Marvel Ultimate Alliance 21

Written by Eric Sunday, 27 September 2009 18:45

Three years after the original Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Activision is back with a new developer and a story fresh out of the pages of a recent Marvel comic book event. Vicarious Visions has taken up the responsibility of bringing us a sequel to a great game that Raven Software gave us in 2006. Instead of crafting an original story like the one found in Ultimate Alliance 1, they have used one of the most important event comics to hit the Marvel Universe as the source material, the Marvel Civil War.

Due to a series of tragic events involving members of the super-powered community, the United States Government has chosen to pass the Super Human Registration bill, forcing anyone with super powers to register their identity with the government and enlist for training and duty. Long time allies Iron Man and Captain America find themselves on different sides, as Iron man is backing the registration while Captain America is gravely against it. The rest of the superheroes, including your team of four, are forced to choose a side.

That is the basic premise for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. The game’s first act is based around another comic book story, Secret War, which helps to escalate tensions the United States is experiencing with their superhero community at the time. The rest of the game loosely follows the events of the Civil War.

There are 24 different playable characters consisting of both heroes and villains, and many more familiar non-playable characters. When the time comes to choose whether to play down the pro-registration or anti-registration path, access to certain characters will be off limits due to their alignments. Captain America, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist will only be playable to those who choose anti-registration, while Iron Man, Reed Richards are strictly Pro-Registration. There are several characters that are naturally aligned to both sides but whichever characters are in your party will follow your decision on which side you choose. This feels a little strange because some characters choices are well known in the comics, seeing Wolverine choosing to side with registration was completely opposite of the events of the comics.

One of the main attractions of the original Ultimate Alliance was being able to put together your ideal team of heroes. If Vicarious Visions really followed the Civil War story they would have to make several characters non playable once a side has been chosen. This would have upset the formula of the original game, so I understand why they decided to make many of the characters neutral, but in the context of the Civil War story this doesn’t work well, especially for the fans who have read the comics.

Choosing a side doesn’t only affect story progression and your access to characters. It will also affect the powers your characters are able to use. Prior to choosing a side each character will have two special abilities on top of their light and heavy attacks. Depending on which side is chosen, two additions abilities unlock. You can then choose to level up these abilities with “ability points” that are gained through battle, as well as XP and “power points”. Power points allow you to strengthen your core powers while ability points can be dispersed for the damage your powers do, damage resistance, using up less stamina, and so on. You can choose to micromanage every facet of each character or simply enable auto spend, which automatically distributes the earned points to your heroes.

Stamina is a blue bar next to the health bar which decreases as a superhero uses their special abilities. Once depleted the hero will have to wait for their stamina to regenerate before they can use their patented moves.

While power and ability points are used to customize a specific character, team boosts enable status effects for each member of the party. These team boosts appear in levels as collectibles or can be gained through performing other goals the game set out for players. There are 200 team boosts total but players will only be able to choose three to have active at any time. Many of the team boosts have very little effect but there are some which completely change how to play the game. The most memorable involve giving 100% more stamina to each member of the party and another gave an extra fusion star.

Fusions are a new feature in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, allowing two superheroes to combine their powers into one for a devastating attack. The fusion powers can be broken down into three categories- guided, targeted and clearing. Clearing fusions are used for clearing large areas of enemies, targeted allows for a single combined strike on one opponent, while guided fusions lets players control the path of destruction for several seconds. Targeted fusions work the best in boss or leader battles where there is one enemy which needs to be taken out quickly. Having Spider-man shoot his webs onto Wolverine, spin him around and then hurl him at the boss is a fan boy’s dream. Clearing fusions work very well when surrounded by large groups of enemies, Ironman will blast his lasers at Wolverine who deflects them at opponents with his adamantium claws. Iceman and Human Torch blasting their powers at one another to cause a single beam of fire and ice which can be controlled by the player is one of the best guided fusions in the game.

These fusion powers are really awesome until you realize that the majority of the fusion powers are the exact same between all heroes. Wolverine will either be hurled at an opponent or deflect something off his claws. The guided fusion Thor has is a tornado; whoever is the fusion partner will simply throw things into it whether they are Gambits card, Spider-man’s web balls, or Deadpool’s grenades. I was excited to see some fusions between a few of my favorite heroes but was very disappointed. I thought Thor and Hulk would have something really cool, but instead it was a clearing fusion that consisted of them jumping up and down to shake the surrounding area. The worst fusion is repeated by several heroes, which is basically two characters running together hurting everything in their path. It seemed like the developers either didn’t have enough time to make unique fusions or couldn’t think of creative ways to combine powers. There is also an achievement tied to performing every possible combination in the game. I had no interest in seeing the same generic fusion animations over again, which made me categorize this achievement as a big waste of time.

One of the similarities between Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2 is the ability to unlock additional costumes for each character, it is also one of the differences. The first Ultimate Alliance had a few different costumes for each character, each with giving different bonuses such as gaining XP easier. In Ultimate Alliance 2 there is only one costume for each character, and they do not give any bonuses. Another problem with the costume is the long loading time to transition from on to the next. While five to seven seconds between costumes may not seem like a long time, it discouraged me from even looking at all the costumes I unlocked as the game progressed. The same amount of waiting time applies to switching characters in your party, so choose carefully.

Trivia mode and mission simulator, which were two popular distractions in the first game are back. Not much has changed since Ultimate Alliance 1 expect now you can perform “fusions” while answering trivia questions. These fusions give extra points and to perform one two players must both answer a question correctly.

To add substance to the Civil War story are several conversations that players can choose to participate it during the headquarter levels. When a conversation is started you will be given three types of responses to what the other character talks about. Each response with be either aggressive, diplomatic or defensive. Completing enough conversations using one type of answer will result in team boosts associated with that response. Depending on the character you are using, the lines may appear to be different but will stay in the same three answer models. Thor will use old English while the Hulk will speak like a third grade child. The fact that Vicarious Vision didn’t use the same line for each character is welcome but the delivery falls flat.

When choosing a response your character will simply stand there until you have made your selection. Once you have answered the camera will shift back to the NPC for their response. During these conversations your character will never speak, you simply select the lines and watch the responses. The result is that these interactions don’t feel as emotional as the backdrop of the Civil War would intend them to be. There are a few exceptions when you use two characters that have a long history together. Using Captain America to talk to Ironman or another similar pairing will having both parties speaking but you have no influence on the tone of the conversation or the lines being spoken.

The main issue I have regarding Ultimate Alliance 2 is the presentation of the story. Spoiler warning for the next sentence as I’ll be discussing a little bit of the story in the game. The game is broken into three acts, with acts 1 and 2 loosely following the events of the comics. The third act introduces a new threat which causes both sides of the conflict to put their differences aside to stop this larger threat. This facilitates opening up all the characters for use and culminates in the same ending no matter which side you originally chose. The effects that the Civil War had on the Marvel Universe were drastic in the comics but by the end of the game everything has returned to the status quo. This makes me ask why did Vicarious Visions even choose to use the Civil War storyline for their game? If they weren’t going to follow the story presented in the Civil War why didn’t they just create their own story?

The Ultimate Alliance series should stick to original stories or follow those presented in the comics. If they did end the Civil War as it was presented in the comics they could have made each new installment of Ultimate Alliance follow the events of future Marvel stories. Instead it seems like they wanted to capitalize on the Civil War story but not have any of the lasting repercussions carry over to future games. To be really nitpicky the involvements of the Hulk and Thor have no place in this game based on the Civil War apart from bolstering the game’s superhero roster.

The Bottom Line

While the trivia and mission simulators are welcome distractions, there is not much replayabilty to Marvel Ultimate Alliance once you have completed both story paths. I enjoyed my time with the beat’em gameplay but nothing feels fundamentally new or improved from the original which came out almost three years ago. The departure from the original Civil War story makes the game seem at a constant conflict with its identity as a comic book licensed game. At first the fusion moves seemed exciting but once you realize that the same moves are recycled dozens of time throughout the game the novelty quickly wears off.