Marvel Ultimate Alliance

The ultimate superhero action RPG?

Tags: Categories: PS2 Reviews, PSP Reviews, Reviews, Xbox 360 Reviews

Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Nov 10th, 2006

Title Players
Marvel Ultimate Alliance (title page) 1 - 4
Developer Publisher Genre Online
Role-Playing (Action) Yes


For anyone who’s been a Marvel Comics fan, ever, Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a dream come true. Well, almost. Finally, instead of a simplistic fighting game, comic book fans have the chance to enjoy playing their heroes with a somewhat full complement of their actual superpowers, in a game environment that tells a comic-book-style story. I mean, let’s be honest, those old Street Fighter vs. Marvel arcade games may have been a minor thrill for about two seconds, but they certainly didn’t deliver the goods like this.


On the flip side, Marvel Ultimate Alliance doesn’t really do much that developer Ravensoft hasn’t done before in X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II. Only the cast is different. Not that this is a bad thing, only that the formula is much the same as it’s been in two prior outings. Of course, the formula I’m speaking about is more in terms of the gameplay system, not the story being told.


While Activision has highlighted the large cast of Marvel characters featured in the game, don’t start to salivate just yet; the game features, on average, only about 16-20 playable characters. The rest do appear in the game, but you don’t get the thrill of playing them. So in a way, it’s not that much different than the X-Men Legends games.


At least there are plenty of good characters to play, though. The entire Fantastic Four is playable, as are the most popular members of the Avengers and X-Men, Daredevil, Elektra, Moon Knight, Spider-Man and more. Heck, even Luke Cage is available! That being said, it’s still a long way from being the cast of 120+ playable characters that most gamers were anticipating when the game was first announced.


The game’s story, such as it stands, is penned by a marginal comic book scriptwriter, C.B. Cebulski, which – for those not in the know – is a significant step down from Activision’s last Spider-Man game, which snagged one of the top talents in the comic book biz, Brian Michael Bendis. Also, for those familiar with the Marvel Universe, the game is also a confusing use of the “Ultimate” brand name.


You see, there are basically two Marvel Universes. There are the books that represent the standard Marvel Universe, whose continuity dates back to creator Stan Lee’s first Fantastic Four and Spider-Man scripts, which came out in the early 1960s, many of which are still going today, attempting to juggle at least 45 years of comic book continuity into about a five-to-10-year span of “comic book time” with increasingly less and less success.


Then there is the “Ultimate Marvel Universe,” largely launched by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar, which rebooted the Marvel Universe from the ground up, reinventing and de-aging the characters to fit in better to the 21st century and the youth market of today. The move was controversial, the changes often dramatic, and, thanks to the scripting talent of Bendis and Millar, largely successful.


Now along comes Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and far from being a collection of Ultimate Universe character, it is – you guessed it – a confusing mix of both. While many of the characters are embodied by their Ultimate Universe personas, Nick Fury is the tipoff that all is not consistent; rather than the Samuel L. Jackson-inspired Ultimate Marvel Universe Nick Fury, the character found in the game is the World War II veteran, David Hasselhoff look-alike that hails from the original Marvel Universe.


The story, likewise, is not exactly a Kirby Award-winner. You open the game controlling Captain America, Thor, Wolverine and Spider-Man – a sort-of odd-mix Avengers team being ordered about by the Hasselhoff version of Nick Fury. The struggle is against a villain group familiar to Marvel devotees, the Masters of Evil. But this Masters of Evil is a conflagration of villains never before gathered together in any comic book appearance.


This is not the Masters of Evil, led by Baron Zemo, who nearly destroyed the Avengers and then went on to fool the world into thinking they were a new superhero group known as the Thunderbolts. This is basically just a collection of as many big-bad villains as Cebulski could concoct, led by a villain never before associated with the Masters of Evil, Doctor Doom.


Why the supreme ruler of Latervia would want to associate with the likes of the Scorpion, let alone draft him into a super villain group, is never really explained. And don’t expect any tie-ins to current Marvel storylines, like the wildly popular and controversial Civil War event; in this game, Iron Man and Captain America still get along.


The voice cast is solid, but not quite star-studded. Phil Lamarr is one of the rare recognizable names. Danica McKellar, best known as Winnie Cooper of Wonder Years fame, as well as Swamp Thing movie vamp Adrienne Barbeau, is about as luminous as the cast gets. And videogame voice cast veteran Cam Clarke, best known for his work in Grandia 2, is also featured. Others who might be mildly recognizable to insiders include John Kassir, Peter Lurie, Michael Gough, David Naughton, Chris Cox and maybe Roger Rose. Of course, one does not need to be famous to be good, and some of the lesser-known voices turn in sharp work here.


The game play is nothing new for those who have played the X-Men Legends games. While leveling up has been set to automatic if you play the game out of the box, one can adjust that setting to manual for every character, if you put in some effort and such micromanaging is really appealing to you. The four-person, control only one while the rest fight via AI, dynamic is identical to the X-Men Legends games and works well enough, though one would hope that a game aimed at next-gen consoles with port-downs to current-gen consoles would innovate the formula a bit more than is found here.


Graphically, the game isn’t as sharp as one might expect on Xbox 360, looking only like a smoother filtering of the same basic, PS2 graphics. It will be interesting to see if this holds true for the soon-to-be-released PS3 version, or if Activision messed over the 360 in order to make PS3 look better. We’ll know in a couple weeks.


The core game seems to be the PS2 version; that’s because both Xbox 360 and PSP versions of the game boast about their platform-exclusive extras, something the PS2 version does not do. The PSP version offers four additional playable heroes, including Captain Marvel, Ronin, Black Widow and Hawkeye, as well as three bonus game play modes, most of which are based around PSP’s WiFi-enabled online modes and voice chat features. Similar to X-Men Legends 2, the game’s look survives the port-down to PSP surprisingly well. The Xbox 360 received five bonus villain missions, two additional playable heroes, and online cooperative and competitive modes available and empowered by Xbox Live, which allows up to four players to play at once.


In the end, Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a mighty fine action RPG; if you haven’t played the X-Men Legends games, it’ll be a revelation to you, though it may feel all-too-familiar to veterans of those two forerunners. While not quite delivering as large of a playable cast as one might hope, Marvel Ultimate Alliance is an epic story featuring more Marvel characters than any other game like it. Despite the confusion inspired by the mix of regular Marvel Universe and Ultimate Marvel Universe characters and the ignoring of major recent comic book events, the game still is a thrill to play.

What Works Score
+ Great, diverse cast of playable and non-playable Marvel characters.
+ Dramatic, if somewhat license-confused, storyline.
+ The ability to play Spider-Man, Elektra, Wolverine and Captain America all in one team? Fan service to the max!
 8.9
What Doesn't
– Storyline not only confuses the Marvel and Ultimate Marvel licenses, but never really explores serious motivational questions, like why Captain America would fight alongside, rather than arrest, an assassin like Elektra.
– Game plays almost identically to X-Men Legends games, except for automatic leveling up.
– Graphics on the 360 do not look as next-gen as they ought.
Under the Shrink-wrap
The failings of Marvel Ultimate Alliance, which rob it of achieving videogame immortality, are far outweighed by the novelty of playing a game with so many comic book characters all in one game. It’s addictive fun!
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