- Publisher: Activision
- Developer: Vicarious Visions
- ESRB Rating: “T” for Teen
- Genre: Action/RPG
- Pros: Fun and mindless gameplay; nice story; good presentation
- Cons: Shallow; easy; repetitive; weak cast; lacking extras
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 follows the Civil War storyline from the comics where the government wants all super humans to register their identities so they can be held accountable should things go wrong, but also so the government can use them as soldiers. Iron Man leads the pro-registration faction, while Captain American leads the anti-registration faction with the rest of the superhero community split between them. After a couple of training levels, you get to pick a side, which is pretty cool. The two factions fight each other, trying to convince the other side that they are right, and this creates a lot of interesting scenarios where there aren’t really “bad guys”, but heroes fighting heroes.
Also slightly disappointing is the character roster. Aside from big names like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Wolverine, Gambit, and Captain America, there are a lot of minor characters from the Marvel universe that only die-hard comic fans are going to recognize. Another problem is that a lot of characters play exactly the same, so out of 24 characters there are really only a handful of truly unique powers. The game is also definitely lacking in the extras department. Previous games had tons of extra costumes and artwork and other goodies. Not the case here. Instead we have obscure characters no one recognizes with very few extras.
Gameplay
New this time around are fusion attacks where two heroes join up for room clearing special attacks. These attacks range from bouncing lasers off of a shield or studding a huge piece of rock with bombs and then tossing it at enemies, among other attacks, and are pretty darn impressive. Of course, because there are a lot of repeated powers among the characters, there are a lot of repeated fusion attacks as well, so it kind of starts to lose its luster the further you get into the game. Despite having a large cast of characters to choose from, you’ll only really want to use a handful of them.
The character abilities and upgrades have also shrunk significantly. Instead of customizing each character with unique equipment, there are now simply medals that affect the whole team. Also, each character only has one alternate costume. Each character also only has 4 powers this time, rather than a bunch you could choose from. It just feels like a massive step backward in terms of content.
I do have to admit, though, that despite all of these problems and the lack of content compared to previous games, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is still fun. It is mindless and easy but it keeps you playing.
Graphics
The presentation in MUA2 is pretty nice all around. The environments look nice and the characters are nicely detailed and animated. Special effects for all of the super powers look good as well. The menus are also nice and clean and easy to use this time around as well.
Sound
The sound can best be described as “appropriate”. It is loud and super hero-y. The voice acting is a nice blend of comic book cheese and believability that works well.
Bottom Line
