Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a dungeon crawler that trades wizards and orcs for superheros and henchmen. The game lets you recruit your own four-hero team, selecting your crew from roster of comic books' heaviest hitters. Then it's off to pound baddies to a pulp, earn experience points, hoard coin and collect equippable items as your team adventures to Valhalla and back to save the universe from another one of Dr. Doom's evil schemes. While totally enjoyable as a single-player, action-RPG experience Marvel: Ultimate Alliance was made to be played with friends. It's also a rare example of a game starring comic book heroes that doesn't stink like Galactus' jock strap.
A Multiverse of Details
Like the comics its based on Marvel: Ultimate Alliance has a convoluted plot rife with pseudo-science and mystical mumbo jumbo. This time Dr. Doom is out to swipe the powers of the god Odin. You're called to duty by Colonel Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. to help stop the metal-faced madman from making with the nasty. What's cool about Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is the sheer amount of characters you'll meet, befriend and punch in the solar plexus during the course of your adventure. You'll go toe-to-toe with dozens of villains and chat up just as many allies. And here's where the game's story loses a little traction. Since the days of Lee, Kirby and Ditko, Marvel comics have been known for painting their heroes as folks with foibles, complaints and complicated personal lives. In Marvel: Ultimate Alliance you'll find very little of the humanity that makes the comics so compelling – just reams of back story. And yes, wise guy, there will be a test. A mini-game actually quizzes players with trivia questions based on NPC blather.
Fantastic Four
If you're playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance properly you'll find some of the personality the game lacks right next to you on the couch. The game really shines when there's more than one player behind the wheel. On top of the standard, at-home multiplayer, the game is also playable co-operatively online with four friends. Online games can be saved and picked up later, making it entirely feasible for most people to play through the entire game with a four-person group. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is the kind of game that might just inspire that kind of devotion. The playable superheroes are varied enough in look, voice acting and powers that many players will want to try them all. And the game's levels are loaded with secrets and side plots that most won't uncover on the first spin. Simply, the game's just really fun to play. Like Diablo the game relies on a simple formula of combat and questing that works.
True Believers
The game is on its shakiest ground when the brawling stops. Peppered throughout the narrative are dull-as-dirt mission briefing sequences which play with all the drama and excitement of the weekly meeting in an office conference room. Not only are these scenes boring, but they're downright ugly. The game's top down levels (where you'll spend 90% of the game) are beautifully rendered and the few CG sequences are impressive. But the rundowns sessions look stiff, shabbily designed and decidedly last-gen. Some of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance's best moments are swiped straight from other games. One boss battle simultaneously bites the monster scaling of Shadow of the Colossus and the button-press activated beast slaying from God of War. Throughout the game you can climb, disarm and pummel certain henchmen adding welcome variety to the hack and slash formula. Other game highlights are born out of sheer creativity. One level cleverly pulls the rug out from under your super group – throwing the four do-gooders into an unexpected deathtrap that they must fight, puzzle and game their way out of.
It's these surprising high-points that help elevate this game from the bargain bin. Where most super-hero games are satisfied with mediocrity, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance aims high and blasts its target into smithereens. 'Nuff said!
Article by: Gus Mastrapa
