Before the 2014 film I was familiar with Guardians of the Galaxy only in name. I still haven’t read any of the comics. Which is perhaps one of the reasons why the first episode of Telltale’s take on Marvel’s crew of misfit galactic adventurers didn’t quite hit home with me.

The movie provides enough preparation and background to hit the ground running with most of the characters seen and referenced in the game, including Peter Quill (Star-Lord), Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, Drax the Destroyer, and Groot, as well as secondary characters like Thanos, Nebula, and The Collector.

It’s the vibe I wasn’t prepared for.

The first episode – which begins, surprisingly, with the crew of the Milano full-on killing their arch nemesis Thanos – feels kind of subdued and isn’t even all that funny, even though it’s clearly trying for laughs. Drax still takes everything completely literally, Rocket is as glib and snarky as you’d expect. And, playing as Peter, we almost always have at least one flippant option in our dialogue choices – though Scott Porter, the actor playing this incarnation of Star-Lord, delivers his lines a little too flatly for my liking.

The real problem, though, is that the comic timing and direction are off. The space between character responses is often just a little too long, and there’s little body language to go along with and emphasize the jokes. It just feels awkward. Plus, many scenes are accompanied by a soft, generic, meandering score that’s pretty much incompatible with humour.

There are moments when the game is obviously striving to recreate the sort of atmosphere created by the film, but it’s always a struggle. For example, the first episode contains a handful classic rock songs by bands like The Electric Light Orchestra, but none of them are as familiar or memorable as the songs in the movie. And – with the exception of a moving scene atop the roof of an old station wagon – they aren’t even put to particularly effective use.

Weirdly, Telltale’s Guardians is at its best in its quieter, more sincere sequences. Like when Star-Lord is having a flashback to when he’s a kid spending time with his sick mom. Or when he’s having a discussion with Gamora about her family, what it was like being brought up by the galaxy’s most notorious murderer, and how she feels now that he’s dead. It seems strange that these should be the most memorable moments for this particular group of characters – until we remember that this is the sort of emotive storytelling is what Telltale has always been best at.

As I alluded at the start, I do wonder if perhaps I went into the game looking for it to capture the feeling of the film when it was instead intended to recreate the tone of the comic books. But if it is more representative of Guardians in print, I’m not sure it will act as particularly effective marketing to entice many potential new readers.

From a play perspective, this first episode is pretty standard Telltale stuff. It does have a couple of new tricks up its sleeve, like the ability to use Star-Lord’s jet boots to move between different levels when exploring larger environments. But the bulk of the game is, as usual, composed of verbal interactions with other characters and making hard decisions – such as whether to sell Thanos’ perforated corpse for profit to make Rocket happy or hand it over to the Nova Corps to appease Gamora – plus action sequences with quick-time events that force players to quickly tap buttons as they see them appear on screen.

Even with the lack of laughs and the overly familiar play, there’s enough going on plot-wise that I’ll come back for at least one more episode. The crew has yet to meet up with the enigmatic Collector, and I’m sure sparks will fly when Gamora and Nebula eventually run into each other (Gamora did kill their dad, after all). Speaking of which, is Thanos really dead? The giant hole in his chest, suffered just minutes into the game, seems pretty definitive. But you never can tell in comics.

Telltale’s Guardians aren’t the ones I know and love on the big screen, but there’s something about them that makes me want to stick around at least a little longer. Hopefully they’ll grow on me.