Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

Raven has brought us some fantastic co-op titles over the last few years including X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II.  Today we see the release of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance for the Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Wii, PSP, GBA, and PC. With the ability to play heroes that, more than likely debuted before you were born, as well as their more modern counterparts, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance has the largest collection of superheroes and villains ever collected in a video game. 

Just as it is in the X-Men Legends series, you’ll choose four superheroes from an all-star cast including Iron Man, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, The Fantastic Four, Wolverine, Deadpool, Ghost Rider, Thor, Electra, Captain America, and many more for a total of 22+ playable heroes.  Unfortunately for you, there are FAR more supervillains on the roster, and they’ve all put aside their differences to unite under Dr. Doom to create a super-group called The Masters of Evil.  You’ll face off against the likes of Mysterio, M.O.D.O.K., Byrreh, Krang, Dragonman, Grey Gargoyle, Ultimo, and far more as you work to unravel Dr. Doom’s latest insidious plan for world domination.  Stan Lee has to be proud of this game, it truly is the Ultimate Alliance.

The game kicks off with some fantastic CGI work, courtesy of Blur Studios, in an intro showing off Thor, Spider-Man, Captain America, Wolverine, and quite a few other Marvel heroes.  The Xbox version of the game runs in 480i, 480p, and 720p, which alleviates some jaggedness in the lower resolution texture work.  After a 6 second load sequence (roughly 5 seconds shorter than the Xbox 360, and a full 10 seconds faster than the PS2 version), I got into the heart of the game.  While there is a slight jaggedness that you might expect on a previous generation title, the game looks strikingly similar to the Xbox 360 version from a distance.  The texture work is a decent approximation to the Next-Gen platform, and it has a solid framerate to match.  Similar to the PS2 version, the game does suffer a little bit close up.

Many times in the game you’ll get a snippet of the storyline from a villain or hero.  They’ll explain your next objective, rattle off some new information, or provide clues on the overall plotline through an in-game engine cutscene.  The game zooms in on these characters, which is great on the Next-Gen systems, but the Xbox version looks slightly boxy.  The basic texture work is better than passable from a distance, but up close you will see a bit of blockiness.  It is a minor thing overall, and the 720p resolution of the Xbox puts it head and shoulders above the PS2 version.  If you don’t have a Next-Gen platform to play this game, you can get the same experience with pretty decent graphics by picking up the Xbox version.

You can’t use cookie-cutter animations for a game like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.  Simply put, the comic reading public will destroy the game if Spider-Man moves like The Thing.  The folks at Raven Software would have none of that, and each character appears to be animated in their own movement style.  The Thing is a lumbering beast, while Spider-Man is lithe and agile, jumping up in the air with his legs outstretched to shoot webs at his enemies.  Iron Man uses thrust from his boots to jump, while Wolverine has an almost feral look to his jumping style.  Comic fans are all about the details, and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance delivers it in spades. 

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a great auditory experience. The background music is dynamic and changes as you encounter tougher enemies and bosses. As the situation grows grim, the music reacts accordingly. If you don’t like the music, you can use the custom soundtrack option to change it. Personally, I found it to be great background music, if turned down a few notches. It is however rather odd that the music does continue to ‘react’ to the area, even after a sub-boss is dispatched. The voice work for a title this big is a tricky proposition. Every comic fan has an idea in their head of what Mysterio, Iron Man, Black Panther, or Dr. Pym sounds like. Since every character in the game gets a few lines at some point or another, you’ll find that sometimes it clashes with the persona you created in your mind. Bypassing that, the voice work is pretty good, and depending on who is delivering the lines, can be quite humorous as well. A good example might be an interaction between Spider-Man and his classic nemesis, Mysterio. (Spider-Man enters the room and spots Mysterio, remarking “Mysterio…jeeze it’s good to see you. Still got a fish bowl for a head I see.”) There is nothing better than a supervillian that is flustered by a smartass superhero. As you move through the game, the storyline is told in small snippets as you work through the missions, as well as more actively in Stark Tower – the impromptu S.H.I.E.L.D. base of operations following the disabling of the Omega Base. Most of the interactions in the game use full voice-overs, including every boss and sub-boss. You’ll get to hear your heroes square off against their arch-enemies, as well as the usual ‘villain reveals his entire plan’ moments comic fans have come to expect. A few of the voice actors come across pretty flat, but as a whole the voice work is well done.

X-Men Legends II had a really great control scheme, and Raven really didn’t see a need to mess with it too much for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.  As before, the left analog handles movement, while the right analog swings the camera in a 360 degree arc.  The X button issues a basic attack, while the B button pulls double duty performing a smash attack or a charge attack if held.  The Y button makes you jump, and the X button is used for interactions.  The left trigger is used for blocking and dodging, and the right trigger activates your powers.  In short, it is very comfortable and requires almost zero practice to get into the swing of things, so to speak.

As you move into later levels, the game gives you a few more tips and hints on how to best expand your melee repertoire.  You can stun an enemy with A, A, B, or you can trip them by A, B, A.  Some enemies are resistant to certain combinations, but weak to others, so it is in your best interest to learn these and use them often.

Using your powers in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is as easy as holding the R2 button, then hitting the corresponding face button for the power you’d like to activate. You set these powers in your character customization menu, so feel free to mix and match your powers as you see fit.  Since the AI controls characters you aren’t using, you can set up your other heroes as support if you select the right powers.  When you and a teammate attack with a similar power, you’ll occasionally do a bit of bonus damage for your efforts.

Just as in X-Men Legends II, there are occasional camera glitches.  The camera can be controlled directly, but it can get confused and lay behind a semi-transparent object for a few moments.  When this happens, the camera compensates by pulling up on the z-axis until it passes the object.  It is a pretty good solution to a very common problem. 

The controls for menu navigation are laid out very simply.  Upgrading your hero equipment, outfits, and skills is simple thanks to an intuitive menu system.  If you aren’t inclined to micromanage your hero, you can simply set your stats to auto-upgrade.  You can do this for individual heroes within your team, or set it for all of them for a true beat-em-up experience. 

To keep the pace moving forward at a good pace, equipment plays a much more simple role in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.  You’ll only get equipment from bosses and sub-bosses.  This means that you’ll spend less time deciding what amulets, arm bands, and boots to wear, and more time kicking evil-doer butt!  Your costumes are unlocked over time, or by completing specific objectives, and carry with them specific skill and power upgrades.  For instance, Iron Man’s classic costume grants a slight bump in speed, power damage, and defense.  You can upgrade these with S.H.I.E.L.D. tokens, just as you can with your hero powers, but since there is obviously not enough tokens to go around you’ll have to be rather picky about what you focus on.  This really helps the pace moving in online games as well, and should be a welcome change for action fans. 

The gameplay formula for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance was already well established with previous Raven titles.  Like any good recipe, there is almost always room for improvement.  Maybe you like a bit more spice, maybe you want a bit more consistency – Marvel: Ultimate Alliance has both.  The gameplay method of constant beat-em-up that we got in X-Men Legends II was better paced by adding sub-boss battles.  The lack of difficulty in the previous titles was also clearly remedied as those bosses and sub-bosses aren’t joking around.  I have to admit that I never suffered a party wipeout in any of the four-player titles in this genre until I played Ultimate Alliance.  Squaring off against Mysterio seemed like it should be a walk in the park – the man wears a fish bowl for a head!  I was wrong.  Later, as I faced Grey Gargoyle I suffered a similar fate.  If you aren’t using block, dodge, combinations, and your powers to their best effect, you are going to be in big trouble.

As I stated earlier, the game centers around a collaboration of villains called The Masters of Evil, whom have aligned under Dr. Doom.  For once, they haven’t made their world domination plan painfully apparent, and you must use the greatest collection of Marvel superheroes ever assembled to stop them. Without ruining the storyline, I'll say that you encounter several comic cliché events that will put a smile on your face.  Mirror versions of yourself?  Check.  A boss that is as big as a 60 story building? Say hi to Galactus for me!  A boss with multiple 'phases' that regenerates?  I'm looking at you Blackheart!  Rhino? Shocker? Silver Surfer mini-game?  Check, check, check!  The game is simply stuffed full to the point of bursting with content.

One of the new features in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance the game is a competitive arcade mode that stacks players against each other to determine who is the best at wearing form-fitting spandex and silly masks.  You'll play through the main story of the game, but this time you'll earn points for wrecking the environment, getting the most kills, and completing objectives.  If you did all the damage against an enemy, but your friend gets the last shot in, they get the kill points.  You can see the potential for kill theft, ninja gear collection, and coin nabbing as you compete against your friends.  It is technically cooperative play since you are still working on the same objectives, but at the end of the level, the numbers are crunched and a winner and loser are declared.  Tired of being a side kick?  Flame on and grab the loot then!  Nobody wants to sit in that damned sidecar...

During a particular level in the game, you’ll face off against a villain named Arcade.  He’ll stuff you into an oversized electrified pinball machine and watch you try to carefully navigate his maze while dodging a large steel pinball bent on crushing you.  If that wasn’t enough, he’ll also push you into an arcade machine making you take on the role of Pitfall Harry in the original Pitfall game. You’ll get a healthy dose of nostalgia as you log jump and crocodile hop through a portion of the original Activision classic.  Since there was no health bar in Pitfall, you simply rotate through your players one at a time until someone is able to complete the game.  If you are playing four players, it will rotate through each player giving them a chance to flex their old school geek muscles.  Let me assure you, it is much harder than you remember.  For the younger set, this was before games came with cheats and an instant-win button.  The level is a fun distraction from the action, and a cool trip down memory lane. 

In the Xbox version of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, you’ll have 20 characters to chose from, but you can only select 4 at a time.  You can do this by creating your own team, or selecting pre-made teams such as the Avengers, Marvel Knights, and the Fantastic Four.  Since there are only so many S.H.I.E.L.D. tokens you can collect, you’ll essentially have to pick a group and stick with it.  Given how difficult some of the bosses and sub-bosses can be, your best chance of survival is to level a particular team and max them out.  This leads to a particular aspect of the game that puts the breaks on the action in a hurry.  If you have a character get knocked out of the action, you’ll have to wait a specified time before you can bring them back onto the field via the S.H.I.E.L.D. symbols scattered about the level.  This time limit varies from a minute to five, and may stop gameplay entirely as you wait for two or three fallen heroes to regain their ‘fully rested’ status.  This happened to me several times just before a boss battle, and rather than fighting with a half-strength fighting force, I waited out the required time to bring back my fallen comrades. 

Speaking of bosses – there are quite a few in this game.  As I mentioned, the levels are often punctuated by sub-bosses such as Bullseye, Scorpion, Dragonman, Byrrah, Krang, and more.  These sub-bosses are tough, but the boss battles are often surprisingly easier.  When you face off against a larger boss, you often have a minigame that you can use to ‘even the score’.  When fighting a boss in Atlantis, I could activate vents that would drag him to the ground for my team to pummel.  Another enemy in this same level could only be killed by a minigame similar to that of God of War where you hit buttons as they appear on screen, crushing the boss with large pillars.  It is a great break from simply hammering buttons to kill enemies, if not a bit too easy.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again – Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is stuffed to the point of bursting with content.  The popular trivia game that has been present since X-Men Legends is back with far more questions, offering slight experience bonuses for those of us who read our comics as a kid.  There are optional side missions that can yield stat upgrades, or change the outcome of a particular series of events.  17 locations in the game, more recognizable heroes and villains than has ever been assembled, and a great multiplayer experience offline or online makes for a solid addition to your library, regardless of your chosen platform.  If you do choose the Xbox version, be aware that you’ll lose the two exclusive characters that the Next-Gen players receive.

The single player game clicks in at roughly 25 hours. Since the game does keep track of what missions you take, what objectives you skip, and how you interact throughout the game, you'll have many opportunities to alter the outcome of the game via your actions, or the cooperative actions of you and your friends. These friends can use the Join in Progress system to join your game at any point by simply jumping in via Live or plugging in a controller. Like any good adventure title, there are secret areas that you can find, so having a second, third, or fourth pair of eyes never hurts, right? 

In addition to all of the in-game content, there are also collectables to obtain as you play.  These can be cinematics, logos, trailers, briefings, load screen art, concept art, comic covers, and more.  In total, there are over 100 items to find, and you can bet it’ll take a few runs through the game to find them all. 

While Marvel Ultimate Alliance isn't reinventing the wheel carved by X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II, it certainly puts Armor All on the sides, slides in some new rims, and adds aquatread.  With better focus on what players want, including four (useful!) costumes per character, a plethora of villians and heroes from Marvel lore, better visuals, tighter RPG elements, less of the Chatty-Cathy moments, and FAR more tough boss and mini-boss battles, Marvel Ultimate Alliance could be the geekfest that keeps players wrapped onto whatever platform they chose like a pair of tight blue spandex with a big 4 on the chest. 

Gaming Trend Score

88

1. Graphics: 85
2. Audio: 90
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 87
5. Value/Replay: 87
6. OVERALL:88