Marvel Ultimate Alliance, a 2006 game that flew under the radar but ultimately succeeded for raising the bar for future cooperative action-RPGs. Unfortunately its successor, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, doesn’t feel like a step forward for the series, nor the genre. This is mainly because the developers, Vicarious Visions—the team behind the Wii and DS ports of the original MUA—failed to recreate the same phenomenally designed cooperative gameplay innovations that made the X-Men Legends series, as well as the original Marvel Ultimate Alliance, so damn fun.
That’s not say that Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is bad, it’s just not a very polished overall product. From head to toe the game suffers from a plethora of issues ranging from the bland visuals to the extremely buggy gameplay. Even the cast of super heroes to play as is completely jacked. There’s no Blade, Ghost Rider, or Magneto, and even some of the more badass heroes like Thor and the Hulk are only unlockable after completing mindless objectives. Even some are pre-order bonuses from certain retailers and other heroes are system exclusives, which is absolutely unacceptable.
It’s too bad too since the game features an incredibly ideal story that never really mounts to anything more than a drive to push you forward. The “Civil War” as its referred to in the comics, pits the super heroes of the Marvel universe against each other over the decision to become a contracted Super Hero working for government, or to stay freelance and do as you wish. This has Captain America (anti-registration) and Iron Man (pro-registration) split.
It’s a really awesome story, it’s just unfortunate that the game doesn’t present it in a very good way. The cutscenes for example are a muddled, compressed mess. The conversations between the different super heroes are clunky. The narrative is easy to understand but isn’t terribly interesting. The “better” super heroes such as Wolverine or Spider-Man feel as if they have absolutely nothing to do with the narrative, either. They just sit there, silently, without a care in the world.
The thing is: you’ll want to play as your favorite super heroes, which is fine, we all want to be Wolverine because he’s badass. But the narrative revolves around just a couple of characters that it makes the rest of the selectable heroes useless. I never once was compelled to try out Invisible Women or Ice Man. This wasn’t a problem in say, the original MUA, because the story never focussed on one certain group of characters.
As a video game Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 plays pretty well. Most characters feel unique from one-another and the special moves are still satisfying to pull off in the most opportune situation. The environments and missions that are built around the story is what disappoints most. While the original featured some awesome, out-of-this-world scenery, MUA 2 level designs feel generic and uninspired. The enemies you fight are also repetitive, mindless thugs and robots that feel lazily built. The boss fights are still pretty cool.
And speaking of bosses, one of the coolest additions to the short of list of new features is the new “Fusion Attack.” What these attack do is combine two character’s abilities together for an ultimate attack to inflict massive damage on groups of enemies. Sometimes the attack will be a clearing maneuver that will take out every enemy in sight, while sometimes it could be a targeted attack that hits one specific target—perfect for boss fights. These fusion attacks depend on what characters you have selected.
The rest of the overall product is par for the course for the series’ trademarks. There’s still an experience element where you can level up your characters as well as equip different boosts which will vary your team’s statistics like experience gained and attack strength. I felt as if the RPG elements are a little less predominate in the sequel like Vicarious Visions didn’t want players to get too caught up in the customization, or that they thought the original game was too overwhelming. I’m not sure.
I’m also unsure what sort of style they were going for with the visuals of the game as it doesn’t look realistic, but not stylized, either. The character models have a bulky, over-the-top look to them while the environments have a real-life appearance; it’s like a mixture of two designs. The game doesn’t hold up quite well in intense situations as the frame rate continually struggles in enemy-heavy situations with lots of effects. The sound design is decent but not anything special. The soundtrack is generic and unmemorable, plus the voice acting could be much better.
I came into Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 with so much expectations that I was left a disappointed, distraught mess. Vicarious Visions by no means did a bad job, they just didn’t do a good job, either. The story had lots of potential but ultimately suffered because of the lack of polish with the rest of the game. I don’t think a Marvel Ultimate Alliance (or X-Men Legends) fan would hate the newest title, but I doubt they would love it. It’s just a very mediocre overall product.