s close. In that sense, Telltale has succeeded in setting the stage for its finale, and I’ve now learned enough about most of its leading characters to really care and get behind their cause in episode five.

A meandering plot, a formulaic, by-the-numbers gameplay flow and contextually redundant choices undo the good work and story built up to this stage, leaving players asking how could so much go so wrong, so quickly.

Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series - Episode 4 "Who Needs You" doesn't destroy the solid work that went into the first three chapters, but it does drag this series down quite a bit.

The most successful episode, which would normally earn a pretty six-out-of-ten rating. But when you cannot finish a game on many PC configs because of a critical bug in a PC version in many configurations...