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Video Game Review – Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2

By | September 21st, 2009
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Bright and early and bushy tailed on a Tuesday morning, I set out to my local GameStop to get my pre-ordered copy of M:UA2. Suffice it to say, this is one of my most anticipated games of the year. The first one is one of my favorite games on the next-gen systems and I’ve replayed it more than any other game I own. I’ve literally spent hours at the game doing every little thing I can, and once I didn’t talk to anyone for a week just so I could unlock Silver Surfer! So yeah, M:UA2 is a big deal to me. I attended the preview at E3 this year and loved it, and immediately after getting my copy I went home, set myself up with food and drink, drew all the blinds, and played for the rest of the day, ignoring every other responsibility I have. Excitement doesn’t feely explain it, I don’t think.

So how does the game pan out? Did I love it or hate it? You might remember I was really harsh on Batman: Arkham Asylum, and this is partly because outside of anything in a comic book, I’m usually prejudiced against Batman things (which could be explained, but it’d involve a very long rant and, quite frankly, a whole lot of wah wah wah-ing as a comic nerd). However, I’m cuckoo for cocoa puffs over M:UA2, so am I soft on the game? No. I promise I am just as hard on this game as I was on your beloved Arkham Asylum game. If you’d like a completely fair and balanced review from an objectional stand point as a video gamer and not a comic book nerd, read on, True Believer!

Right off the bat, you’re probably wondering: “Is this game as good as the first? Is it a good follow up?” The answer is no, but yes, but no. I’ll explain briefly right here for you, and then I’ll expand on all the points later. Essentially, the first game brought in a HUGE cast of Marvel characters from all across the universe and put them together in a completely immersive and true RPG experience. We were able to explore in great depths Asgard, SHIELD bases, Doom’s castle, and more. In the new game, it follows a much more strict and established story line with a much smaller cast, and it just flat out does not deliver the huge nerd-dom punch that the first game did. While it runs smoother and cleaner and looks much prettier than the first game, it doesn’t reach that timeless status as a game full of endless replayability and customization despite first and foremost being designed as such. This is not to say I didn’t enjoy playing it and I won’t play it through a couple of times, but it comes nowhere near the first game at this point.

One of my big complaints right off the bat is that it doesn’t follow in a logical progression from the first game. For those that don’t remember, the first game ended with you defeating Dr. Doom and the game fading out to Galactus, angrily eyeing the Earth and swearing vengeance upon us for stopping him at the Skrull homeworld. There are many possible reasons that the sequel didn’t take off from that point. First and foremost, the game is not made by Raven, who had everything to do with the first one. This game was designed by Vicarious Visions, and it’s their first game not designed for the Wii or DS. This explains logically why many of the things that are different are, in fact, different. Since Raven wasn’t behind everything, Activision was left to simply pick up the pieces and assemble new teams to build new engines and new systems. It seems to make enough sense to me that without Raven, the Galactus plot would not be present. This isn’t entirely the case though. The game does in fact act as a sequel to the first one and in fact references the first game at a number of points. Bardas is placed in Latveria in the aftermath of what Doom did to the universe, and Doom is pronounced missing and assumed dead. On top of that, right after the opening play through of the Secret War plot line, if you talk to Thor he will mention that there was a mighty battle against Galactus, but he’ll get to it another time. So the reason Galactus isn’t your main villain is still unknown for now, and that causes to me a great deal of annoyance.

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The plot, as we all know, revolves around the books Secret War by Brian Michael Bendis and Civil War by Mark Millar. For those who don’t know, Secret War revolves around Nick Fury launching a private assault in Latveria against Lucia von Bardas, the current prime minister (and former educator, if the Trivia game asks, wink wink), who is harboring the Tinkerer as he makes super powered suits and weapons for criminals across the globe. While Fury refers to this as international terrorism, the American government guffaws at him, reminding him that they put Lucia there. Fury brings Wolverine, Spider-Man, Captain America, and Iron Man (one character away from the original start up of M:UA) to Latveria to launch an assault at Doomstadt against her. A year later, after blowing up Doomstadt and assumedly killing von Bardas, she returns as an evil cyborg to attack New York. In the book, she took out Luke Cage, who was also part of the mission, btu this doesn’t play into the story of the game. Fury’s actions, brought to light by Bardas’ attack, helps instigate the bill of Superhuman Registration in Congress, and after the tragic events of Stamford (caused by the New Warriors fighting Nitro), the bill is pushed forward. Now, you’ll get to play all of the Secret War, Bardas’ attack on New York, as well as an assault on Washington DC by Titanium Man where you get to rescue Stan Lee a senator and fight Deadpool (battle boss, suckers!) before the Superhero Registration Act takes force, at which time you will get to decide which side you’re on. From here on out, you follow a similar storyline to Mark Millar’s Civil War – Cap’s side hides while Iron Man’s side roams the streets for Cap’s side and takes prisoners. Eventually, Iron Man lures Cap into a trap, at which point Goliath would die if he was in the game. Finally, in the third act, the game veers off the original story as you are reunited with a previous hero and learn of a strange twist to the events that did not take place in the game before ultimately leading to it’s climax.

But that there is just the plot. While it is definitely annoying that the game doesn’t follow up where the previous one left off, I gotta admit – they knocked it out of the park with accuracy. There are several cut scenes that are very obviously taken DIRECTLY from the comic, and it looks and plays wonderfully (examples on the left and right, click for bigger images). While obvious liberties have been taken, they’re not done in any way that hurts the original stories at all. I really did feel like I was a part of the Civil War, and it’s pretty awesome. Unfortunately, the game is utterly short. Mocle and I recently made an attempt to play through M:UA before M:UA2, and we didn’t even get close. We just barely beat the first act. I played M:UA2 for a good solid day and I was already done with my first play through of the game on the anti-reg side. Clearly the game is made for multiple play throughs so you can see how both the anti-reg and the pro-reg side go, but does it have to be so short? It’s a three-act game, and the last game as well as both X-Men Legends games lasted for 4-5 epic acts, absolutely full of things to do. As far as extra things to do goes in this game, there isn’t much. Where are all the character-centric extra missions that you beat for extra costumes? All the villain challenges? They’re nowhere to be found in M:UA2. The extra missions in this are all pretty bland, to be honest. Either that or just plain frustrating (see: “How Are De Ducks?”) The last game had about a bazillion villains in it, and even though not all of them made sense, it was awesome to fight them. In this one, the actual villain character library is pretty small. You’ll fight a bunch in the beginning, all ranging from well known to classic, and then as the game goes on you fight less and less. The odd thing is that in M:UA2, the engine is so powerful you can fight about 50 enemies at any given time, even if you have just one character (as I had to do when I was in Prison 42), that you’d think there might be a little more diversity. Granted, you do in fact fight a lot of heroes on either side of the registration, but it’s still odd to see a game with so few actual villains.

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Speaking of the cast, let’s tap on that for a minute. What on Earth is with the cast of this game? It is so small and so ridiculously bad. Look at it this way: we start with X-Men Legends, the first game of this kind, and we have all X-characters. Sweet. We get X-Men Legends 2 and now we have a larger cast and we get to play as some villains like Mangeto. Sweet! We get Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and now we have a super huge cast spanning all corners of the Marvel universe, plus DLC. Amazingly awesome! Now we have Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, and it’s basically the cast of the first game plus the Thunderbolts and Jean Grey, Iron Fist if you have the 360, Psylocke if you have the PS2, PSP, or Wii, Sentry and She-Hulk for the DS, and if you pre-ordered you get Juggernaut. Are you kidding me with this? Plus, every character gets 1 alternate costume. The past 3 games have all come with 4 alt costumes, and now you get 1? One of the best parts of M:UA was the multi-costume options giving you different abilities as well as being able to switch between powers. In M:UA2, your costume adds nothing but a new look, and you have set abilities from the beginning to end with no additions. I’m not going to lie – this is easily the most disappointing element of M:UA2. You never get to actually use the full cast until the end of the game (and by then, why bother when you’ve put all the work into the ones you have?) because due to the registration act, you can’t get certain characters (Mr. Fantastic, Songbird, and Iron Man are all Pro-Reg locked; Captain America, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist are all Anti-Reg locked) which leaves to a mildly frustrating play through because, quite frankly, I have no interest in using the Fantastic Four (as much as I like them) or characters like Storm and Iceman. Your only unlockable characters are Jean Grey, Hulk, and Thor, only one of whom I actually want to play as. Look at this cast – what is this? Where’s my Moon Knight (busy being crazy somewhere)? Hawkeye (he was alive at this point, just undecided)? Where’s my diversity? There are so many characters who have a part in Civil War that you don’t get to play with that I’d love to get a chance at controlling. How about Hercules? The game is very clear – there will be DLC at some point. The game in fact opens by saying “Searching for Downloadable Content.” That’s great. But I want Hercules in box. He’s in the game enough as is to make sense. Suffice it to say, this cast is highly disappointing (although playing as Penance is really fun).

There really aren’t many new elements to the game. As I stated before, most of the diversity and RPG qualities of the first games are gone. You still get to level up powers at your own pace, but now it’s on par with games like Mass Effect where you have a set group of things you can put points into and that’s it. There’s no picking and choosing different powers anymore. We have the brand new boost system, which you can use up to three of at a time which all add limited qualities to the game play that are basically not noticeable at all through out the game play. And of course there are the Fusion attacks. In place of any sort of character based special attack, we now have Fusion abilities where you and one other character team up to create devastation. I gotta say, the Fusion attacks are sweet. I usually have Iron Fist and Deadpool team up to absolutely clear out a room and it works 90% of the time. As far as I can see, there are only really three types of attacks: you and another character running around destroying things, you and another creating a super radius of death, and you and another character picking a specific target and smashing it. Despite that, the combinations are usually pretty fun to watch and they can and will rain down some serious hurt on the enemy. I should note that this is the only new element of gameplay though. Besides Fusion, there is nothing new to the game. All you do is run around in a team of four with characters from the Marvel universe performing special attacks and punches and kicks. You’ll solve some simple puzzles (where do I push this block?!) and you’ll move on. As much as I enjoy the game play style of this and the past few games, do you think we could elaborate more than just the Fusions here, guys? I mean, even Guitar Hero adds new play modes when they release a new game.

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Despite all that I’m saying, I do enjoy the game a lot. From the perspective of someone who never played the first game or perhaps someone who doesn’t get bothered by little things like this, it’s really fun. Heck, despite all that bothers me, I still have a lot of fun playing it. Also, it looks frakking fantastic! The costume designs are snazzy as hell and the environments are very rich. They don’t hold back on the graphical capabilities at all. I can without a doubt stand behind this engine and praise it all day long. The whole “50 enemies at a time” thing is awesome, and I LOVE fighting huge mobs. I’ve found I mainly use Iron Fist, and I’ll sit there and Dragon Punch bitches until the Skrull cows come home (is that a good reference to make? Do people get that?). You can be sure I’ll be playing this game multiple times too. I’ll beat the game on Legendary, no doubt about it. The game does not have the same lasting effect and power as M:UA does though, and this is mainly due to such a short story and lack of characters. M:UA keeps me coming back because I love trying out new teams and new characters who I am a fan of. The M:UA2 cast just doesn’t feature enough characters that I care at all about. Sure, I like experimenting, and I’ve used some characters I don’t care about like Gambit (who is surprisingly a lot of fun) and Juggernaut (because I pre-ordered the game to be able to use him, I might as well, right?), but I’d still love the ability to play as Hercules, or one of the characters who appears in the background like Multiple Man. As far as the length goes, due to needing at least two play throughs to get the full story, you can probably presume that this counts as your fourth and fifth act, but it’s really just not the same. What makes M:UA work is the way it runs from beginning to end, and the flow of M:UA2 is too obtuse to create a gameplay experience that someone who loved the style of the first three games will really enjoy.

So overall? Yeah, I still get a kick out of the game. If I had to give it an alphabetical letter to show an arbitrary form of grading, that letter would most definitely be a C, but that doesn’t neccesarily ruin the game for me. It’s just different. I can definitely tell you that I like it less than I like the first one. If given a choice, I would take a game like the first one over a game like M:UA2 any day of the week, but I still get a good kick out of playing the actual events of Secret War and Civil War if only as a huge comic book nerd. That stuff is fun to me. To the rest of the world though? This game is a rent first most definitely. As a comic book fan I would say it’s definitely worth a rental to give it a test drive, and if you like where it goes from there give it a full purchase. I just can’t advocate you go out and blindly pay $59.99 on this game due to the in-box content. It’s fun and it’s a real kick to play as these characters, but it’s definitely not for everyone.

Pro’s: great adaptations, amazing graphics, definitely fun with more than one person, and fusions are a blast

Con’s: poor cast of characters, short game, more stuff taken out then added to justify paying for a sequel

Final Verdict: Rent first


Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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