Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

"Ulitmate A-Team...!"

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

Story
Very interesting. Marvel heroes have come together to fight an evil force called the "Masters of Evil" led by Dr. Victor von Doom. The story spans through five chapters, and each ones will take you around the world and to other planets. You will see many characters from the Marvel universe, whether they are heroes or villains, if you're a super hero/comic book fan, you'll be excited to see them in actions. The story mainly progress before and after each chapters. What you accomplished or failed to do in each chapter will reflect the outcome of the aftermath of those missions. For instance, let's say you failed to save a character from dying, you will see the events that will take place after this person's death, and it will change the future that should or should not happen. While there are many aftermaths, there is still only one ending for the actual story.

Game Play and Controls
If you've played X-Men Legends 1 & 2, then you'll be familiar with Marvel: UA. It's a beat-em' up RPG. You play as 1 of 4 characters, and you can instantly change from one character to the next with the D-pad. The game is quite simple. You level up to build up your stats, and you gain skill points, which you can place onto a special move. With one of the shoulder buttons, you can set what mode you want your team to go into, such as defense, offense, assist, etc. In this console version, you can use the SixAxis feature to land harder hits on enemies, steal an enemy's weapon, perform some stage actions, and fight some of the bosses. You may have trouble using the tilt function, it will take some practice, but if you don't like it, you can turn the tilt function off and stick with the traditional mashing the correct buttons appearing on-screen. Using characters with the ability to fly can take you to places where ground characters can't reach in the game, and using characters with super human strength will clear an obstacle you couldn't reach with some regular dude with a gun. You don't have to plan out which characters to use, but it helps to explore and finding hidden items.

Features
Many playable super heroes. You should be able to find someone you like. This time around you have over 20 characters, and there are some 2 in 1 characters, for an example: You can play as Spider Man or Scarlet Spider, which both aren't exactly the same...kind of in Spider Man's case. You also have many customes for these super heroes to wear, from old school to current attires. On the next gen. consoles, you'll get two exclusive characters and they are Colossus and Moon Knight. There are 4 unlockable characters, which you have to go through each chapters to find all of their toy models before they can become unlocked.

This game features many talented voice actors and actresses. Voice actors and actresses are very important, I don't know if some of you really care about them other than just wanting to hear character in every single game to speak, but they do bring characters in all games to live and give them personalities. Many of these VAs are from games you may have played before, such as Metal Gear Solid series, God of Wars, Kingdom Hearts series, Final Fantasy series, and even popular animes. Marvel: UA also supports online modes. You can play the story mode with 2 to 4 other characters, including yourself or you can play a verses mode. While I hardly see any players online to play Marvel: UA, but the ones that do, they hardly stick around for one entire stage in my experience with this game. Besides the online and story mode, you can play scenarios from actual comic books for more replay values.

Overall
The story mode is quite lengthy. It has a good story that goes with the game and you can experience comic books scenarios. The graphics is nice, and the PS3 version supports 1080p. While Marvel: UA is one of the launch titles of the PS3, it's quite impressive when compared to the 360 launch titles. Although the 360 and PS3 version of this game looks very close to one another. Upon completing the game, I couldn't find myself to go back and play through the game again, even though I had missed a few stuffs. I just couldn't get myself to go back and collect whatever item or complete every single optional missions to reach 100%. It's a good game, and the pre-rendered cut scenes are incredible, but I suggest you renting this before you actually buy it. I hardly see anyone playing online, and even if they do, they don't stick around for a long period, which isn't enough to experience the online play. There is also a slight delay in the movements while playing online, it's not your fault, it's the Marvel game server.

Pros:
Amazing pre-rendered cut scenes
Lengthy, with a good plot
Supports tilt and online
Top known voice actors and actresses
Many playable characters and customes

*Moderate replay values*
*Decent load times*

Cons:
Tilt function may be frustrating for some players
Very few players online, that should signal something...
The game has a bad server causing a lag when playing online
Once you've completed the game, you've seen pretty much all it has to offer, even if you didn't collected everything.

I give Marvel: Ultimate Alliance a 6 out of 10.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/07, Updated 03/08/07