Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 – Review (X360, PS3, PSP)
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 had a clear agenda of cutting back on content in order to refine the experience. Unfortunately they only achieved half this goal in releasing a shorter adventure with fewer characters and a less epic story. It’s still a great game that all Marvel fans will enjoy, but it was difficult to shake the ‘expansion pack’ feeling when playing.
The actually gameplay remains relatively unchanged from the original title, with a light attack, strong attack, and grab moves that can be combined into combos that have a variety of effects. It is a classic example of easy to learn, difficult to master. A beginner can jump into the game and breeze through, though button mashing will get you nowhere on the higher difficulties. About half the bosses are simply stronger version of regular enemies, while the other half require some thought to find their weakness.
Fusions are the big new feature to combat that really help spice up the battles. Each pair of characters has a unique attack that not only devastates the enemy ranks, but look really cool as well. There are three variations of fusion attack: targeted, radius, and guided. This adds some strategy to your party members, since it isn’t entirely effective to have multiple members that use the same fusion with your preferred character.
Experience is earned from battle that levels each character up and allows them to spend points on skills. While in the past, you could only use two active skills at a time, now you have the option to have four powers accessible at any time. The trade-off is that each character has only four skills now as opposed to the dozen or so in the original game. This makes the battles more action packed, but removes almost all of the character customization options that many loved in the first title.
No one ever said super heroes were good at negotiating.
The story ties quite well to the Marvel Civil War. It was a really cool experience to feel as if I was really taking part in the war. Other than a few exceptions, you can choose which characters to take with along when you decide to register or rebel. About halfway through, the story takes a unique turn, so it isn’t completely identical to the story in the comics. The plot isn’t anywhere near as epic as the first game, where you battled Dr. Doom, Loki, Mephisto, and Mandarin. The villains here are far less impressive and never really made me feel like they were legitimate threats. For those excited by the cliffhanger at the end of the last game, sadly Galactus is nowhere to be seen.
Calling the game Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is a bit of a stretch since the hero roster is much smaller and less impressive this time around. Gone are big names like Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, and Blade. They were replaced with some relative unknowns like Songbird and Penance. The list isn’t entirely bad, but since almost half of them are locked to begin with and three are preset to join each side of the war, which makes them unavailable to you once you make your choice, the options feel quite limited.
Another disappointing reduction was the number of costumes per hero. There are now only the basic outfit and one unlockable alternate. One of the biggest draws of the last game was to unlock every costume, but that appeal is almost gone here. The costumes also no longer have unique effects on your stats, meaning they are entirely cosmetic additions. To add insult to injury, the vast majority of the unlockable costumes aren’t even as cool as the ones the characters start the game with.
It didn’t help that the game was just over seven hours long, which is roughly a third of the original game. This is a poor time limit for an action game and completely ridiculous for a RPG. There is a ton of replay value due to hidden items, multiple characters to play and two paths to chose, but that only partly makes up for the incredibly short length.
The overall presentation is an improvement, but still sub-par when compared to other games out today. Most environments are fairly bland and unimpressive, though the characters and their powers look great. There is still a large amount of glitches, both graphical and gameplay related. For example, we started the entire experience off on a sour note as a friend jumped into the air in the first level and got stuck; he could still move around but couldn’t fight. None of the glitches are game breaking, but being forced to work around issues that should have been caught in testing is disappointing, especially when most of these were the same problems that occurred in the first game. The cutscenes are about average, but since the first game had easily the best movies in a game I have ever come across outside of a Blizzard title, not having ones even remotely close in quality hurts the overall experience.
There seems to be an equal amount of improved and removed features, which isn’t exactly a good direction to go for a sequel. Fans of Marvel comics probably won’t have any problem overlooking the faults, but there are better choices out there if you are looking for a great action RPG.
The Bottom Line
| Pros |
|---|
| Addictive action, A blast for Marvel fans, Well woven into Marvel Civil War story |
| Cons |
| Far more features removed than added, Still dated graphics, annoying glitches |
| Verdict |
| A good action ride, but is more of a step backwards from the original. |
| Overall |
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