Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

"Marvel: Ultimate Letdown"

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

There is an incredible amount of untapped potential in the video game industry for superheroes. It's just a shame very few have capitalized on it. Though you can find some rare gems if you've dug deep enough like “Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction”, “X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse” and 2006's “Justice League Heroes”. Fresh from pumping out two “X-Men Legends”, Raven Software has brought us “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance” and they've thrown in everything but the kitchen sink with over 140 characters making appearances, a 10-13 hour game and secrets galore. Yet somewhere along the way, the game didn't quite make it into the mix.

“Ultimate Alliance” opens with Nick Fury's airship under attack by Dr. Doom. Apparently Dr. Doom has created an alliance to end all alliances, he's organized an army of super-villains beneath his banner “The Master of Evil.” (For an evil genius couldn't he have come up with a better name?). They have some evil plot of course to rule the world, or destroy it – I really couldn't figure it out. Thus superheroes unite to form the “Ultimate Alliance”. The story wants to be epic but it doesn't make any sense and Doom's plot is downright absurd. The battle will take you from Atlantis to Mephisto's Realm, Arcade's Murder World, Asgard and even into space against the man himself, the planet killer Galactus.

The gameplay is identical to what you saw in “X-Men Legends”. You'll form a party of four heroes from a big cast of characters spanning the entire Marvel universe. The expected characters are here like Wolverine, Captain America, Spider-man, The Fantastic Four, and Iron Man. But on a smart move, many lesser known characters make a much welcome appearance like Ms. Marvel, Deadpool and Luke Cage. Once you've formed a team you'll pummel endless waves of enemies through one area after another on your quest to destroy Dr. Doom. This is exactly where the first problem with “Ultimate Alliance” appears, and that's the combat. You pretty much only have three combos: A, A, A; A, A, B; or A, B, A. That's it; try not to have too much fun for the next ten hours with only those attacks. If you're making a game of this length it needs to have depth to the gameplay or it really begins to sag, and when it does even the colossal cast of characters can't save the gameplay from turning into a bore. You also have a number of powers at your disposal, but they're for the most part unspectacular. It also doesn't help that some of them are grossly unbalanced with some characters doing ludicrous amounts of damage and others not even worth using.

When the shallow fighting begins to rear its ugly head is when you'll notice the painfully tired level designs. I won't say the levels are repetitive in location; they certainly are more varied than the “X-Men Legends” games which seemed like endless dark steel corridors and science labs. “Ultimate Alliance” certainly has more variety from the bottom of the sea, to a carnival and well…Hell. Yet the layout of these levels is about as lame as you can imagine. You'll pretty much trek down one long hallway to reach another…really long hallway. Throughout the levels are various puzzles, but I use the term lightly because these puzzles stimulate the brains about as much as an episode of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. For example, you come across three trees and a notice pops up saying as long as the trees stand, enemies will keep coming. Right next to the tree is a large hatchet. If you can't figure that one out, well who am I kidding, if you can't figure that out, you probably couldn't even figure out how to turn on your Xbox 360. These might be forgivable if they were rare but some levels litter them throughout and they're all ridiculously pathetic that you begin to wonder why the developers even added them.

The game does support 4-player co-op on Xbox Live, but some really idiotic choices on the developers' part all but ruin the experience. All four players must share one screen, ONLINE. This makes for a huge headache when people are running all over the place and people will constantly get stuck on objects trying to catch up. Not to mention if you reach an area that requires a character with flight to pass, the other players will have to leap to their deaths because if the person flying goes off the screen they'll re-spawn back with the others, making it impossible to proceed unless the rest are dead. Also, pausing the game will cause every other player to pause as well. Matches I played in were littered with people who continually paused again and again for no other reason other than to confirm how many idiots play online games.

Graphically this is not a very impressive looking game. The levels occasionally sport some good textures and lighting effects but the rest looks pretty low quality for 360 standards and some areas look God awful, even below original Xbox standards. The characters don't animate particularly well and all have this glossy look which make them look like action figures. The music and sound effects are forgettable, typing this review I can't even recall what the music was. The character voices are passable but the dialogue is downright silly with villains spouting the ancient lines like “You cannot defeat me.”

“Marvel Ultimate Alliance” is as the movie A Bronx Tale put it, wasted talent. There's an incredible amount of potential in a game like this, but a good idea alone won't suffice, and that's certainly the case for a game like this. I'm sure superhero fans will ignore this review despite what I say, but I strongly would advise a rental to anyone. Chances are you'll be grateful you did.

Graphics- 6.0
Gameplay- 6.5
Sound- 5.0
Overall- 6.0


Pros:
+ Huge cast of characters
+ Plenty of unlockables for comic fans

Cons:
- Boring level design
- Shallow combat
- Unbalanced powers
- Bad online design flaws

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/15/07

Game Release: Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (Gold) (US, 05/22/07)