Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

by: The Ryan 2 years, 3 weeks, 4 days, 13 hours, 15 minutes ago

Release Date:

10/24/06

Price:

$60

Company:

Activision

 

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is one of those games that I’ve been paying attention to since the day I heard it was announced. The biggest collaboration of Super Heroes in any game to date with characters stretching back nearly 60 years in Marvel history.

On the game’s release date I was like a kid on Christmas. It’s the game I’ve been waiting over a year to play. Comic-Con was nothing more than a tease showing videos and not having any hands on demo’s on the floor. Now it’s my turn…

As you are introduced to the game you play as the four most popular (at least to the average person) characters in the game; Thor, Spiderman, Captain America and Wolverine. I couldn’t help myself but just walk around and look at each of the characters special power that they start with. While Thor’s hammer and Captain America’s shield were entertaining to perform, the weak abilities that you start out with get leveled up fairly quickly and become amazing to watch and use.

When I finally got a chance to check out other characters I was amazed at the selection. Even with little more than half the characters available at the start, it always took a while to decide on the perfect team. As a little side note, I think that Iceman is one of the coolest characters (one that is available right away at least). He quickly gains the ability to freeze people in their tracks and shoot ice shards from his hands like he was holding a machine gun. He is the most versatile character in my opinion that you start the game with, and the most fun.

It’s obvious when you start playing the game of how much care and precision was given to each individual character’s abilities. Almost every ability you can think of that you character has, they can do it in the game. I say almost, because there’s always going to be one of you out there that know of the most obscure ability that a character may have that I didn’t think of. That’s not by any means a bad thing, if you play the game and notice an awesome power that isn’t there get on our forums and let everyone know.

Let’s move onto the visuals. Just like no character’s abilities were overlooked, neither were their costumes. The little intricacies you can see in the texture of Spiderman’s suit for example is nothing short of phenomenal.  If you get close enough of an angle to a character you can see all the little details that were put in. I think I speak for all of us when I say, thank you for that Activision. The level design is very well put together but some flaws seem to stick out. There’s been a couple of instances where you will see barrels that just fall through the floor for no apparent reason and some of the texture on the outdoor areas seem a little blocky. This is strictly by analyzing every little piece of the game though, you’d hardly notice any visual blemishes in the game.

With how perfect this game is though there’s always one thing to remember, nothing’s perfect. Several instances in the game have one of your AI teammates just standing around getting hit without them doing a thing to defend themselves. The worst instance of the A.I. that I experienced happened in Wolverine’s comic book episode. Some of the enemies just stood there getting pummeled. This didn’t happen the second time I played through it, so hopefully it was just a hiccup the game was having. Speaking of the Comic Book episodes, they’re extra levels that are unlocked by finding pickups within the levels that you can play through. Each of the levels for each of the characters tells you a little back story that pertains to them. It serves as extra content to fill the game and a very useful and fun tool to level up your characters and their abilities. Plus it’s the only way (besides the code… CHEATERS!) that unlocks Silver Surfer. But seriously, don’t cheat.

If you’ve ever played X-Men Legends, Ultimate Alliance’s character menu’s are handled much in the same way. As your character levels up they’re given the ability to add XP to each of their abilities. Most of the abilities are only unlocked once your character reaches a certain level though. So you won’t be able to use a screen clearing move on the first level, you’ll have to earn it. But don’t worry, with the way this game handles nothing feels like a chore.

I’d like to be the one who schools you all about how accurate the historical aspect of all these Marvel characters are. But that’ll be explained by our resident Marvel geek, Average Joe, over the next few paragraphs…

As far as the accuracy of the characters goes, this game has them pretty dead on. I mean it’s hard to mess up the looks of these characters right? Well I guess that depends on which look you’re going for.

One thing I’ve always liked about Activision and their Marvel games is that they’ve never hesitated to include a slue of alternate costumes. Remember the original Spider-Man games on PSOne? Now do you remember how many un-lockable costumes he had? Yeah, a lot.

Activision takes it to the next level in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance in giving each of their playable characters four alternate costumes to choose from. Now I won’t sit here and spoil who gets what costumes, but I will say that most of these characters get to choose from their current, classic, ultimate and other costumes they’ve worn throughout the years.

In terms of voice acting I would have to say that the cast Activision has assembled is pretty impressive. While there are a few characters that made me cringe when I heard them (namely the Thing) characters like Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain America and Iron Man are all done perfectly. While a lot of these voice actors aren’t well known there are some seasoned pros such as Phil Lamarr, Cam Clarke, Dee Bradley Baker, and James Arnold Taylor that also lend their voices to the game. Even Winnie Cooper herself, Danica McKellar joins the cast playing the Invisible Woman.

Since the game features such a massive cast of Marvel characters you’d think it would be impossible to touch on all of their history right? Wrong. Throughout the game you’ll hear subtle things referring to each of the characters such as Captain America’s Super Soldier program, Bruce Banners “expertise” on gamma radiation, and Wolverine’s Weapon X program.

Being that The Ryan is the resident game expert, and being that he’s a little “green” when it comes to Marvel history I came in to lend my “expertise” in playing thru the game, and to be quite honest with you this game FAR exceeded my expectations with just how accurate and faithful it is in not only the characters, but in their worlds, voices and powers. If all comic based games were as faithful as this one, geeks everywhere would never leave the house….wait, do they leave the house anyways?

Back to The Ryan for the rest of the review….

So all in all the game handles like a dream come true. The bosses can be ridiculously easy on Normal mode. But try it on Hard mode after you beat the game, you’ll definitely get a hardcore challenge. All the gameplay videos that were released before the game looked really promising and they proved that. The game has shadowed every other game in my collection, I haven’t so much as thought of playing another game with this in my library. As I said before, this game is truly “Game of the Year” on Komikazee.com.