Game Info
Game Name: Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Developer(s): Raven Software; Vicarius Visions; Beenox Studios
Publisher(s): Activision
Platform(s): XBox 360, PS3, PC, PSP, Wii
Genre(s): RPG/Action/Adventure
Release Date(s): October 24, 2006 (XBox 360; PC; PSP)/November 14, 2006 (Wii)/November 17, 2006 (PS3)
ESRB Rating: T
Seriously…I’m Galactus…I could just eat you
The Masters of Evil have a plan to take over the world. It is up to the heroes of Earth to stop them. The X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four join other heroes in taking on Dr. Doom in a threat that takes them from Earth to the far reaches of the galaxy and beyond.
Ultimate Alliance was an early next-gen title and was also available on Playstation 2. The game based its gameplay on the previous X-Men Legends games and involve an overhead, multi-character gameplay. One to four players can join the game and different modes of play are available in this format, plus online play is available.
The gang’s all here
The fun of Ultimate Alliance is all the characters. Both Ultimate Alliance and the X-Men Legends games did it right by including not just a few characters but a ton of playable and non-playable characters straight out of the comics. The villains are real; the characters are real. Playable characters include Black Panther, Blade, Captain America, Colossus, Daredevil, Deadpool, Doctor Strange, Elektra, Ghost Rider, Human Torch, Iceman, Invisible Woman, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Moon Knight, Mr. Fantastic, Ms. Marvel, Nick Fury, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Storm, Thing, Thor, and Wolverine (some of these characters must be unlocked through play). Downloadable characters for the Xbox360 included Cyclops, Hulk, Hawkeye, Nightcrawler, Doctor Doom, Magneto, Sabretooth, and Venom, but the downloadable content has since been removed.
Thing…Why are you prancing?
Each character has their own upgradable abilities and by combining certain characters different traits can be boosted. They are easy to activate and don’t involve any tricky key combination. The slew of abilities and upgrades sometimes can be frustrating since the characters all share a pooled experience points and each costume (which also have different abilities) have their own upgrades. To max-out each character would take forever.
The story isn’t bad and the cinematics are quite impressive (sometimes looking better than real movie versions of the characters. Many of the complaints come from the overhead view. The camera can be zoomed in for a closer shot, but the closer view is hard to fight in. The game is full of repetative fights. There are big villain bosses but generic demons, robots, and soldiers make up the bulk of the fighting. It can become very tedious at points, but fortunately having so many different characters, it can be changed up a bit.
Just push the punch button & everything will be fine
Within the levels hidden “mission discs” exist. The missions are character specific and range from just making it through levels with certain points attained to trying to diffuse bombs during fights. The missions are probably much harder than the actual game and can keep challenging you after you finish the game.
Ultimate Alliance definately has its pluses and minuses. The number of characters keep the gameplay changing and allows for multiple playthroughs. Many of the “costumes” actually are different characters so it sometimes feels like there are even more available characters. Since it was almost a launch title, the graphics could have been better (though the movies still look good). It was followed by Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 in 2009.
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