Ultimate Alliance 2 is based off of the Marvel Comics Mega-Crossover Event called Civil War. During this time the government introduces a "Hero Registration Act". Under this act all Heroes must enlist with the government and reveal their secret identities. I've never read the Civil War series, but I understand that the game deviates from the comics pretty significantly and it's pretty obvious where it does it.
Ultimate Alliance 2 is the most dumbed-down of the series (including the X-Men Legends games). There is no real stat building. You only have 4 powers to choose from, there are personal buffs for each character, but it's all pretty simple run of the mill stuff. I think my desire to play this game came from playing Marvel vs Capcom 3 (which is a fun game).
The game offers what is basically a "New Game+" option. I get to keep all of my characters levels from my last playthrough. The game begins in Latveria, a fictional nation that is normally controlled by Dr. Doom. The events of the last game left Dr. Doom "dead" (no one really dies in comic books) and the country is now controlled by Lucia von Bardas. S.H.E.I.L.D. director Nick Fury has discovered that von Bardas is working with the villain known as the Tinkerer. Fury declares that this is terrorism so he enlists various super heroes to invade the country.
The game starts with Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man & Captain America being playable characters. Nick Fury tags along as an NPC. Gameplay actually annoys me right off of the bat. I'm looking for X to jump, square basic attack, triangle strong attack, and circle for grab. Instead X is basic attack, square is grab, triangle is jump, circle is strong attack. This bizarre setup really throws me off and I end trying to use the wrong button repeatedly. To make matters worse, I can't change the setup. BOOOOOO! New to this game are the Fusion attacks, this is where 2 characters team up to do a large attack. Fusions are fun and good for crowd control, the only problem is that there's only like 5 of them in the whole game. Different characters will pull off the same Fusion attack as an entirely different team.
Game play occurs from a 3/4 view normally, but that can be slightly adjusted by using the right analog stick. After God of War, it's nice to have the control of the camera back.
So your characters have invaded Latveria. About 2/3 of the level is trying to locate Bravo Team and Black Widow. There are some boss fights against Electro and then a team up fight against Wizard and Scorcher. I know who Electro is, but I'm not familiar with the other two. Since my characters are so overpowered I was able to crush these guys pretty easily (I would like to point out that I have no idea what difficulty I'm playing on).
The level moves forward pretty normally until a cutscene occurs. And I swear the entire population of Latveria comes charging out of the bunker. Latveria is a really small country. See! It's really small. I have to wonder how they got such a large army. I get the robots to boost the army, but these are real people. At this part Fury splits up the team. Fury, Iron Man and Captain America will hold off the Army while Spider-Man and Wolverine need to find Bravo team. What makes this funny is immediately at the end of this scene the player is taken to the character select screen. New characters have suddenly become available (for me everyone is available). Once you leave the character select screen Fury contacts you and refers to you has Bravo team. I guess I found Bravo team, that wasn't all that hard.
Wandering through the remaining part of the level is pretty simple. There are some fun things that happen off to the side where you can see Iron Man blowing up enemies and such. The level moves down into the Tinkerers laboratory and eventually to a boss confrontation with Tinkerer himself. Tinkerer is in this giant spider tank. You have to destroy his legs and once the legs are down the tank goes down. This is a fun fight and it's probably the best fight for truly teaching you the game mechanics. You can't just rush the tank or else it will massacre you. This fight requires planning and patience.
Battle over, mission over. Lucia von Bardas gets caught in the blast of Doom Castle and everyone goes home. Well at least everyone goes to Stark Tower. Stark Tower is your main hub at this point in the game. There are various things to do here. You can replay previous missions, accept the next mission, do a trivia game, do training missions, view unlockables and talk to various NPCs.
There are some character specific conversations that can occur while talking to NPCs. You have to be in control of the correct character or else you'll miss the conversation completely. These are pretty neat and can help get answers for the trivia.
I like comics, but I don't normally get the chance to read them. As such, I don't know if I was impressed or horrified by how many of the trivia answers I was able to get right.
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