Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - Final Thoughts

I will always really want to enjoy Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2,but the game is flawed in so many fundamental ways that it really is hard to. Let's break things down a little bit.

X-Men Legends, X-Men Legends 2, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance are all made by Raven Soft. The love they had for the franchise is very obvious and very deep. They crafted fun, fully thought-out games. Raven Soft is still in business last I new. They developed a game called Singularity which released last year.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is made by Vicarious Visions. While Vicarious Visions started out strong, they suddenly became a port company. All they seemed to do is port someone else's project to different systems. Case in point, the did the PSP port for X-Men Legends 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance.

Now I don't know the internal politics of these two companies or Activision (even though we've all heard the stories) so I don't know what development of Ultimate Alliance 2 was handed to a different company. Maybe Raven Soft wanted to work on something else. That's the problem with franchises, all people want is the next sequel. It can be creatively stifling for the development team. Activision might have felt comfortable with Vicarious Visions since they had worked with the series before. It really is hard to say. All I know is that the final result speaks for itself. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is not a good game.

The levels are very linear with an occasional secret item. Your way is constantly blocked by invisible walls so it can also get confusing on where to go. If you don't want the player to go a certain way then you block off that path. Put some destroyed cars there or something, just make sure the player clearly understands that is not the way to go.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 has 9 levels. The game really feels like it's just getting started when suddenly it ends. You barely have time to get to know The Fold then BAM! Battle against Fury and game over. X-Men Legends has 16 levels,  Ultimate Alliance has 13 levels, and I can't exactly figure out how many level X-Men legends 2 has, it looks to be around 25 or so. So 9 levels in total, each with a play time of around an hour, that gives you a 9-10 hour long game. That's fine for an action game like God of War or Devil May Cry, but this is an RPG. It needs to clock in around the 30 hour mark. The only way you're going to get remotely close to that is if you play the training missions. And I honestly doubt they'll add 20 hours of gameplay.

I personally feel that the game suffers by using the Civil War story line. It really suffers when they abandon the story and go for something original. The whole story should have been original. I really feel that it would have alleviated many of the problems that the current story suffers from. I mean, the whole Wakanda section really feels shoe-horned in. Also, splitting up the team was just dumb. I lost half of my character list and I didn't want that. I never truly understood each side of the story or sympathized with either team. I actually was disgusted by the actions of the Pro-Registration Team.

The cast felt very weak in this game. If you include DLC the first game had 33 characters. Again, with DLC Ultimate Alliance 2 only has 30 and we ended up with some real C-list characters. Penance? Songbird? Did we really need 3 Spider-Man villains as playable characters? I would complain about Iron Fist but at least he has healing abilities. Do I need to even mention Cyborg Nick Fury? But what happened to Silver Surfer? Elektra? Human Nick Fury? Nightcrawler? Ghost Rider? Doctor Strange? Any of these character should have been in the game. Fans want to play as their favorites, not some unknown character who you're just going to dislike.

There are a lot of unused characters who show up during the game. Why can't they be added to my team? She-Hulk, Bishop, Colossus, Spider-Woman, Black Widow and War Machine would all be a great start. I would even settle for Firestar, Lady Deathstrike, Dagger, Wonder Man, Justice, or Hercules just to help add some more variety. I can only imagine that many of these characters were planned as DLC and then canceled once Disney bought out Marvel. I'm still not happy about that.

Where's the customization in this game? Every character only has four powers so you don't have to worry about which one to choose. You can't equip any gear to adjust personal stats, just team boosts and you only use three of those at a time. You can't select what stats to put points into either. Characters are really static and you don't get to own them or feel involved with them. Heck, you can barely heal them. I'm going to find the guy who thought that carrying only two healing tokens was a great idea and punch him in the face. Give me my potions back you jerk!

And where are the alternate costumes? In the last game each character had four costumes. And various costumes would allow for unique team bonuses. This was a fun system since it added a lot of depth. Your costume choice really mattered and Spider-Girl even slipped in as an alternate costume for Spider-Woman. That's how awesomely the first game milked Marvel history. In this game you only get one alternate costume per character (except cyborg Fury, he doesn't get one). I found most of the costumes just ugly so I didn't bother to use them. Not like I found team bonuses to be all that useful this time round.

I'm sure I could go on like this, but it feels like I'm starting to nitpick. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is a bad game and that's all you really need to know. What really hurts about this is it basically killed off this style of game. I enjoy the top-down, 4 characters at all times gameplay. I felt this style of game had plenty of room to grow and new options to explore. Heck, I felt that Smash Bros. would be perfect for this style of gameplay if they ever choose to abandon the fighting game style. Sadly, we probably won't see another game along these lines for a good while. And I blame you, Vicarious Visions!