I feel like I'm being called out to speak in front of the board (
), so I will. But mind you, it'll be a very long talk.
I'm not going to talk about the visual side of the game, because we all know how old and shitty the Telltale engine is.
I consider this game to be awful due to how some of the stuff in the story is handled, as well as because the overall direction in which Telltale is heading. Major plot points don't feel natural and instead feel forced. The story doesn't feel like it's developing, instead feeling like TT was ticking out boxes.
And if you don't believe me, then check out positive opinions about the game even on our forum. Some people like the story, sure, but most of the praise is focused on the fact that there are more hubs. Check Admin's opinion on the game - he basically says it's remotely interesting, but not enough to keep him going forward with the game.
So for the story - most of the stuff feels forced. And even when you get past that stuff, you're forced to do it again. Example: what happens after the first battle. Gamora hints at the fact that Guardians were together to bring Thanos down, but otherwise will drive each other crazy. That's a possibly interesting development. What goes awry? That Telltale mistakes driving each other crazy for outright antagonizing each other. Rocket suddenly angers Drax by saying that Peter killed Thanos and the Drax didn't get his revenge. No longer than a minute later Rocket gets angry when Pete says that he himself killed Thanos. Rocket, you've just contradicted yourself. Is being inconsequential Rocket's character trait? If it is, then there's nothing that hinted at it before now. It's sudden, or - if we ask Telltale - convenient for the plot to drive a wedge between Guardians. And don't tell me that this is how the character is in MCU, because I clearly remember reading one of the reviews that said something among the lines of, "with the knowledge of these characters from the movies, making a remark that Star Lord killed Thanos with Rocket's gun was meant to be a playful teasing, but Rock has an outburst and flips out at Peter, which was unexpected." For me, it's simply manufactured tenstion and simply illogical. (but maybe Telltale mistakes that for being funny? Protip: it's not)
But let's say you managed to get everyone together for the toast. Yay Guardians, hooray! And what happens? Telltale goes, "F*ck you!" and develops the storyline as follows: suddenly, Guardians have an abrupt money problem (can't you just, you know, don't pay? After all, for killing Thanos, you'll be covered by Nova Corps. But no, you're not. Oh, you chose the line about 'erasing future crimes'? That was supposed to be funny and not consequential. You know, just shut up and enjoy the game!) and of course they come up with selling Thanos body (good call, TT! Nothing's more revealing about your story to revive Thanos with the green cup other than attracting attention to his dead body and making Guardians lose possession of it). Rocket and Gamora have different ideas. See what's happening? If you somehow managed to get everyone together during the celebration earlier, you still have to piss off someone anyway!
And the "trade". Nova's offer pisses off Rocket and selling to Collector pisses off Gamora (you have trouble with committing crimes? Once again: Nova Corps will cover up for your crimes, remember?!). Let's look at Nova Corps until this point. They're awful at keeping peace. The body will be stolen from them. The Collector? Will sell the body to whoever pays him (who knows, maybe Nebula? You know, to keep that awful Gamora remorse plot going). Thanos will be revived, blah blah.
And just to push stuff a little further, Telltale once again demands from you to chose between who goes with you to retrieve the green cup. Mind Drax, who says that if you don't kill as many of your assailants as possible, he'll never forgive you. And again - why are you so much against them? You barely cross paths with them. Still - watch the plot develop in the direction of helping Kree (or whatever they're called) and pissing Drax off.
Oh, and Drax - he brings up the vengeance for his family only for the convenience of the audience. He won't shut up about it, talking about it in the spaceship, during the battle and after the battle. Gee, TT, I get it, I know you need us to remember that because you'll probably make a motive for Drax to take the green cup artifact for himself and try to revive his family, okay, but you don't need to keep reminding us about his dead wife and kid! It might be a character trait to act as Captain Obvious and take everything literally, but it's not funny if you keep repeating his stupid origin story.
But you know what's the worst? That most of this won't matter in the end. It's a T-rated game, a Marvel property and, most importantly, a story based on destroying established relationships between friends. This means they're bound to recover from their differences by the end. The most shitty and overused cliched story template ever used.
TWD Season 1 - subverts stuff from zombie genre, there's no typical 'us v. them' with zombies in the background; a struggle of survival, with a little girl being a moral compass;
TWAU - a noir story that starts out as a murder mystery, but halfway through transforms into the story of a society on a brink of destruction and is instead being a commentary on the world we all live in;
TWD Season 2 - starts out as the 'us v. them' story that S1 tried to avoid, but by the end goes for recapturing the S1 feel of people put under pressure and making decisions that lack humanity;
TFTBL - story about chasing the almight dollar by both corporate rats and con artists the comes to an end by Episode 1, with the rest being an all out road adventure in hopes of making it to the top; would've been cliched if the writers didn't make surprise twists in the story at every turn - the key to the Vault turns out to be a robot, it's missing piece is on Helios, which no one would've predicted, Jack takes over Helios, mob is after the Vault, the space station crashes on Pandora, etc. etc.
GOT - it does have a 'one step forwad, two steps back' thing to it, but at least it fills out the blanks in the TV canon. Since I'm not really the best person to defend it, I'll refer you to all the positive stuff Jake posted when the game was released. However it was, the game does have a rather big following, I admit.
Michonne - shitty revenge story, the only novum is the fact that the player character is the villain, but it was unintentional on TT's part, I suppose.
ANF is still in release, we'll see how it turns out.
Guardians are actually the closest to Minecraft, because both have a very basic story template that Telltale doesn't even try to hide (the difference being, Guardians have some tacked in StarLord origin story that tries to be dramatic, but I think it's only there to serve the purpose of showing what the green cup can do). This feels more like a merchandise product than a videogame, existing solely to expand Telltale's portfolio and attract attention to GOTGv.2 amongst the gaming crowd.
By the time I finished watching the full episode playthrough, I was mad equally at the game and at Telltale. I've given them the benefit of the doubt when A New Frontier was released, because Eps 1&2 were decent (3rd was, well, average-to-bad). Maybe I had unrealistic expectations, wanted this to be new Borderlands, but the game was not funny (to me - and I don't think my heart's cold as ice, I do have a rather good sense of humor) and instead feels like a corporate calculation on Telltale's part - churning out a game without giving it much thought. Return of hubs is good if they don't slow the pace to an agonizing speed (which is a case here) or exists solely to create inexplicable tension between characters (the bar scene).
Why couldn't Telltale make a game with Guardians still trying to make it big? Why make a game when they take their ultimate enemy down and then resolve to making conflicts? Too much of The Walking Dead influence? Who knows. I'm sure of one thing though - I hate the direction Telltale takes with their games as of late and GOTG is a victim of that approach.