Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - Free Will

This game really paints the bad guys as the Pro-Registration team. I don't care how you look at it. Captain America is out fighting for his beliefs, standing up for what he thinks is right. Iron Man just rolled over and called it quits. He became a servant of the government and attacks whatever foe they tell him to. But that's not the worst part of it all. Not by far. The next level really reveals how far the Pro team has fallen.

The Pro team has been capturing super villains. All of the villains have been placed in Prison 42. And once there the Pro team is free to experiment on them. Yep, we have human experimentation going on here. But it gets worse. The Pro team has created a Nanonite control system that they can inject into the villains. This system literally takes away the villains free will! That, quite frankly, is horrifying. There's nothing just or right about this. They can now force a person to do whatever they want and that person cannot fight back.

This is shown during the next level. A convoy is transporting captured Supers to Prison 42. During this mission Venom shows up to help the Pro team. He initially tries to talk to the team, but whoever is controlling the Nanonites clamps down on his vocal chords and prevents him from talking. Later the controller forces Venom to "shut down" in a rather painful looking display and then he turns Venom back on, forcing him to fight some more.

I get that super villains aren't nice people and 99.9% of them would be on death row, but this is pretty sick. It strikes me as a plan that super villain would unleash, not something that "heroes" would use. This is the part where the game starts to veer away from the comics so they needed some sort of plot device, but this is bad. It really shows the Pro team in a negative light and takes away from the "both teams are fighting for their beliefs" that the game tried to establish.

This is also sad since this area has one of the more unique boss fights in it. In the Pro team you fight Goliath. Goliath has lived up to his name and is now giant-sized. This is better than the basic round around an arena and pound on the enemy until he drops that you normally encounter. You have to dodge his giant fists, hit his fists and cause him to collapse. It really is fun and I wish more of the fights were this unique. I only had one major problem. Only the guy I was controlling did anything! The rest of my team would just follow me around and stare at me with blank looks on their faces. CAN I GET A LITTLE AI HELP HERE?! My team isn't normally the brightest in the bunch but this is beyond stupid. Some self-preservation would be a good idea.

There's a fight against Multiple Man. He lives up to his name by creating copies of himself. It's a perfect battle for unlocking costumes for your characters.

I need to say that I despise the Fantastic Four. I have never liked the team. It's hard to explain why too. They're just the guys that rub me the wrong way. So I don't give a crap about The Thing and his personal issues with the whole Registration Act. I do find it funny that he bothered to join my team in the end though. I quickly unlocked his costume and then kicked him out of my line-up. That's basically what I do with all of the Fantastic Four.

So the Convoy level ends with Cap freeing some people and some others getting captured. That's just the way it breaks down. After the level the poorly named Mr. Fantastic makes a comment about glitches in the Nanonite control system, but it's "nothing" to worry about. Yeah right.

I'm also not a fan of Scorpion becoming Venom. I know it's been that way for a while, but the Scorpion already had a gimmick. Let him stay with that and bring back Eddie Brock as Venom.
Note: This might have already happened in the comic books. I personally have no idea.