Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 Review - Xbox Gaming in South Africa

When Diablo 2 arrived on PC in 2000 it brought the action RPG genre to a whole new audience. You didn't have to worry yourself over pages of dry statistics or wind your way through mazes of dialogue to progress through the game. All you really had to worry about was clicking fast enough on your enemies to kill them before they killed you. Now take that and instead of a fantasy hero, substitute in superheroes from the Marvel universe and you've got Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (MUA2) in a nutshell.

Spiderman, Iron Man, the X-Men and other heroes from the pages of Marvel's comic books are at your disposal in MUA2 as you play through a story that takes the main points from the Secret War and Civil War story arcs in the comics, and lets you choose which side you'll fight for in a battle between superheroes. As you progress through the story taken from the Civil War comics, there comes a point in the plot where civilian casualties occur as a direct result of the superheroes' activities, leading to the emergence of the Superhuman Registration Act which calls for all superheroes to be registered in order to continue using their powers. This of course splits the superhero fraternity in two with Iron Man leading the Pro-registration group and Captain America going into hiding to lead the Anti-Registration group. On paper it sounds like a good idea but in the game it doesn't have much of an effect as you end up playing the same missions but only from a different perspective.

As an action RPG there are two things you can expect from MUA2, action in the form of beating down on enemies, and RPG in levelling your characters up and choosing how to develop their powers. In terms of the action you can expect plenty of it with 99% of MUA2's gameplay consisting of you hitting the A or B button to unleash attacks. You can definitely see that it will get real boring after beating your 600th enemy, so its a good thing that Vicarious Visions saw fit to include Fusion attacks. Fusion attacks are when two of your superheroes combine their powers to do a clearing, targeted or guided attack which deals a large amount of damage. They're usually just subtle variations of each other with different heroes having the same attacks, but nonetheless, they're great to watch and fun to pull off at the same time.

The RPG portion of MUA2 isn't as much fun though. As your characters level up you can choose which attacks or stats you want to improve, but I found no discernible difference between any of the choices on offer and soon resorted to the auto-spend option which only left me to choose which characters to take with into each mission. The characters in MUA2 span all the way from the well known ones (take a bow Iron Man and Wolverine) to the ones that only comic book fans would recognise such as Penance; a particular favourite of mine as he needs to feel pain in order to be able to use his powers and has some great looking special moves. There are some rather unbalanced characters though with Thor being a prime example. One level I merely spammed Thor's special attack which caused every enemy on screen to fly up into the air and land before using the same move again without letting them get a single hit in. I can understand that he's a god and might therefore have a bit of an unfair advantage, but it definitely doesn't make for challenging gameplay.

The campaign in MUA2 lasts roughly 7 hours or so and there's plenty of replayability with a huge amount of collectibles to be found throughout the levels, with each collectible giving some info or insight into a particular Marvel universe character. There's also the chance to take on missions with different groups of characters and experiment with their powers, however, you'll end up using similar tactics in boss fights, no matter which superheroes you choose.

The online co-op mode in MUA2 is where the real value is found, with plenty of laughs to be had as you work together to fend off enemies and perform Fusion attacks, and importantly, there was no noticeable performance issues across Xbox LIVE. What does detract from the experience though is the terrible camera which insists on doing its own thing. I've lost count of the number of times I've lost sight of a boss because the camera refused to move, which led to me wasting Fusion attacks on air instead of smacking an enemy with a super powered punch. It's easier to work with when there's two of you as you tend to stick together and keep enemies in sight, but when there's four players, then it becomes far tougher to control the camera as everyone starts running off into different directions.

MUA2 is definitely not the best looking game out on the Xbox 360 with character models that look quite terrible when seen up close in the in-game cut-scenes, and environments that aren't too inspired. The voice acting on the other hand is well done and although none of the characters are voiced by their movie counterparts, they still manage to avoid sounding cheesy. Other than that, the only sounds you'll hear to accompany your punches are some rock tracks that are instantly forgettable but manage to not intrude on your gaming experience.

Does Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2's simplistic gameplay and average graphics mean it's not fun to play? Not at all, as the the sizable selection of superheroes, collectibles and the entertaining Fusion system help turn this button masher into an entertaining action romp. If you're a comic book geek then MUA2 is a worthwhile buy as the story and characters do justice to the Marvel comic books. While it can't live up to another recent superhero game in the form of Batman: Arkham Asylum, MUA2 is still a fun and enjoyable action game that shines in co-op.

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