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Genre: Third-Person Action Publisher: Activision Developer: Vicarious Visions Players: 1-4

By Frank20 (13th Oct 2009)

Typically in any game it’s the graphics and the realism that are commented on first. Ultimate Alliance 2, in a move unique for a super hero game, provides its strength in both the storyline and the acting, attributes that combine to make this a cut above the rest in an already crowded genre. Superhero movies are usually ten a penny these days and each one will be accompanied by its gaming comrade that loosely follows the story from the movie but generally feels like a lacklustre effort. Not so here. This game’s plot is from the hugely successful Civil War story arc that Marvel ran a few years ago. Long story short, it involves an attempt by the government to bring in a Super Human Registration Act that will require all crime fighters to come out in the open and work for Uncle Sam. Some in the superhuman community support this move while some oppose it. Battle lines are drawn and alliances are made and broken.

I had previously read the Civil War graphic novel and was surprised to see that this game actually told the player a little more than the comic did. It also remains true to the actual dialogue from the pages of the novel but like any good translation it knows when to fine tune something for the viewer. You don’t take control of any one hero in this game either; you control all of them, four at a time. This is also something new but it’s where the game was also let down a little.

You start with four heroes on screen doing their thing. Three are AI controlled while one is moved by you, alternating between them. As the gameplay progresses you can unlock more playable characters and replace old ones on your team. The problem with this is that having four Marvel heroes on screen at one time leads to confusion and a severe overcrowding problem. Imagine playing a soccer game where all the players are dressed differently, moving differently and fighting with different weapons. Added to this is the fact that there needs to be four times as many minions onscreen for them all to battle and it’s like a free-for-all gone wrong. Bewildering is not the word. Sometimes your character is completely lost in the super scrum leaving you to mercilessly mash the combat buttons and hope you hit something soft and evil.

When you do find something to hit, the combat can be occasionally inventive but at times nauseatingly repetitive. Each character has a light attack and a heavy attack. Combos can be carried out by pushing one then the other twice and so on while the expected super attacks for each hero vary according to their individual powers. Where it gets unique is the Fusion attacks. This is where one hero works off another to inflict a colossal attack on the evil doers, for example Spiderman webbing a bunch of them together so Ironman can blast them all at the same time or Gambit charging a chunk of pavement so the Thing can prise it up and hoist it at the bad guys while it explodes.



The originality of the fusion attack is all well and good but they need to be charged up and the rest of the time the combat is a constant and undiluted bore. The bad guys are always the same and seem to attack in waves with no tact or intelligence - your standard superhero game foe then. They even dim and disappear when dispatched creating the illusion that the fighting is nothing more than a dressed up version of Streets of Rage or Double Dragon from the early 90s. It’s a little depressing that it really has not evolved much since then.

However the game’s acting also has something a little different for you to play with as the cut scenes are somewhat user controlled. As the different heroes choose their side in the conflict, whether pro-registration under Ironman or anti-registration led by Captain America, you must also choose your friends and enemies. Throughout the game during each cut scene whatever character you happen to be controlling can converse with others from the Marvel universe and you can choose what to say and how to act, weather it be aggressively, diplomatically and so on. It allows you some measure of command over a normally inert part of the game but ultimately the only real decision you must make is who to join. Either way you will end up fighting both super villains and super heroes from the Marvel universe.



The sheer amount of characters from the marvel comics in this game is overwhelming. Some good superhero games in the past have gathered a few familiar faces for you to interact with but this game has no less than 77 heroes and villains dancing together. Many are controllable but obviously many are also automatically controlled.

Still, with all the fame and flash I could not help but feel let down by some aspects of the game. Some of the time it’s difficult to even see where you are on screen and a few times I was actually out for the count but carried on button mashing completely oblivious to my characters ill health. Sometimes you find yourself looking at the wrong character, and one of my favourite heroes was the Thing since one of his attacks knocked all the bad guys nearby on the ground and in a sense cleared the air and allowed you to see. The graphics up close were impressive but the game was played from a height rendering all the characters quite small on screen and was not helped by disappearing wreckage and little gameplay faults like enemy missiles striking an area rich in evil doers but only hurting the heroes. However, as you had four characters on screen at a time it allows excellent multiplayer options where four individuals play simultaneously.



Some disappointments may have raised their heads but in a superhero game they were the expected ones. The saving grace was the storyline that actually had me looking forward to the cut scenes to find out what would happen next. Vicarious Visions and Activision obviously knew what writers they needed – the actual Marvel ones, and in that department they were not found wanting. Comic fans will be choking to play this but its cleverness will attract non marvel readers as well. If the rumours of an Avengers movie are true then Hollywood producers would do well to take notice of this game’s plot and how it contributed towards its success.

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