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Raven takes its X-Men Legends franchise to the next level with Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. This is particularly strong praise since the X-Men Legends games are widely considered two of the best superhero games ever made. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance touches up the already stellar gameplay, adds in tons of Marvel characters, and ends up being one of the most enjoyable action RPGs currently available.
When you have such a variety of Marvel characters, each with a fully fleshed out storyline, it’s a little hard to make a cohesive storyline. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance nonetheless includes a satisfying story that places your heroes against Doctor Team. You’ll visit 17 locations along the way including Asgard, Atlantic, Mephisto’s Hell, a Shi’ar ship, and many more.
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance makes its first good impression on the character select screen. You’ll still a good number of X-Men, but they are joined by the Fantastic Four (playing as The Human Torch is particularly cool), Spider-Man, Captain America, Silver Sulfer, Thor, Elektra, and Daredevil. The variety of characters lets you focus on a playing style that you want. If you prefer melee combat, The Thing will let you pound foes away. Would you rather keep your distance? Well, play as The Human Torch and fly around levels while using long-ranged fire attacks. All in all there are over 20 playable characters in the game, although you’ll meet over one hundred when you include the characters that help you out along the way and villains, which include The Crimson Dynamo, Ultron and Dr. Doom.
Although Raven hesitated to call Marvel: Ultimate Alliance an extension of its X-Men Legends franchise, both series share similar gameplay. The game still has you playing in a team of four superheroes (complete with its own name and icon), visiting various levels, laying waste to a number of unimportant foes, securing objects for your team, and ultimately taking on an end-level boss. Though the game gives you a bonus for playing with a classic Marvel team (X-Men, Fantastic Four, etc) and sticking with the same four people for some time, you can have whoever you want in your team and change it as often as you wish. As usual, you can easily switch between your four team members at any time. Ultimate Alliance seems to focus more on the action in action RPG since the game is faster paced, although your characters still gain experience points and level up, learning new moves. If you really want to get involved with your character the game does let you do so via the RPG elements, although gamers preferring straight action will find that too. In addition, there are some levels where you will play as a singular superhero which helps change the pace just a bit.
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance still features a lot of unlockable content. When you begin the game, you’ll notice several locked characters in your group. As you play through the game you can find action figures to unlock these characters, and you can even unlock many different versions of the characters you have, including classic versions.
Although the AI characters do a good job of backing you up, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is best played with other humans. The game includes four-player multiplayer via Xbox Live and offline. Additional players can jump in and out of the game at will, so you can play the game a bit yourself, get stuck and call a buddy over, and continue in one seamless motion. Aside from the main story, the game includes an Arcade mode that more obviously focuses on the action elements of the game while rewarding players for collecting more items and defeating more enemies. Technically, the online gameplay performed well.
Aside from the typical, top-down Action-RPG gameplay, the game includes a fun Pitfall clone with the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance characters. The game’s graphics are nearly identical to Activision’s classic game with the exception that instead of playing as Pitfall Harry you’ll play as one of the Marvel superheroes, recreated in Atari 2600 form. The gameplay is identical to that classic game although the superheroes can use some of their powers to help them out. If you don’t have the same reflexes that you used to, don’t worry, since some of the characters can swing or float their way through peril.
The game’s graphics are great. All of the Marvel characters in the game look the part thanks to exquisitely detailed character models and a superb animation system. Spider-Man swings around with the same grace that he did in his own games and The Thing looks as menacing as you would expect. The environments have a similar level of detail although the emphasis is clearly on the characters in the game. The game has good lighting and effects on all of the systems. The Xbox and PlayStation 2 versions of the game don’t rock the real-time shadows of the Xbox 360 version, but have good lighting effects nonetheless. The PlayStation 2 version has a few framerate drops but nothing that too greatly impedes the game. The game supports both 480p and 720p on Xbox, but only runs on 480i on PS2.
The audio presentation is just as solid. The highlight of the audio is clearly the stellar voice acting which helps bring the game to life and really engages you to be a part of the Marvel world. The game’s sound effects and music are well done, too, though they don’t have the same wow factor that the voice acting does.
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance successfully integrates Marvel’s cast of characters with Raven’s established gameplay engine. The game includes tons of gameplay, a plethora of Marvel characters, a great presentation, and successfully balances the action and RPG elements, while letting players choose just how much they want to micromanage. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance has something for everyone: Marvel fans, those looking for an easygoing blast-a-thon, and even more RPG-centric action RPG fans. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Oct 25, 2006
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