Many gamers complain that Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick turned the venerable gaming company into an organization that lacks vision, creativity and heart. In his zeal to turn all of their IPs into annual franchises he’s sucked the soul out of the company. I always thought the criticism was a bit harsh, I mean Activision still shows signs that it can be creative, i.e. The Call of Duty Series, and Wolverine was surprisingly good. I also don’t have a problem with sequels, I say give me more of what I love with some tweaks here and there and I’m pretty happy to play the same game over and over. I’m not sure what I expected from Marvel Ultimate Alliance II the sequel to their hit Superhero basher from a few years ago. I loved the first game, so I expected this one to at least be on par with that one and be fun. I mean really it’s taken over two years to give us this; a game that is almost exactly the same as the first one only somehow completely soulless. This is sequel making at is most crassness; there’s nothing unique, original or even fun about this game.
Story
The story starts off with your team being recruited by Nick Fury for a secret black ops mission in Latveria. When the mission goes wrong, Fury and the Heroes take heat from it. A year later an entire US City gets blown up on TV. The public outcry against Heroes forces congress to pass the Super Hero Registration Act. This divides the Hero community into those who are for and against it. You build your team and go on various missions. That I’m about 4 hours into the game and have no real desire to finish it or see if the missions get more interesting.
Gameplay
The problem is for the first 3 missions you have no control over selecting your team it’s selected by Fury. The game has a boatload of characters but at no time in my initial play through did I really feel like there was a lot of difference between the characters or the powers that you select. In the first game it really felt like there was a real difference as you powered up and got stronger and like there were real advantages to having a well balanced team. In Ultimate Alliance 2 it felt the same no matter who I was, whether it was Iron Man or Daredevil – although Daredevil seemed strangely more diverse than Iron Man. I still like picking characters that have projectiles, Captain America being the best and seemingly most powerful character in the game. His shield throw takes out multiple enemies with one hit and he has a power bash move that can take down 3 or 4 at a time. The game attempts something new with this dumb Fusion Power thing. If you build up enough power you can fuse your power with any member or your team for a unique super power. It’s pretty to watch but I find it a bit difficult to control.
Boss battles are a bit irritating because I can’t figure out how to read the HUD (not to mention, there’s too much going on) and there doesn’t seem to be a power meter to let you know how much more of a beat down you have to give. When you hit a character you see the hit point impact, but that number is meaningless when you have no idea how much more power the characters have left.
The missions felt pretty long and flat. The Level Design is very basic, at the end of the day all you are doing is running (on rails) and beating up faceless bad guys and smashing and breaking objects to get coins. I’m not even entirely sure what collecting all the coins will give you – it appears to have nothing to do with leveling up and there’s no store to purchase extra gear. I generally hate any game that involves “coin collecting” smashing everything in a room for no real reason is annoying. It is amusing when enemies will sometimes hide in a box.
The PlayStation 3 version of this game is irritating; it required a 9 minute installation, plus another 5 minute update and for what? To play a game that doesn’t let you skip most of the freaking cut scenes?? I would tell you about the online modes, but I can’t because after four days of trying, I only found 1 co-op match and then I got kicked off 2 minutes into it. Once again, another multiplayer PS3 game is janky online – I’m shocked. There’s a reason why you should always, always, select the 360 if you want to do online gaming. After all of these years developers still don’t know how to properly implement online modes on the PS3. I’m not an achievement whore, but I do love how trophies/achievements are handled in this game. Unlike a game, like Wet, in UA2 you earn them by actually playing the game by completing mission objectives, defeating bosses, etc.
Presentation
The graphics don’t look much different than the first Ultimate Alliance that came out 2 years ago. The CGI in the cut scenes look weirdly lifeless. Everything looks good and competent, but it’s not colorful and there’s no “Wow.” Most of the minions look the same – gray or drab silver. As I said earlier, most of the cut scenes can’t be skipped, so if you are having a difficult time with one of the boss battles, be prepared to sit through the same dumb 30 – 60 second scene 10 or 15 times. You still have to watch the beginning of the scenes that are skippable. The game takes forever to load, again why did I have to sit through a 10 minute installation on the PS3 if I still have to wait a good minute or two for missions and save points to load? There’s very little dialogue and what’s included is atrocious, a typical line – Captain America says “That’s what happens when you attack America,” when he hits someone, or the Torch will say “I’m part of the Fantastic Four, I’m used to winning.” Whoever “wrote” this game should be fired and banned from ever “writing” another video game. The only one that’s even remotely witty is Deadpool. I did love how they did DC and actually got the DC Metro Interior mostly correct.
Conclusion
It took Activision two years to make a sequel to Marvel Ultimate Alliance and this is what we end up with, a half assed, half baked, generic game? I will probably go ahead and finish this game, because lately I’ve been on this real kick to complete everything that I play. I hope it gets better once I get more experience points, but I seriously doubt it will. The game is available on all system. This review is based on the PS3 Version.
Review Update
I did finish the game and it never really got better and got even more annoying. Everytime I started to get into my character the game would take them away and force you to select someone else. So word of advice don’t pick any of the big ones like Iron-Man, Captain America, etc.
Grades
- Gameplay – D
- Presentation – D
- Story – C
- Fun Factor – D
Final Overall Grade – D
EM Review
By Michelle Alexandria
Originally Posted 9.25.09