Working Title 01.29.09: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Posted by Jordan Williams on 01.29.2009

The fanboys wetdream game is getting a sequel later this year, but at the moment we know no details of it. So what can be learned from the original MUA that could be fixed in the new MUA?

Welcome to the #1 Column to get 15 hours of community service, WORKING TITLE. Yep, after my little scuffle two weeks ago it seems I was sentenced 15 hours of community service. I haven't decided where I'm going to do it at yet. Actually...fuck yeah. I just decided.

I'll volunteer at the Super Bowl. I keep forgetting that that is in town this week. By the way since I live in Tampa we naturally have to root for underdog teams, which mean the Cardinals have my vote.

Anyway, we are continuing with HBFS for this week. In my first week I examined the zombie thriller/funfest that is Left 4 Dead, last week I looked at Fable 2. This week I decided to go back in my backlog a bit. I noticed the first two games here for PC/Xbox 360 games...which I can't help because those are the only consoles I own. But I figured this time I would go back to a game that was AT LEAST multiplatform.

Not only was this the first game I owned for my 360, but it also has the distinction of being the only game I've beaten 3 times on 3 different consoles.

This week I'm going to make an Alliance...an Ultimate Alliance.


Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Note: I am aware that there is already a sequel to this game in the works. But as of the time of this writing there have been no details outside of team moves released. Therefore I'm doing the column anyway and if you have a problem with that you can eat it. Eat it hard.

So MUA is Marvels third game in its series of action/RPG dungeon crawlers. You take a pretty much who's who list of Marvel characters and set out to stop the evil (yet awesome) Dr. Doom from pretty much bending over the universe and fucking it in its...well, yeah. You get the point. Either way the game was pretty damn successful and was heralded by many as the first of its kind. A completely co-op and four player active beat-em up in a time where the genre was all but dead.

However, if the sequel were to come out today with the same style and flare, it might not be as well received. So it's time to see what we can do to fix this here. Don't get me wrong, MUA is one of my favorite games but all things can be improved and MUA definitely has its fair share. So let's get this show on the road and take a look shall we?

And for those of you who need a refresher, this is how HBFS works:

Harder: This is going to talk about how the came could be more challenging, and if the game was already challenging enough, how they could make it even MORE challenging to the hardcore players out there. Less health? More damage to the player? It'll be covered here.

Better: Pretty much how it sounds. What are those flaws that could've been left out of the original and made BETTER in the sequel? Didn't like the fact that you had to find a save point and couldn't save whenever you wanted? What about the annoying button layout? We can fix that.

Faster: Now this one might not make sense, but Faster doesn't actually refer to the speed of the game. This will be referring to how fast the game gets supported as WELL as speed of play. Sure, the game might be slow in some points. But what is worse than a slow game? A game that's slow and it takes even LONGER for decent DLC or patches to come out for it

Stronger: The most important part, how do we make the game just stronger than the previous title? How do the three above factors fit into just making the game better as an overall package, in essence, making the game stronger?

Yeah, I pasted that directly from the other column. I'm so fucking lazy it's not even funny. Either way it still applies to this one. We'll be following these same guidelines to see what exactly we can do to Fable III to make it better overall.

Harder

Now this is actually going to be pretty hard. I can't for the life of me think of how to make MUA any more difficult. The game has a pretty gentle learning curve but if you were to crank up the difficulty level the game gets pretty damned hard. So how would someone even make the game any harder than it already is without it being cheap? I honestly can't think of anything so I'll have to take a weasel way out and ask you all.

Consider this your Working Question for this week, How in the hell could you make Marvel Ultimate Alliance Harder?

Now that I have successfully weaseled out of that one, I'll just be moving right along...

Better

Okay, I might've weaseled out of Harder, but I can definitely do Better. MUA was pretty good at what it did, but there were flaws...a good chunk of them, actually. But of course these are things that can only be fixed without changing the overall integrity and style of the game. These things aren't necessarily game ending flaws by any means, but they can still be fixed and improved upon. It never hurts, right?

Equipment - Do it better or not at all

A staple of the XML games and MUA is that it used Marvel themed equipment to alter the stats of the heroes in the game. The thing about this is that thing equipment really didn't have much a bearing on the gameplay overall. Sure, some of the more powerful equipment really did tip the tides of the battle into your favor near the end of the game, but then again in the same vein you are already so strong by then that you can run around naked and still be a decent match for Dr. Doom.



I think the equipment system should be redone or taken out completely. A good way it could be redone is more Hero-Specific Equipment. MUA touched on this by having equipment that would enhance a certain hero's powers, but they could take it a step further. Maybe Cyclops has different visors that drastically change his powers and damage? Ironman could have modules that change some of his special powers around drastically. Having equipment that has a stronger link to the heroes would not only give them more of a personality (I'll get to that in a moment) but it would also make the equipment as a whole more interesting. I don't know about many of you but outside of certain situations I -never- actively looked at my equipment and changed it. I usually just let the computer randomly put something on whoever was in my party.

Or...they could just remove it entirely, I don't think it would be missed that much.

Big Names, Little Names, No Names

MUA boasted a huge roster of characters from the Marvel Universe...but some of them were a bit questionable. I understand the game is called Marvel Ultimate Alliance and not X-Men Legends 3 or Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, but some of the heroes in the game were a bit...out there. Now I am not a big of comic book fan as I used to be, but I honestly don't think many people were clamoring for the chance to play as Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman, Moon Knight, or Dr. Strange in video game form. Also even some of the more well known characters just seemed a bit out of place. I get it that the Fantastic Four always travels together but really...who wants to play as Invisible Woman?

Ditto for Storm, she's one of the oldest running(thanks to the commenter who pointed out I was wrong) X-men and is great to the mythology, but I find it hard to believe they chose her to be in the game over some of the other 'big name' X-men like Cyclops (I know he was DLC, so shush) and Gambit. This also may have a bit of bias on it because Storm is easily the WORST CHARACTER IN THE ENTIRE DAMN GAME.



But I digress, it just seemed that MUA had a mixed bag when it came to its initial roster, of course DLC helped flesh this out a bit but there are still some of the big names that were nowhere to be seen. For instance where the HELL was The Punisher? Black Widow?...Howard the Duck?

Faster

Now getting in the fastlane is pretty simple, MUA was plenty fast but Faster here is all about improving the player experience. So what could be added to MUA that could make it more fun for the player altogether? Well I'm glad I asked. Now I get to act like a complete psycho and answer myself.

Alternate Alliance

Yeah, it's a cheesy name. But anyone who reads comics knows that Marvel has a TON of different versions of it's same characters. MUA touched on this by having costumes for these characters that would change their look (such as Ironman being able to be Ultimate Ironman and Ms. Marvel taking on the look of previous Ms. Marvels) but it could definitely be expanded on by those characters that have DRASTICALLY different versions. For instance for those who follow the comics you know that Deadpool and Ultimate Deadpool are too drastically different characters. One is an awesome 'Merc with a Mouth' and the other is a psycho who is hell-bent on destroying all mutants and hunts them for game. Another fine example is Colossus. You know the big Russian badass who can turn his skin all metal and awesome? Well his Ultimate version is pretty much the same...except he's gay.

See where I'm going with this? Ultimate (and other) versions of the characters change so much that more should be taken into account of them more than just a 'costume' like in MUA. Maybe these alternate versions of the same character could veer off into their own character with their own specialized powers and move sets? Perhaps Classic Wolverine is all about clawing and stabbing but 90s Era Badass Wolverine focuses more on the rage spectrum of things.

Like I said earlier, Marvel already touched on this a little bit with the costume ideas, they (technically) did have some different stats but these were so negligible on most of the characters that you were just better off picking whoever one looked the coolest and sticking with it that way.

Evil

If The Dark Knight (yeah, I'm talking about DC in a Marvel discussion. Sue me.) proved anything it's that people LOVE villains. Where MUA had a decent cast of villains (Dr. Doom being one of the best villains in comic books) the rest were just sort of...so so..

I'm sure a lot of the more hardcore comic fans would balk at me turning my nose up at Loki, Baron Mordo and The Wrecking Crew. The truth is that a lot of the more casual comic book fans don't really know who the hell most of these villains are. Now the villain roster for Ultimate Alliance was pretty damned impressive. You could tell they wanted to encompass villains from all of Marvel's works instead of just drawing from the X-men and Spider-Man well, but then again I think to having a little bit more star power on the Evil roster would've done some good. Maybe a Green Goblin here or a Sentinel there. Of course you run the risk of having too many conflicting badass super villains in one place, but who said it had to be an Ultimate Alliance for just the Heroes? Admit it, seeing Magneto, Doc Oc, Dr. Doom, and Red Skull teaming up to take on the worlds finest heroes would be fucking AWESOME.

Stronger

Faster is about enhancing the player experience, Stronger is about making the game more appealing to everyone else. MUA in its very nature should be appealing to two of the more hardcore types of geeks out there. Comic book geeks and Video Game geeks. So how could you expand upon that without pulling a Nintendo and trying to draw in everyone over the age of 50 and everyone with a vagina?

Promotion

Now I might've just been under a rock. But I really didn't see too much promotion for MUA when it first came out. It followed in the footsteps of XML1 and XML2 in the ways that these are games that could draw HUGE numbers and crowds given the current climate of anything with a comic book super hero being downright GOLDEN, but I never saw a single commercial or print ad for these games outside of well...comic books. You would think a commercial showing kids that they could play with all of their favorite known and unknown super heroes would be enough for some PR guy to droll over, but instead we get nothing.



That is something that definitely has to change when it comes to MUA:F. These things have to be addressed because now that video games are as close as they can possibly be to movies (hell, look at games like Stranglehold and The Force Unleashed which are just interactive substitutes FOR movies) its holds even more true that without the right kind of promotion a game will fail. Of course this isn't always true as there have been some games that have been shoved down our threat yet haven't sold well at all (Hi, Little Big Planet) and games that seemingly came out of nowhere and ended up breaking the bank (Sup, Army of Two). But either way when you're dealing with something as ingrained into pop culture as MARVEL then there is just no damn excuse to not have commercials running on all kid-centric and geek-centric channels at all times. If they can show that goddamn Lego Batman commercial all the time they can squeeze in some MUA:F commercials.

Action/RPG. Don't forget the RPG.

MUA was classified as an Action/RPG. Now I understand the action part, it was almost balls to the wall action from the first level...as for the RPG aspect? Color me wrong but just slapping on some stats and levels doesn't make a game an RPG for me. You have to do a little bit more to sell me on the "RPG" aspect of the game. How about some choices that change the gameplay? Some actual multi-layered and open ended missions? Some big fight moments that solidify all things referenced to an RPG.

Don't get me wrong, MUA is on the right track with its RPG-lite feel. As mentioned earlier they do have the equipment and there is a decent level of number crunching under the hood that keeps the game a little bit more deep and involved than standard beat-em ups, but the story itself was so interchangeable...which lead itself well to the fact that you most likely changed your team up whenever you got the chance but did you notice that during the cut scenes of MUA that only a few members of the cast were ever actually featured? Maybe this could change in future versions of the game. Maybe if you go through the game with certain heroes you get certain villains, story options, cut scenes. This would make the game almost infinitely replayable as different combinations would yield different outcomes, and hell, maybe certain combinations of teams have their own complete storyline.

Sure, The Avengers might want to save the world, but maybe Weapon X or The Brotherhood of Mutants have a different idea of what should be going, so they take a different route to the same (or maybe) different outcome. It would stay true to the 'anything can and will happen" style of the comic books, as well as lending the RPG genre to Marvels way of storytelling. Not to mention it would give you an actual reason to use some of those lesser known heroes I listed above.

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Working Feedback

The thing that disappoints me the most in Fable is that you can't really play a proper Highwayman.

There's Highwayman gear, a Highwayman's Guild, the game's practically set in the Age of Highwayman. Yet the closest you can get is ambushing travelling merchants, without so much as a "your money or your life" type threat?

The game could really benefit from horses and coaches. I really wanted to have high-speed chases on horseback from city guards, and holding up coaches to steal the rich occupant's gold and jewelry, maybe with the option of having them kicked out and stealing the coach for extra. Maybe you could even kidnap his wife and hold her for ransom, having your wicked way with her in your secret hideout.

Alternatively, you could be a mercenary set out to find and deal with these highwaymen and kidnappers. As it is, the game's basically Fable 1.5.

I'm also disappointed that there's no pregnancy phase for female characters, just a black screen and a baby gets beamed down in less than a percentage of a real nine-month pregnancy. Engaging in combat while pregnant could have benefits and deficiencies like less movement speed but higher attack power, humans less likely to attack a pregnant women but animals more likely for the extra meat, while injury or KO could result in a miscarriage, adding to the realism.

It's a shame Fable 2 probably won't be as moddable as, say, Oblivion, since a lot of these issues could be done via mods, and I definitely see potential in the game.
~ The Tortoise King

....I have nothing to add really. You sort of hit the nail on the head. Although I think having miscarriage in a game is a bit 'eeeeeh' as it might attract unwanted attention to a game where you can already have threesomes and polygamy AND STDs. Although I do agree that playing as a female should've had more than just *blank screen* and suddenly a baby.


I'll be waiting. Although I may say this late in, you may be better off waiting till the new Call of Duty comes out. It is hard enough to get used to the maps when you first get a game, let alone when everyone has a 3 month jump on you.~Toddo

That's right, Toddo. Find excuses to run from me. It's okay, it doesn't make you any less of a man.

While I haven't been telling people what next weeks column is going to be about (mostly because I tend to think up column ideas over the weekend) I already know what I am covering next week. Now I did vow that given the nature of the site I would never really go in depth into this next game…but if any game needs the HBFS treatment it's this one…so next week in the finale of Harder,Better, Faster, Stronger. I'm going to tackle the big one.


Smackdown vs. Raw '10 (or would that be 0-10?)

Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams…and Working Title is not a one shot deal.