Video Game Review – Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2

One of the greatest dreams of comic book fans is to be able to play as their favorite heroes/villains in video games. Activision has produced some great games in the past, and they created a follow-up to their hit Marvel: Ultimate Alliance with new selection of characters, teamwork based power attacks, and a popular storyline pulled from the comics. Did Activision succeed this time around? Read the game review below.

Gameplay

Fans of both the first game in the series as well as the X-Men Legends games will find little difference in how those games play with this one. That being said, it is a bit of a let down. All players do is run around, breaking crates and attacking waves of enemies, sporadically having to take down a mini-boss or a shield generator blocking your progress. Blending RGP and action, players have the ability to control the progress of the characters, choosing what powers and abilities to upgrade. The default setting is set to automatic, so if you forget to keep on top of your characters XP, the game takes care of upgrading them. One of the new additions to the game is an attack called a Fusion, which allows a character to use their specific powers with another. Every character has a mostly distinct Fusion with every other one, so sometimes powers look similar but have a bit of difference. Iceman and Human Torch face each other and blast their powers at one another, allowing the player to guide the beam towards enemies. Iron Man blasts his laser blasts at Wolverine, who reflects them at enemies in a radius around him. The Fusion powers are pretty cool, but become repetitive over time.

Grade: B -

Graphics

The graphics are the biggest letdown of the whole game. The in-game graphics are completely sub par, almost last gen in appearance. The game has a few cut scenes with fully rendered graphics, but they are typically choppy and short. Sometimes in the game characters speak to another and you have the ability to control your characters responses, but no matter how you respond the outcome is always the same. Along side your control of dialogue, the creators did not even record voice responses for the characters; the character speaking to you has audio, but your responses are just text. There are over a 20 characters you can play as, and recording voice work for each would have been tedious, but without it, it just lets down.

Grade: C+

Lasting Appeal

The game has a pretty good amount of replay value. During the game, you have to choose if you side with the Registration Act or oppose it, and after the game, you can start over on a harder difficulty with all the accumulated XP and badges from the previous game, as well as the unlocked characters. Now, you can play through on the other side of the Civil War and see things from another perspective. Although the gameplay is mostly repetitive, playing through on the other side is very interesting and fun.

Grade: B+

Final Grade: B-