Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is now officially verified for the Steam Deck.
Eidos Montreal made the announcement themselves on the official Twitter account for the game.
The second and last Marvel related video game project from Eidos Montreal, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy deserves better sales, and more players, than it received.
In contrast to the lackluster Marvel’s Avengers, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy featured a standalone single player campaign, with no room for microtransactions or other monetization models.
More importantly, it received strong critical acclaim, including many awards and accolades. While it didn’t get any awards for game of the year, it did get awarded for its soundtrack, narrative, and voice performances for its actors. It even received a 2023 Grammy nomination for best video game soundtrack.
While Eidos Montreal were given carte blanche to make any story that they wanted, their Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy clearly took a lot of inspiration from the Disney movie series directed by James Gunn.
(On the side, James Gunn himself got involved in video games in localization and as co-writer for Lollipop Chainsaw, an experience he claims he took inspiration for for his Suicide Squad movie. He had nothing to do with Eidos Montreal’s game, though.)
Much like Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies, this game balances a lighthearted tone, with plenty enjoyable and fun moments, with a darker story filled with down-to-earth themes, like trauma and grief.
There is also no mistaking the visual cues Eidos Montreal took from the movie versions of the Guardians of the Galaxy in designing their own versions of Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Groot, and Rocket Raccoon.
This verification comes more than a year after the game’s original release. Since that time, Marvel ended their deal with Square Enix and Eidos, Eidos themselves broke off from Square Enix to be bought out by Embracer Group, James Gunn released his third and final Guardians of the Galaxy film, and the Steam Deck is facing its first serious threat in the ASUS ROG Ally, to be officially revealed today.
With all this taken into account, it’s still not too late to give Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy a spin on the Deck. Enough time and patches have passed that its performance issues from launch have mostly been addressed, and the latest update removed Square Enix store functionality, which is part of what allowed Steam Deck verification to happen in the first place.
