Marvel Ultimate Alliance (Xbox 360) Review
Posted by Steve McHugh on 11.15.2006
Spider-man does a great Dwayne Dibley impression.
Dr Doom is the greatest villain of all time. He’s charming, intelligent, ruthless, evil and oh so very powerful. Think about it, who’s better? Lex Luthor? Doom would squish his bald head like a ripe grape. The Joker? Doom would swat him aside like nothing, he has no time for games. Magneto? Well which one? As there’s like 3 I think (anyone reading x-men a while back with the whole Xorn mess will understand what I mean) besides he has no powers now so Doom would simply ignore him. That’s right Doom is the greatest villain ever.
All of which means that it’s probably a good thing he’s the main bad guy in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. And in Marvel Ultimate Alliance (from now on it will be MUA) he assembles the Masters of Evil and sets out on his villainous plan. Being called the Masters of Evil you would assume that they’re not the nicest bunch ever and any plans would be…well evil, which is why it is up to you to stop them. Yes the story is typical comic book fare and it all works very well. You pick 4 out of a possible 22 heroes and you go battle the forces of said evil. Raven software managed to do the exact same thing with X-men Legends 1 and 2 and they were excellent. So lets see if this game continues that trend.
Graphics
The game looks a lot like Ravens previous legend games. In fact it’s basically the same but with improved textures and lighting. The really big improvement is the cut-scenes which are now amazing. The Nightcrawler one in particular is a thing of beauty as it the Dr Doom one later in the game. The only problem is that there aren’t many of these cut-scenes. The character models are also much nicer and more detailed to look at. However, there are a few parts that don’t look so good. On the Hero select screen Spider-man is hanging upside-down and unfortunately looks like he’s wearing comedy teeth, which I doubt he is. A few of the other characters also look a little on the rough side, it seems as if the developers just didn’t spend much time on some of the characters as others.
The other thing that bugs me is just a personal issue. Before each mission you have a brief cutscene where everyone talks about what’s happening. The problem is that no matter what costume you have your characters wearing they always revert back to the original ones for these scenes. I sure it would be possible for this to not happen as it really does take something away from those scenes.
I’m being a little on the harsh side because over all this is a very pretty game but the 360 can do more and it would be nice to see that utilized.
Get used to Elektra always being useless in a fight.
Gameplay
If you’ve played any of the other games of this sort then you’ll know how to play this game. You select a group of 4 and go around defeating the bad buys by hitting them. There’s a strong, weak and grabble button as well as being able to jump. That’s it for face buttons. The right trigger brings up that heroes powers which can be activated with a press of the corresponding face button and the left trigger brings up a menu to change the nature of your characters from aggressive to passive. It’s all very easy and straightforward to use. In fact switching between the 4 characters you’ve picked is easy too. Each direction on the D-pad corresponds to a different hero. Within minutes you’ll be hacking away at the enemy with glee. In fact it’s so easy there’s no tutorial.
As per the other games each character has both a health and focus bar. The focus is used up when you use your powers and regenerates over time. There is also the special power bar which raises as you fight and beat enemies. Once it’s filled up you can unleash your most powerful attack, which in turn causes every other character with this power unlocked on your team to also unleash it for some huge damage. Some of these powers are very impressive and very useful against one character and some are much better to use against multiple enemies. It’s a shame each character doesn’t have two powers to choose from so that you don’t waste one when you’re fighting.
One very good thing about the game is the change to the way you get potions for your health and focus. In the old games you could pick up a set amount and use them with a press of a button. This time round they’re not picked up at all. Every time you break a crate or kill an enemy (or just keep hitting a boss) the tiny orbs will pop out and go to whoever needs them the most. It’s just about the greatest idea in this sort of game I’ve ever seen. It means no more constantly having to check on your comrades to ensure they have the right amount of health or running our of potions and hoping you don’t get into a fight. The only problem is that they are so plentiful that it means that it’s very hard for anyone in your team to be killed. It’ll happen but not often.
In fact the easy nature of the game really does let it down. Most of the characters are not balanced at all and fall into one of two categories, hugely powerful or crap and hopeless. Let’s take wolverine for example. On one occasion all of my teammates had died and it was him against a boss. And I won. Easily. In fact Wolverine can basically kill anything in the game by himself. And it’s not just the furry Canadian, Thor, Doc strange and a host of others are massively powerful. Good you might say, and in a way it is. Thor should be very powerful but not when other characters in the same game are so weak. Elektra is awful and I mean will die constantly awful. No matter how far up her level is she always dies. Yes you should have characters more powerful then others but for the next game maybe they should pick characters that are not so polar opposite in terms of power and are more well rounded. This problem is compounded by the ability to pick up the weapons of your fallen adversaries. These are much more powerful then they should be and you’ll be able to hack your way though most enemies with even more ease when you get hold of one.
Speaking of the characters I have a little rant to make. Xbox 360 owners as a bonus get Moon Knight and Colossus. PSP owners get Ronin, Hawkeye, Captain Marvel and Black Widow. I just feel that as I paid more for the game then PSP owners why aren’t there a few more characters available to us? Specifically where are the Hulk, She Hulk or even the Young Avengers characters (who I would love to see get their own game). Maybe they’ll be in the sequel but I think if you’re paying the most for a game you should get the most bonus content.
Each hero has a number of costumes to unlock. In normal games these wouldn’t do anything and would just look nice. In this game each costume has 3 sets of values to it e.g. raise health, more attack power or defense and you can raise each of these levels by using money you’ll find throughout the game. It’s a great way to improve the stats you want and have your favorite heroes in the costumes you love at the same time. All but 1 of these costumes are unlocked by playing with that character with the last one unlocked by completing their training sessions and most of them are excellent. Spider-man’s in particular are fantastic and the last costume for any character is always an impressive one (his new armored costume in this case).
If there is one major problem with the gameplay it’s the repetitive nature of the game. It’s basically go into one area, beat everyone up, move to next area rinse and repeat. There are puzzles but they’re all in the same vein move the block to this point etc. and are so easy you won’t have any problems. If you did have problems though most of the puzzles are spelt out for you in minute detail sometimes to a degree that it’s actually insulting.
On the plus side there is an excellent new feature. The teams. You can pick any 4 characters and make a team out of them that you can name anything you like. As you keep these 4 together and defeat enemies and complete quests you will gain more reputation and eventually be allowed to level up your team. This can be anything from raising your max health to allowing you to add more team members. The last one is especially important. If you remove any team member for another character you loose reputation points but once you can increase the number of team members you can add and remove any members that are in team. So if you’ve got Thor, Doc Strange, Iron man and captain America as your team and you can increase it by one and you add Moonknight that means you can make a team of 4 out of any of those 5 characters. It works very well and eventually you can get 7 or 8 members to be in one team and switch them about as you like. It also adds an extra element of strategy as you try to figure out who will be most useful in any given situation.
Sound
This is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand the musical score is excellent and invokes a feeling of the grand but on the other hand some of the voices are awful. Spider-man is probably the worst culprit as he comes across as neither witty nor clever, and whilst the script may be to blame for some of that the flat delivery of lines doesn’t help. In most cases though it’s simply a case of the wrong person doing the voices. Thor should never sound like he does in this game.
There are exceptions to the rule; Silver Surfer is well done as is Doc Strange and at least one Deadpool line will make you laugh. In fact the one-liners you hear throughout the game never get annoying and the sound effects are also used well.
Iceman became confused to where the Invisible woman was.
Lasting Appeal
First play though on normal will be about 20 hours. After that you’ve got hard mode to unlock and you will want to play though at least once more to unlock some of the other characters and try the ones you didn’t before. In fact there are a number of characters to unlock, one in particular is very hard to get but once you do it’s more then worth it.
On top of that you’ve also so that multiplayer aspect which as it has been in previous games is a huge amount of fun and definitely something you’ll come back to with friends. Arcade Mode has you progressing through the story with friends but you’ve all out to get the most points, which are received when an enemy is killed. It can create all sorts of hell when after nearly killing someone your friend comes in and steals the glory. It’s a he amount of fun, but you’ll probably loose friends over it if you’re competitive.
There are also the achievements. Some are really easy and most are unlocked through just playing the story but some are a little harder to unlock. One based on trivia questions (which I love by the way) is very hard to get the first play through. In fact a fair few of them require more then 1 play which if you’re an achievement kinda person that’s even more reason to play again.
Fun Factor
As a comic book fan myself I found this to be huge amounts of fun. If you’re not into comic books then you’ll probably like this less. Either way you will never get tired of the power that allows you to turn people in crates. Seriously it’s fantastic. What would have been nice is the opportunity to have a few bad guy missions and play as Doom himself. Still there’s a lot of fun to be had from this game either by yourself or with friends.
Overall
Well the comic book geek in me wants to give this an 8.5, as it really is excellent. But the games review guy is a little more pragmatic and knows that there are many problems with game. These are mostly the repetitive nature, simplistic puzzles and the ease at which you’ll finish it, so he wants to give it a 7.5. We’ll go half way because it really is a very good game but the more into Marvel comics you are the more you’ll get out of it.
Graphics
8.0
Mostly very good but with some rough patches. The cut scenes are amazing though.
Gameplay
7.5
Easy to play but you'll grow weary with the repetitive nature and awful puzzles. Issues with balance with characters too.
Sound
7.0
The music is pretty good but some of the voice acting is awful.
Lasting Appeal
8.5
It'll take you a while to play through and unlock everything. Then you'll want another go too. Multi-player is fantastic.
Fun Factor
7.5
Lots of fun but you'll get fed up with the little problems along the way.
