If you never played the first MUA...or X-Men Legends...or X-Men Legends II, this is a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler where you take a group of 4 Marvel superheroes through a series of levels, killing a metric fuckton of enemies and finding a metric fuck-pound of collectibles. It's a very tried-and-true game style.
Now, the first major concern about this game is that the long-time developer of these series isn't back for this game. Yup, Raven Software isn't involved at all. That's usually a less-than-stellar sign.
The next is that they try to cram in multiple storylines into a game that really doesn't need a deep story as is. They try to tie in Secret Wars, the Civil War storyline, and something involving nanites. It's a bit much and, for me, shortchanges all of them.
Now, this is a genre of gaming that I am almost genetically predisposed to thoroughly enjoy. I love these mindless pursuits. No idea why, but I do.
And this game is a lot of fun. Enemies aren't brutally difficult, but there are so many that it takes a lot of work to actually get through a level. Not saying the game is hard (even on Legendary, it is not terribly hard), but it does take a bit of work to grind through. The roster is rather massive.
But, while the game is SIMILAR to the original --- it isn't as good.
A few things bug me. First, there is a lack of extras. The first one had multiple alternative outfits for all of the characters, and those outfits provided different stat boosts. This one provides ONE alternate and it is a purely aesthetic change. I also hate the removal of the individual super attacks. While I think the Fusion system is a bit nifty, the lack of individual super attacks is annoying. The simulator missions aren't as solid as the original ones were, either. I do like some of the missions, but few of them were as enjoyable as the ones from the first one.
I can't say the game is bad as I loved the first play through and I'm definitely going to play the pro-registration storyline as well. But it does seem a little redundant and it seems like a somewhat weak copy of the better original. The visuals are actually not any better and it's not like the PS2 is the lead console on this one.
