Despite mix reviews on Marvel Ultimate Alliance, the game was a success commercially with good sales. This shouldn't be a surprise at all because there are a lot of comic book fans out there and Marvel Ultimate Alliance gave those fans a chance at playing some of their favorite Marvel Super Heroes in an action rpg game. Now after 3 years, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, the sequel, is release in North America featuring a new story with improved gameplay and new playable super heroes for fans to try out. We take a look at this sequel to see what new changes and features have been made to the game for the High Definition age of gaming on the Playstation 3.
STORY
"This Secret Wars sanction, Fury?"
"A Civil War is coming, Cap."
During the filming of their reality tv show in Stamford, Connecticut, the New Warriors, a less than establish super team, fought a bunch of super villains in hopes of garnering big ratings for their reality tv show. In the ensuing fight, the super villain, Nitro, used his powers and exploded.
The explosion was so big and devastating that it wiped out an entire neighborhood of Stamford resulting in the death of 612 people. The deaths of all these people created an outcry from the population of the U.S including the government that resulted in the passage of a bill call the Super Human Registration Act in congress. This Super Human Registration Act requires all known Super Human to be register with the government for proper training of their powers or they will be incarcerated. Iron Man, a key supporter of the bill, feels that Super Heroes need to be properly train and held accountable for their actions to avoid any future disaster where innocent lives will be lost due to being caught in a cross fire between super heroes and super villains. Captain America became a key figure head against the bill because he feels the Super Human Registration Act goes against the civil rights of super heroes by forcing them to register with the government or face jail sentence. This conflict between pro and anti registration between Iron Man and Captain America soon spread to the rest of the super human community between other super heroes with heroes agreeing with Iron Man and heroes agreeing with Captain America. With Captain America and his followers not agreeing to register with the government, the president of the United States order Iron Man and his followers to track down and incarcerate any super hero refusing to obey the law of the registration act. This means the capture of Captain America and any heroes who wish to follow him in breaking the law. Civil War has now reached the super human community with heroes fighting heroes over the Registration Act. Whose side are you going to be on?
Well as you can tell from the brief overview of the story, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 storyline is a water down and revised version of the Marvel Civil War storyline that ran in the comic books a couple of years back. It's been water down and revised in a sense that they took bits and pieces of key events in the Marvel Civil War comic book storyline and pieced them together to make their own Civil War story but with different results for an ending. The result of this however is not a very good story at all especially when you can compare the game Civil War story to the comic book Civil War story and you notice just how many stuff the game story is leaving out. The problem with the game story is that all it does is use certain key events of the comic book story and than pasting them together for the purpose of using it as an objective for each mission stage instead of actually creating a real story out of it. So the story is more or less a jumble mix of things and doesn't really go into any real details of each key event. It's sort of like telling an outline of the story but not going into any real detail of the story. And it's kind of hard for gamers to actually follow the story and get involve in the story because all it does is go into an outline of each story event and than shifting into game play mode. Base on this concept the story is hard to follow and lackluster because in the end the story is more or less just a brief summary on the Civil War event instead of being an actual story on the super heroes Civil War. In fact you don't really care about the story at all. This is more of a gameplay rpg game than a story rpg game. The concept and the plot behind Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is nice but the execution and storytelling is done very badly that leaves gamers with no real interest to the actual story in the game. But this is the same problem with the past game as well. They only create enough of a story to have the game evolve around it but not willing to make a full blown rpg story for gamers to enjoy. And the most important thing about an rpg is their storyline. It's why rpgs take an average of 40+ hours to play is because of their in-depth storyline. It's pretty disappointing really that after all these years, the one thing that Activision fail to deliver on with their super hero action rpg games from X-Men Legends to Marvel Ultimate Alliance is creating a compelling rpg story for each game. This is another miss opportunity on what could have been a great rpg story base on the plot concept. The overall story isn't bad and some of the key plots are very interesting indeed but the game didn't bother with elaborating on any of these key story events at all.
Score 6/10
CHARACTERS
"Join the Anti-Registration movement."
Like with the first game, the main attraction here is being able to see and play some of your favorite Marvel Super Heroes in this game. From this stand point the game doesn't disappoint as there are 24 playable heroes including the hidden extra characters. You also get to see some cool Marvel villains as well. From the 24 playable heroes, there are some new heroes introduced for this sequel but you also lose some heroes that were feature in the first game as well in order to make room for the new heroes. From a storyline stand point, the game pretty much mainly focuses on Iron Man and Captain America. Character developments are pretty much none-existent in this game. To learn more about each character in the game, you can read their profiles that give a brief background on how they became heroes and their powers. Collecting these profiles known as dossiers is part of the gameplay. But honestly at this point, you probably should already know these heroes from their comic books. It's the reason why you are playing this game is because you are a comic book fan. So in terms of Super Hero presentation, this game does a good job in giving us more heroes and newer heroes to play with than the first game.
Score: 8/10
GRAPHICS
"Become Pro-Registration or
else..."
The graphics is a bit mix in this one. Gameplay graphics and environments look great but story scenes and character models look very unattractive. We'll talk about the movie scenes and the character models in dialogue scenes first. The first thing you'll notice is that the game uses a smooth lightening effect on the story scenes. It doesn't come off too well because this smooth lightening effect sort of takes away the colors of the graphics and kind of made it hard to look at the screen with things being a bit too bright and soft. But the main problem is the character models or the design of the character models. These character designs are done in a 3D fashion but they look like 3D clay models and they are butt ugly. The female heroes look like they are on drugs and some of the male heroes' just look weird and not like the way they should look. Spider-Man look like he's been disfigure with the way they design his body shape and Wolverine looks just plain weird. And the list goes on and on. We'll just going to say these character models are very unattractive to look at. I don't know what happen or why the game designers thought using these kinds of character models would look cool. There's just no excuse for these horrible looking 3D character models. The good news is that these character models only show up on movie scenes and this game doesn't have a lot of those. The good part of the graphics comes with the gameplay graphics where the environments look very nice with different variety of stages and the character models in the gameplay are much smaller but looking more like the way they should look base on their comic book presentation. Movements of the character models using their powers and doing melee combos comes off very smooth and realistic. The environments are very detail with cars, windows, crates and stuff exploding around you as you fight enemies. Super power moves and special fusion moves all look cool with the right kind of animation to them. I love how the game design the animation moves of these models fighting, whether it's picking up an enemy or tripping them. It all looks nice and realistic. It's kind of unusual that the gameplay graphics are more appealing to look at than the story movie scenes. Too bad that the lasting impression you'll have with this game graphics is that the characters look really ugly in this game. This alone kind of ruin the entire graphics for the game as it's the cool Marvel Super Heroes that we want to look at and see in this game. I don't know why they want the character designs to look like clay figurines.
Score: 8/10
MUSIC
"Least the music isn't as bad as I look."
For the kind of game that Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is the soundtrack not bad at all. You obviously not going to get some major production soundtrack like you would expect from an epic rpg game. What you have is great environmental sound effects for explosions, burning crates, smashing windows, ect. The sound effects are really top notch in this game and you really do notice them as you play your way through the different stages, bashing and smashing your enemies. The musical scores are primary base on mission stage scores and battle scores that play in the background during your gameplay and story scenes. In fact the musical scores are very loud to the point where at times you have a hard time even hearing the voice acting over the musical scores. They serve as adequate battle and stage music and get you into the tempo as you play your way through the game. Nothing really stands out at all in terms of emotional story render musical scores. Base on how the game is design and the lack of an in-depth rpg storyline, the soundtrack does a good job in presentation. Its primary duty is to get gamers into the groove of running through gauntlet of enemies and fighting numerous super villain bosses, and from that stand point I don't think you'll be disappointed in the soundtracks. So a good tempo of musical scores but nothing really too outstanding and awe inspiring from this game.
Score: 7/10
GAMEPLAY
"New Avengers, hit them
high & low!"
"Red Hulk smash with Venom!"
Game Information
Genre: Action RPG
Publisher: Activision
Disc: 1 Blu Ray Disc
Memory: 2.5 GB
Players: 1-4 Player Mode
Online: Broadband Required
Supported HD: NTSC,720p
Rating: Teen
Release: September 2009
The basic concept of the gameplay is pretty much exactly the same as the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance game. This should please returning fans and help new fans get acquitted with this series. The game is fairly easy to understand and learn. This is a 4 party member action rpg game just like the first one. You control one hero while the AI controls the other 3 heroes. The game also has a co-op option for offline and online play where you can play with your friends or other online players if you decide to play co-op instead of single player. If going by single player than you don't have to worry about the AI playability as it does an excellent job in controlling the other heroes. In fact the AI does such an excellent job that you can just stand and watch as the AI uses the other heroes and do all the fighting for you. At any rate the game is divided into three Acts or three Chapters. Each of these Acts will consist of various mission stages that the players have to clear and complete. Back at HQ you can talk to various NPC super heroes standing around to get some information on the latest events in the Civil War. Once you done all your talking or information gathering, you can approach the Mission Console and being a mission when you are ready, exactly the same way as the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance. When you begin a mission, you'll be warp to the mission stage. From here you just make your way to the end of the mission stage clearing out whatever objectives that are set before you and defeating the super villain at the end of the mission to clear it out. Clearing out these missions and completing the objectives isn't hard at all. The game actually directs you on where to go and what to do next. All you need to do is press the R3 button each time if you're not sure where to go and what to do. A blinking large arrow will pop up under your control hero when you press the R3 button showing you the way to your next objectives. The game will automatically list your objectives whenever you need to do something and will update your progress as you play along, very simple stuff to follow. You control one hero but can easily switch to other heroes any time and can also rotate in new heroes. This is an action rpg game so its pretty much hack and slash. Or in this case bash and smash your enemies. It's very neat really as you can do melee combos on your enemies or use your super powers on them. You can also pretty much pick up anything in your surroundings such as cars and throw them at enemies. The game designers kept things pretty simple to just smash & bash and using super powers. Once you defeat the mission boss, normally a super villain or villains, you'll be warp back to HQ. You can than repeat the whole process of gathering information from any NPC super heroes standing around and then start on the next mission stage when you are ready. You'll have no trouble learning how to play this game at all and if you've already played the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance than you can just jump right in as it's the same thing. One thing to note is that the gameplay is divided into 2 paths base on the storyline branch of Pro or Anti-Registration in Act 2. Once you reach Act 2, you will need to decide on which sides you want to play for and from there you'll have access to use heroes that are for anti or pro registration only depending on the choice you make. This will only last till the end of Act 2. Act 3 will be the same for both sides with all heroes becoming available to play. The game does introduce a couple of new features as well as revamp some returning features so let's go over those.
Melee Attacks: Melee attacks are the main basic attacks for this game outside of using your powers. The 2 types of attacks are light attack and heavy attack. By combining these attacks in certain sequences you can do some melee combos to foes such as stun, trip, and pop up. Super Powers: Super Powers are back for each hero but this time around you only get 4 super powers for each hero instead of 8 super powers. Each super power is assign to each of the 4 buttons on the controller. Each time your heroes level up they will gain a Pip that can be use to upgrade a super power effectiveness. Abilities: Each of your heroes will have their own set of buff abilities that will help boost their super powers and overall fighting abilities. By collecting Ability Points during fights you can use these Ability Points to further upgrade the effectiveness of the heroes abilities. Special Teams: Special Teams are back and as before, if you place certain heroes in the party base on their background, you will form a special team that gives an extra buff to the overall team. For example if you place all heroes that are from the X-Men, you will form a special team call X-Men giving a boost of +15% max stamina to the entire team. Fusions: Fusions are this game new special attacks replacing Xtreme attacks from the first game. Fusion Attacks are base on a 2 hero's combo attack doing massive damage. However the Fusions themselves are broken down into 3 different types of Fusion attacks. The 3 types of Fusion attacks are Guilded, Clearing, and Targeted. Each of these types of Fusions serves a different purpose in fights. A Clearing Fusion is a one shot area attack that will wipe out anyone in a large radius. A Guilded Fusion is more of a line attack that is use to take out multiple enemies for a limited amount of time. A Target Fusion does massive damage to just one target and is best use for boss fights. Healing Tokens: Healing Token drops whenever you manage a high score of 15/15 on any Fusion attack. These Healing Tokens are actually the only way to fully heal any of your heroes to full HP status. Team Boosts: Team Boost medals are a new feature in this game where you can equip these medals to give your super hero team a team buff effect to help improve the team over fighting skill. Team Boost medals are gain by defeating super villain bosses and can be found lying around on different mission stage maps. There are nearly 100 different possible Team Boost medals to choose from but unfortunately you can only equip 3 Team Boost medals at once. Multi-Choice Dialogue: This is a new twist in the conversation feature in this game that you now have multiple choice answers when talking with other super heroes. The answers you give will be base on the 3 categories of Aggressive, Defensive, and Diplomatic. By scoring points or raising these categories you can earn a Team Boost medal from them. Co-Op Play: Besides the single player mode, you can choose the co-op play option with 3 other friends or going online and playing multi-player mode. Costumes: Alternative costumes are back but this time around each hero only get 1 alternative costume. Suck that it's downsized here like with super powers. The costumes themselves don't do anything other than changing the look of the heroes.
Ok lets be honest here. Despite the fact that the game introduces a couple of new features in Fusion & Boost and revamped some of the other features, this is basically the same game engine as the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance. You could say that it's a rehash gameplay of Marvel Ultimate Alliance and you can tell right away base on the concept and controls. This isn't a bad thing as returning players can jump right in and play this sequel without missing a beat and the learning curve for new players is pretty easy. But the downside of basically re-using the same game engine is that during and after playing the game, you get the feeling of is this all there is.
Isn't there more to this game than what was given. You get that feeling because everything is so similar to the first game that you end up disappointed that there isn't more here for you to do and see because you seen it all before. It's an unsatisfying feeling that you get sort of like a déjà vu of already done it and experience it. It doesn't help that the game is fairly short on each play through too. Depending on the skill level of the player, you can finish this game anywhere between 14 hours to 20 hours. And on your second play through, the game will probably even shorter because you've become more experience on what is needed to beat each stage, so short gameplay isn't exactly a plus here. Another thing you'll notice is the difficulty of the game. Or should I say the lack of difficulty in the game. The game offers a normal and hard mode through Heroic and Super Heroic mode as a starting point with Legendary mode being offer after you beat the game in your first play through. But the game is still easy in hard mode (Super Heroic). I spend the first hour getting used to the controls and the familiarity of the gameplay again since it was almost 3 years ago since I last play Marvel Ultimate Alliance, I just couldn't die while I was messing around. You could just stand there and do nothing while the AI controls the other 3 heroes and do all the fighting for you. In fact the game is so fairly easy on hard mode that you can pretty much just use only 2 party members to complete boss fights and stages without really needing all 4 party members alive. All you need to do is equip yourself with the right Boost and spam Fusion & Super Powers and you pretty much can breeze through this game. This is base on you controlling 1 party member with the AI controlling the other party members. I can only assume it be even easier in co-op with real players controlling all 4 party members. So to sum things up on the bad side of the gameplay, there are only 3 bad things you can say, too short, too easy, and nothing really new in the game.
Now having said all that the real question remaining is, "did you have fun and enjoy playing it?" I hate to say it but the answer is yes. Despite the fact that the game is too short, easy, and a rehash, it's still a lot of fun playing your favorite super heroes. It's really fun and addictive being able to bash enemies, pick them up, throw cars, barrels, & other stuff, and unleash super powers & fusion attacks against super villains. The main purpose of this gameplay is playing your favorite super heroes and having fun doing it. From that stand point the game is still great and achieves its goal. You might find this game lacking overall but at the same time you still have a guilty pleasure of having fun playing it. If you love the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance game than you will love the sequel. Just don't have a high expectation that this game is more than it really is from the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
Score: 8/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
"Simulation Training? It's nothing, bub!"
Most of the extras and replay features are pretty much a repeat on what was feature in the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance. For in game extras, you have 3 hidden playable characters that are pretty easy to unlock. The Trivia Console is back for each Act Stage where you can access the Trivia Console and gain some extra Exp Pts base on the number of correct answers you provide.
Beside the Trivia Console, there's also a Movie/Audio Console. You can replay all the movie clips, audio clips, and concept artworks of the game in this console. But the main in-game extras are done through the simulation discs that gamers should be familiar with from the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance game. There are a total of 10 simulation discs that you can find hidden in the various stages of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. Each simulation disc represents a mini mission game that you can do for some extra reward. The simulation missions aren't too difficult and at times very short depending on which simulation mission you are doing. But at least they will give you a few extra hours of gameplay that is truly needed in this game. Without the simulation discs, you are looking at about maybe 12 hours of gameplay only so it's nice to have these 10 extra simulation missions to complete.
One of the good things about this game is the replay value. The replay value actually help off set the short gameplay a bit. Once you finish your first play through, you can replay the game in a different difficulty setting, Legendary. In Legendary setting you can gain access to new Boosts from boss fights. Of course you can also choose a different path to take such as Pro or Anti-Registration on your second play through depending on what you chose on your first play through. This way it will give you a better view of the entire storyline and game. In fact it's recommended that you should replay the game again to get both sides of the Registration Act unlock. Another option for replay is the fact that you can replay every single mission in the game over again for extra exp pts and incase you miss out on any collectibles in the mission. It's always nice to be able to replay a mission again to pick up on stuff you miss without actually having to replay the entire game again. So the game provides a nice balance between replay and extras even if they aren't in-depth.
Score: 8/10
Well one thing that is pretty clear is that base on the way this game was done by Activision, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 was made with the clear intent on appealing to the more casual rpg gamers or just casual gamers in mind. The lack of difficulty in the game and the overall length of the game for an action rpg game is very similar to the way casual games are now being made. If you love the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance than you would love this sequel but if you are looking for something a bit more new and in-depth than what was given to us in the first game than you are going to be sorely disappointed. I don't know if a gamer would want to spend full price for an rpg game that is about 20 hours long and a rehash of the original Marvel Ultimate Alliance but just repackaged for consumers. The game would be a good buy if you can get it for a much cheaper price or if you are willing to wait for a bit till the price drops down a few months from its initial release date like with most games. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is still a very fun game to play whether in single mode, co-op, or online multiplayer mode, but it's the kind of game where it doesn't have much of a lasting appeal due to the game length and lack of challenge. It's definitely not worth a buy at full price but a great rental game or at a much cheaper price. You want to be able to have fun with the game but at the same time you want to feel like you got your money worth from the game. And this is where only you can decide on, how much you are willing to pay for an action rpg game that is 20 hours or so and a rehash of the previous game.
