Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

"strike a pose"

Marvel Ultimate Alliance, 2 words, HOME RUN! But why you ask? I'll break it down:

Story Line:

Doom is back with a vengeance! (Again)
I've seen this before but not on a scale like this. With five acts, you are a front line soldier in the fight against the end of the world. The game takes you everywhere from Doom's castle to stark tower. Asgaurd to Mephisto's realm. Your powers get more and more powerful and destructive and so on. For originality the story line gets a 6/10 but for replayablility I give it a 9/10.

Game Play:

Finally a great 3rd person game! But anyway, you begin the game with a troop of 4 MARVEL heroes with one special power each but before the first level is over that changes. You unlock powers and new heroes by finding them in the various levels or performing some tasks throughout the game. The game flows really well from the helicarrier to Atlantis. The controls are easy to get a hold of and it become addictive very quickly. if you have to cheat only use the ones that you really really want, because once you use some of the cheats they affect all of the save files you may make in the future defeating the purpose of the game. Over all I give game play a 9/10.

Graphics:

Anyone who uses a PSP or DS will tell you that no matter what game you play the graphics always leave something to be desired. With that said, the graphics are above par for this game. The finer details like faces or other little things like that aren't amazing. This applies to all platforms you play this on; I know I also have this game on the 360. That isn't much of a problem though because outside of the cut scenes and movies you are normally looking at your character from behind. The environments are well crafted and they don't lag like on other games with environments this big. Over all I give the graphics a 8/10

Difficulty

This is simple. The easy is really easy. The medium is medium and the hard is pretty hard. What else do I have to say? No rating is necessary

Customization:

Throughout the game you unlock new heroes and as a result you can create different and more powerful teams. Teams can include BAD TO THE BONE: Blade, Wolverine, Ghostrider, Luke Cage or the NEW AVENGERS: Iron Man, Captain America, Spiderman, and Wolverine. The possibilities are almost endless. If you register for an account online you can unlock even more characters. As for the customization of each character. Each character has a set of four unlockable costumes. With each different costume the hero gains different and adjustable attributes such as max health, health regeneration, or defense. This is one of the most fun parts of the game 10/10.

Online:

The game features all of the basic online capabilities that one would expect. I haven't dug to deep into the online option yet. I am not much of a fan of online game play myself, not just on this game but on all games. So to be fair I can't give online any rating because I haven't used it.

Overall:

This game is great to have for just about any day. The game play is smooth, the graphics are clear and clean, it's great on any difficulty, and customization of the characters and teams is fun to play with. I recommend this game to all the PSP, and all platform users for that matter, who are looking for a great superhero game has time to play the game all the way through. My average rating is an 8.4/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/20/09

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