Guardians of the Galaxy, TMNT, and more: Grading this summer’s movie-based games

It’s been a busy summer at the theater. Apes tore through San Francisco with machine guns. Autobots blasted an alien ship out of the sky in Hong Kong. And the Guardians of the Galaxy kept their contentious friendship intact while saving planet Xandar from destruction. Movie studios made millions off of these special effects-driven blockbusters. But how did our heroes and villains do on the small screen?

I decided to dive into the dubious waters of licensed games to find out. Since I’m covering a lot of them here (13 in all), I’m not following GamesBeat’s usual review guidelines. Think of these more as quick impressions, as one person’s gut feelings about how well each game lives up to their respective films. Some of them sadly stick to the “licensed games are always bad” stereotype, but others are genuinely entertaining and definitely deserve some play time.