Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

"A decent game, that delivers on some fields and fails in others."

This is a fairly decent smash 'em up that can be fun to play, if you're in the mood for it.

Story:

Cheesy, boring, and very very comic book. A collection of the worlds most infamous super baddies have teamed up to take over the world, under the command of Dr. Doom and Loki the God of Evil.... Yeah real original... And you team up with a team of heroes to stop them. Kinda lame, but hey it can put you into some interesting environments.

Graphics:

Nothing too special, and on occasion sub par, however on the contrary some of the cut scenes are very well done, but this only includes about 5 of them, the other cut scene that appear as mission briefings are horrible and are probably the worst in the game, which is due to the fact that they used the same graphics in the game as are shown in the mission briefings. Not a good combination to mix the combat engine that was designed for large levels at some distance with up close and personal conversations between the in game characters.

Landscape:

This is probably the best part of the graphics for one, it's pretty diverse and decently interactive, the downside to that is how if you destroy a chair or something it kinda just disappears, but hey they aren't the first to do this, although it's something that would have made the game a tad better that got overlooked. The actual layout of the levels is weak and repetitive, hallway after hallway met with easily solved puzzles, and easily dispatched enemies.

Controls:

Not an absolute catastrophe, but nothing too special. You can do light hits, heavy hits, or you can opt to grab your enemy by the throat, punch his face in, and pile drive his head into the ground. There are a total of 3 combos, where you can trip, uppercut, and stun your enemy. These are designed to leave the enemy vulnerable to let you get in an extra hit or two. My personal favorite is to use the uppercut and jump into the air and come smashing down on the dropping little whelp before they land.

Gameplay:

In addition to the grab, light, and heavy you get about 10 specials, and a chargeable rage bar, that alters your specials to something more powerful. However I find that often these more powerful attacks are unwelcome with certain characters in some situations. For example many of Wolverines charged specials send you flailing past your opponents unless there are about 10 doom bots standing in your stead. There is also another attack that you have to charge up, but it's also pretty useless, and can take a while to use in the first place. Another potential flaw with this is style of combat, endless of hordes of minions that are totally outmatched by your heroes. Which makes for a somewhat redundant hack and smash. This can be a bad thing, but if your in the mood for such a game then this is a good grab.

Sound:

Fairly generic combat sounds, like the graphics the cut scene sounds are in high contrast of quality. Some of them are good, and the rest of the are horrible. The script for some of the characters make you hate them, Spiderman and Deadpool are made out to be 14 year old punks, and Wolverine is over the top in how "cool" he is, and Thor is the most intolerable thing to listen to.

Online:

This is totally broken, I don't even want to go over this, it's horrible.

Overall:

Very decent, nothing special, worth playing.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/04/08

Game Release: Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (US, 10/24/06)