Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Review

 

 

The 1990s and 2000s gave us so many fun Diablo-esque isometric ARPGs and 3D beat 'em ups. These types of games were perfect cooperative experiences with a group of friends. I remember pouring countless hours into the PS2 cult classic Champions of Norrath with my older brother, and playing the four player co-op Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games with friends during a sleepover. While the "Diablo-like" loot-driven ARPGs have some key distinctions from 3D beat 'em ups, I think they're more alike than they are different. I feel that a key connection between these two sub-genres is that they really shine in co-op, where you and your friend(s) choose unique characters with their own strengths and abilities and work together to lay low the hordes of enemies before you.

 

In 2006, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance released across a slew of different consoles. This game served as a spiritual successor of sorts to the X-Men Legends duology. Similar to its predecessors, Ultimate Alliance featured a large roster of playable Marvel superheroes, though this game wasn't confined to X-Men characters like the Legends games. The gameplay was almost identical to the X-Men Legends titles, which was exciting for me. I had played X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse on my PSP and really enjoyed the party-based combat and RPG elements. Ultimate Alliance built upon the foundation that X-Men Legends laid, and established a really solid, addictive gameplay loop. I feel like these games managed to effortlessly fuse the stat heavy, action-RPG style of the Diablo-like games with the slightly arcadey, button-mashing, almost fighting game-esque nature of 3D beat 'em ups.

 

Image Credit: MobyGames

 

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance has a diverse selection of superheroes for you to choose from to build your own personal "ultimate alliance." You can select four characters to fill out your party, and you're encouraged to pick characters with different types of abilities and powers to maximize your lethality in battle. Popular faces like Iron Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Thor and Captain America are all here. The Fantastic Four are all present as well. There are some unexpected faces in the mix too, like Moon Knight and Blade, who I was thrilled to see. With the prior two games being themed around the X-Men, you can tell that they didn't want to carry too many of them over to Ultimate Alliance; so unfortunately, many popular mutants were left out, like Cyclops and Nightcrawler. Several missing characters, like the Incredible Hulk, were eventually released as paid DLC (which was only available for the Xbox 360 version for some reason.)

 

  

The game offers you a fairly large degree of customization over each character. You can build every hero in very different ways, by allocating skill points into the moves that you want to focus on. You can also acquire pieces of gear and equip them to grant your character various boons and perks. Being a comic book themed video game, each character has a few different costumes that he or she can wear, and these costumes also favor specific character builds. For instance, my Thor was largely focused on using melee attacks with his hammer, but you can also craft a version of Thor that leans more into his lightning powers. It was really cool to research the game online and see how many different builds that people had created over the last nineteen years, and it speaks to the surprising amount of depth in the game.

 

 

My team was anchored by Moon Knight, Thor and Colossus. My fourth member rotated out a few times, between Captain America, Ghost Rider and lastly Silver Surfer, who is indubitably one of the coolest superheroes of all time. I mostly played as Moon Knight, and my build was largely centered around his "Nunchuck" attack, which can be spammed to melt a boss' health pool. Moon Knight didn't have a ton of health himself though, so I tried to support him with some beefier guys: enter Thor and Colossus. Thor was a solid all-rounder of sorts, boasting a decent amount of health and some hard-hitting attacks. Colossus was my true tank. He had a ton of health and defense and was often my last living party member, if things went awry during a battle. When I unlocked Silver Surfer toward the end of the game, he served as both a powerful ranged attacker AND a healer, which was critically important in some of the difficult late game sequences.

I played Ultimate Alliance by myself, which I don't recommend. As I was mentioning at the beginning of this article, these games are really meant to be played in co-op. It's playable alone, but it's a lot harder than it should be. The A.I. of your teammates is really not very intelligent, so you often feel like you're battling by yourself, which again, leads to many of these fights feeling needlessly difficult. There were many boss fights where my AI party members were quickly dispatched and I was stuck fighting the boss alone for several minutes. That ended up being much more annoying than it was fun.

Image Credit: Game Rant

The story of Ultimate Alliance is largely centered around Dr. Doom's plot and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s efforts to stop him. Your team works with Nick Fury and you're sent on a universe-spanning mission to try and take down Doom and the absurdly named "Masters of Evil." The adventure sends you to China, Atlantis, Murderworld, Asgard and many other locations. I really wasn't impressed by the vast majority of the regions that you're visiting. On paper, they sound like they'd be distinct and visually unique from each other, but truthfully, it feels like they're distinguishable on only a surface level. Each area consists of identical hallways, corridors, chambers and arenas, and because they're so repetitive in design, it leads to it also feeling like you're in each location for far too long. The only standout location for me was Asgard, which was appropriately beautiful and ethereal. You trek through boreal forests, Norse temples and frozen wastes, and the bright, glimmering stars of the cosmos serve as the backdrop the entire time that you're there. It felt like one of the only locations in Ultimate Alliance with an inspired design approach.

 

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a great game. It's simple enough that you could sit down and button mash and have fun fighting through hordes of baddies, like a good old fashioned beat 'em up. There's also a significant level of depth there for you, if you want something more substantial. I'd recommend the game either way, but I'd strongly suggest playing with a friend or friends to greatly enhance your experience.

VERDICT: Recommended
Reviewed on PlayStation 3