The idea behind the Marvel Ultimate Alliance franchise is great on paper: Take your favorite Marvel superheroes and make your own team to fight the forces of evil. To a comic book nerd this idea is a dream come true. But the franchise has let us down before, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, by Vicarious Visions, is only so much of an improvement.
The premise of MUA2 is based around Marvel’s 2006-2007 series, Civil War. The Civil War is sparked by the reckless behavior of a naïve super team that plunges the entire Marvel Universe into chaos and pitts friend against friend and Avenger against Avenger.
In this war of ideologies the super hero community was split in two, each side lead by a strong leader, and backed by certainty of righteousness. Iron Man backed the pro-registration act, a bill that would have all superheroes become government workers and essentially a super police force, while Captain America stood for the individual rights of all heroes and lead the anti-registration movement.
The anti-registration movement eventually lost after Captain America’s surrender and his realization that heroes were no longer fighting for the common good of the people they swore to protect. In the comics, the events of the Marvel Civil War eventually lead to the assassination of Captain America, the downfall of Iron Man, and the rise of Norman Osborn, Spider-man’s long time foe the Green Goblin.
The problem with MUA2 is it’s only loosely based on the comics. The first half of the game follows the story set in the seven-book series, down to every panel and dialogue box. The second half goes off on an odd tangent that isn’t anywhere near as compelling as the comics it’s supposed to be based on.
If you’ve read the comics this is a huge disappointment, because the events of the civil war had a profound impact on the Marvel Universe. If you’re oblivious to the original storyline then it’s just another mediocre story with superheroes that happens to look pretty.
The graphics are a huge improvement over the first game. The 24 playable characters look great and are fantastic interpretations of the print superheroes. The powers are impressive to look at, while the levels are colorful and highly detailed. Later in the game when you’ll explore the Black Panther’s techno-jungle home of Wakanda, which is a delight to behold.
The camera is another improvement and easily the most notable change from the first Marvel Ultimate. The camera is now closer to the action and gives a better perspective of the gameplay, making it more fun overall. But it does occasionally revert to being too far away.
Control wise, the game hasn’t evolved much from the original. The one addition to the control scheme is the fusion powers that mix-and-match two heroes’ powers for devastating effects. If you add Thor’s control over lightning to Captain America’s star-spangled shield you get arcs of electricity bouncing off the shield and frying the enemies who are unlucky enough to stand in the way.
The problem is there are only three fusion match-ups: clearing, guided and targeted. This drastically limits the effectiveness of certain teams if they lack specific powers like energy or elemental. This can force players to select heroes they don’t care about for the sake of one fusion power. And when you can’t have the team you want, be as effective as one that fits the mold it defeats the purpose of the Ultimate Alliance games
The targeted fusion power – which has two characters perform some variation of the fastball special made famous by Wolverine and Colossus--is the only real efficient way of taking down bosses and ultimately makes the boss’ fights less of a challenge and more of an inconvenience, since gamers will have to mash buttons to charge up for another fusion attack.
Another simplified aspect is the character customization. Vicarious Vision gutted the majority of the features from the two X-Men Legends games and the first MUA, leaving gamers with very few options and a lack-luster customization toolset.
Gamers won’t be able to equip items with the wide variety of attributes seen before, like poisoning strike or increased critical hit percentage. Players now have to pick three attributes which the entire team will share. It doesn’t seem like much but it greatly limits the combinations available.
Like other action games, as the heroes level up gamers will be able to spend points on both passive and active skills. The problem here is that the game doesn’t broadcast when characters level up. This left me checking my character stats to see if there were more points to spend. And if you go too long without checking the character sheet the game will automatically spend the points. The changes can be undone but it’s insulting to have a game auto spend experience points for you.
The last details that seals MUA2’s fate are the things taken away from the first game that made it a memorable comic book experience. This time around, there are no specific missions for heroes and fewer alternate costumes. This disappoints because of the amount of history characters like Captain America, Iron Man and the fantastic Four have. After all Marvel did just celebrate their 75th anniversary. This is ultimately a disservice to comic book fans and gamers.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is a game of give and take. Every time something new is given or fixed, something that wasn’t broken is taken away. The game is fun to play but when compared to a great comic book game that holds true to its roots—say, Batman: Arkham Asylum—MAU2 can’t compare and ends up feeling quite mediocre.
The good:
Graphics: Graphically, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is a huge improvement over the first game.
Stan Lee cameo: It’s a small touch, but seeing the man himself in digital form talking to Captain America was memorable.
The bad:
Brain-dead customization: The customization is too simplistic and lacks depth
Lack of Balance: Don’t force gamers to use characters they don’t want to use.
The ugly:
Don’t mess with my comics: If you’re going to build a story around source material, follow the source material.
Playthrough: Single-player game was played until my thumbs bled.
Recommendation: If you need a Marvel-based game this is the one. It’s not great but it’s OK.
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