Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is Square Enix’s latest foray into the superhero universe following their journey through Marvel’s Avengers, and it has certainly caught people’s attention with its punchy soundtrack and sarcasm from the characters. But how does Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy do for accessibility? If you’ve read our review or even seen Courtney’s Tweets, then you’ll know it’s done quite well. So let’s jump into what is contained within the settings menus on the Xbox Series X|S build.
And before we jump in, let’s just take a moment to note that the number of features is not what makes a game accessible and to not use this as a way to determine how accessible the game is based on these screens alone. Instead, there are players that want to see what is on offer for their needs, and so that is what these deep dives serve as.
Boot menu
From your first boot, you’ll be offered the option to choose your language for both voice and text, adjust the brightness and HDR through sliders, and then you’re presented with an adjustments menu. This menu allows you to open sub-menus for controls, audio, subtitles, and accessibility. Each of these areas allows you to adjust pretty much everything that’s available below rather than only having a select number of options from each area like most games do.
Controls
From here, you’ll be able to choose a control scheme, which allows you to see what the set inputs for each scheme include. Each scheme also has options to switch between toggle or holds for the Guardians Mode and Peter’s Abilities inputs. There’s a target lock in the game, and from here there are options to disable the target lock break and also to enable lock target switching.
Vibration can be toggled on and off, but there aren’t any sliders to adjust the intensity. Inverted controls are available for the X and Y-axis and there are sensitivity sliders available.
Video
For video, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy on Xbox doesn’t have a whole lot available for accessibility here except for brightness and HDR. Whether the PC version includes more options is unclear, although would likely be your usual graphical, resolution adjustments.
Audio
For audio, the master volume can be adjusted with a slider, as can the sound effects, voice, and music. There’s a toggle to switch from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy licensed soundtrack to a streamer-safe alternative. The advanced audio settings area mostly lets you adjust your output devices and doesn’t seem to offer much else here.
Audio accessibility though has some interesting options available. Loud volume can be adjusted here which adjusts the highest playback level of the loudest sounds to help minimize sudden audio peaks in the background. There’s also an EQ preset option and a focus mix option. What the latter does is reduce non-critical elements from the game’s soundscape, offering a more focused experience on narrative and gameplay feedback.
Languages
“Languages” is an area that you’d expect to find the option to adjust the languages, and while you can, but it’s also where your subtitle options are housed. From here you can enable the general subtitles, overheard subtitles that appear separately from key subtitles, and closed captions to provide more detail to speech.
An advanced subtitle settings area is where you can adjust things a bit more. The option to allow speaker names is available, the size can be adjusted from presets, letter spacing is a slider, and a background can be applied with its opacity being available to adjust with a slider. You’ll also be able to force bold formatting and invert the black background to a white background.
Accessibility
The dedicated accessibility section allows the same “Disable Target Lock Break” option from earlier in controls but comes with sliders to adjust the target lock break delay and the deadzone. Target switching also has sliders here for the initial delay, a repeat delay, and the deadzone. Other locking features include the elemental lock situation being able to be switched, target lock range, and the option to automatically lock onto the next available target.
You’ll be able to enable an auto-win for any quick-time events as well, and for objectives, a slider allows you to adjust the time that they are displayed. There’s also an exploration dot that can be enabled or disabled with a slider for transparency.
Difficulty
For difficulty, there’s a great number of options available to adjust the game to your playstyle. This includes having a preset difficulty or customizing it. You’ll be able to adjust the slowdown amount when in Guardians Mode, assign how much damage is dealt or received, the cooldown duration, the cost of elemental shots, and even how your shield regenerates. A Huddle auto-win is available to enable, and a slider for vulnerability timer.
You can also change the death gate difficulty, have interactive objects shown with an outline, enable a compass system, and enable hints.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch.
