Following in the footsteps of
X-Men: Legends, the
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance may well be the most ambitious superhero game ever made. The game boasts a pretty impressive line-up: you start with a roster of 20 Marvel heroes (from which you get to pick four). Over the course of the game this builds to over 140 characters both good and evil to interact with. Missions range over locations ranging from the depths of Atlantis to deep, deep space.
So, while we're all on the same page, I'll tell you this now: I'm a comics nerd. Since I started working here, Tim and Marcus have constantly abused me for this reason (that's
staff on a gaming website, making fun of me for being a nerd). So, as you can see, my love of comics is deep, abiding and able to withstand a fight. Just keep that in mind as you read on.
The story kicks off with Nick Fury, the big boss man of S.H.I.E.L.D. (goodies-ish) finding himself in a spot of bother. His Helicarrier (that's an aircraft carrier held aloft by propellers; you can ask us how, but we can't tell you) is under attack by the Masters of Evil. Now, if I was in charge of the M.O.E., evil as I would no doubt be, I probably wouldn't spend my time attacking a fella with a address book as packed with post-humans as does Nick Fury. The world's Superhero community is quickly called to arms, and this is where you step in.
With an opening cast that includes the Fantastic Four, Wolverine, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man, you leap into the fray a mile or so above ground level. With your elite team of merry Marvel head-busters, you begin fighting your way though various models of Ultron Robot to get to Fury and find out what the craic is.
The game takes the form of a dungeon crawler. You make your way through warrens of rooms and corridors beating on folk and smashing things. As you progress you'll fight various different breeds of bog-standard henchpersons, interspersed with scarier bosses like Mysterio, Bullseye, and Fin Fang Foom (a giant dragon with purple underpants. It has no genitalia whatsoever, if you were wondering).
Your characters each have two energy gauges: one for health and one for energy (I would have called it ‘Superness’). When you've got sufficient energy built up, you can set loose one of your powers; when you have enough health built up… well, you’re… alive.
I found myself not paying a huge amount of attention to my health, however. It seems to take a
lot to put these guys down. I mean, realistically, how much damage is a run of the mill henchperson going to do to a guy with rocks where his skin ought to be?
It was a bit disappointing to see that a guy like Captain America, who's basically like you or me if we worked out a lot more, taking as much punishment as Colossus, who's basically made out of metal.
Energy (Superness!) determines the kind of power-driven moves you can pull off to smite your opponents. Unfortunately, Superness suffers a similar problem to health: it's strange to see Electra's throwing stars doing as much damage as the Human Torch going all flamethrowery on the baddies. It's a problem faced by any superhero license with more than one character: each character has to be as playable as the next.
You get to alternate your cast on a reasonably frequent basis, so you'll get a feel for each character fairly quickly. At first, picking your team feels fairly arbitrary, but as you progress you start to feel the benefits of balancing your team, e.g. a guy with long range to go with your guy who could pick up a truck.
