I had nothing better to do last night, so I popped Marvel Ultimate Alliance, a game that came with the Xbox 360, in last night to see how REAL superheroes mixed things up.
You’re thrown right into the mix of things; Dr. Doom and his legions of supervillains are attacking a giant airborne aircraft carrier commanded by Nick Fury, a WWII NCO who has been given life extension treatments that have led him into an odd taste for cigars, biting one-liners and skintight electric blue leotards.
He won’t give up to Doom without a fight, and so he calls upon ALL METAHUMANS REPORT! Answering the call are Thor, Wolverine, Spiderman and Captain America, another WWII vet.
From there follows a very standard adventure game consisting largely of running back and forth, especially since the confusing architecture of the helicarrier has you turning in circles time and again. It was very standard RPG fare, which I played largely without Spiderman and Thor because they sucked (in Thor’s case) or were annoying (in Spiderman”s case); and really, Wolverine and ol’ Cap should be able to handle anything that happens.
I was impressed by how on “rails” the game was. It’s unusual to find a modern game which so carefully constrains you — to the absurdity of having these four superheroes unable to step a couple of inches over a sill. Assassin’s Creed just let you point the joystick and the hero would use his abilities to get there. Here Thor, the thunder god, who can FLY… cannot with all his powers step up two inches. Instead, he must run around on catwalks until he comes back to where he was, just two inches higher. Similarly, Spiderman, the web slinger, to who gravity is something for the other guy to worry about… can’t swing around on webs.
Combined with how small the characters looked on my non-HD TV… it wasn’t very much fun. It wasn’t hard. It just wasn’t fun either. I really expect superheroes to be super-heroic. I did enjoy trashing the helicarrier. All those barrels and stuff are gonna be really expensive to replace, but Nick Fury doesn’t seem to mind, as long as I stay off of his lawn.
7 thoughts on “Brief look: Marvel Ultimate Alliance”
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My friend lent me this he said it was “so good.” It was terrible. I want to know who came up with the genius idea of making games where you must switch between multiple characters. Its everywhere these days! Oh controlling one character is fun, so controlling four characters must be four times as fun! Uh no, its STUPID. It makes me want to throw the controller through the screen. Show me a game with this mechanic that was actually a popular game.
Pac-Man (7 million units sold) – you control one dude
Pitfall! (4 million units) – one dude
Super Mario Bros. (40.23 million) – one dude
Super Mario World (20 million) – one dude
The Legend of Zelda (6.51 million) – one dude
Sonic the Hedgehog 1+2 (10 million)
Halo Series (21 million) – one
Metal Gear Solid Series (14 million)
Gears of War (4.5 million) – OK one dude in a squad. You STILL only control 1 dude
Grand Theft Auto series (65 million) – ONE GUY
and I’m spent
My son *loves* this game, and it’s predecessors (X-Men Legends or something?)
I tried to play some of them, but they’re really just total crap. The character balance is way out of whack (I’m sorry, Daredevil may be cool, but you can’t put him and Iron Man against the same bad guys and me not call shenanigans on you. Daredevil can jump around and tangle you up with his sticks and grappels all he likes, but if you can take a repulsor blast to the face and keep swinging for the fences, Daredevil can’t touch you. /geekrant)
Add to that the horrendously on-rails play, and I just go ‘ugh’.
I mean, I liked games like this in the arcade, 20 years ago. But today? Do better, please.
Meh its still more fun than City of Heroes. At least its got action and the characters are pretty true to the comic. Also if you have the collectors edition like I do you get some great downloadable and extra character content
Did any of you even play past the opening part and get to the base and next missions? Or try the quick missions where you melee the crap out of everything in site? Sure its on Rails, but multiplayer is where its at.
City of Heroes is a character creation system that has (make that ‘had’… it’s been so long since I played my trial, I shouldn’t judge the current state of the game) an anemic game tied to it.
City of Heroes is the only game where I’d rather make characters than *play*, but they were *GOOD* characters.
I did get to the base and the next missions, but it still didn’t grab me. And console multiplayer is well and good, but if I’ve got 3 other people in my house, we’re busting out Rock Band, not a crappy beat-em-up.
@Hexx — the game is still anemic and so damned repetitive. But yeah, the character creation rocks.
@Hudson — I didn’t get off the helicarrier, but nothing about the game made me want to continue. Maybe if I had been doing it with a character of my own, and the gameplay weren’t so on rails, or I could make out the characters from the murky backgrounds, I would have kept on. And no, I didn’t try multiplayer, but I’d probably go for Capcom vs Marvel if I wanted some 1v1 superhero action.
City of Heroes only kept me playing for three months but there’s no way an adventure game that came free with a console was a better experience then a open ended MMO. I like a “multiplayer” experienced but its coming to the point where I consider multiplayer around 3,000 people on the same server and not one or two people next to me.
In other news I wonder what people think of Samuel L. Jackson playing Nick Fury in the movies?
I truly love this game…but the difficulty for multiple players (3…my wife, son and myself) ramped up so incredibly horrible..ugh
Also, just like Xmen, Wolverine is master killah! of all…I mean, everyone likes him…sure… but, he is totally indestructible…and makes playing anyone else no fun…
Of course, it looks GORGEOUS on my 56″ HDTV (but…the cut scenes were from the PS2 version, and ugly as all get out…lol)