Company: Activision
Platform: Playstation 2
Genre:
Rating: Teen
Buy on Amazon.com link

Continuing in the mold of the X-Men Legends games, Activision expands their vision and set their sights on the entire Marvel universe. Well, not exactly the entire Marvel universe, I mean you won’t be seeing a cameo of Bucky Barnes or Typeface but when their giving you Beta Ray Bill and Moon Knight, what more could you ask for? Dr. Doom has once again decided that he needs to rule everyone in the known universe and he has enlisted an endless list of superhero punching bags, or Masters of Evil as some like to call them, to carry out his plans. Only a handful of Marvel’s greatest can put an end to Doom’s plan and send him back to where he belongs once and for all…the recycling center.

With Ultimate Alliance, Activision took the X-Men Legends format as well as some reoccurring X-characters like Storm and Wolverine and basically dropped in some big name Marvel Comics characters. If you’ve played either of the Legends games, then you should be able to just pick up a controller and jump right into it. There are subtle differences, but we’ll get to that later.

One of the biggest selling points for UA was the fact that you finally get the chance to play as some of the biggest names in the comics biz and instead of them having their own individual games, they’re all easily compacted into one for you this time. Have you always dreamed of getting rid of Reed Richards and replacing him with Captain America in the Fantastic Four or did you ever hyperventilate while imagining a team of Thor, Wolverine, Ghost Rider and Spider-Man going up against the likes of Fin Fang Foom? No? Well then, you probably shouldn’t be playing this game in the first place. If you have dreamed of the endless possibilities for years, much like I have most of my life (Yep, I’m a comic geek and proud of it.) then Ultimate Alliance will cure all of your fan-boy fantasies. Just about right off the bat, you’re given twenty of the most powerful Marvelites at your disposal. Much like in X-Men Legends, you can put certain combinations of characters together and receive stat bonuses. If you play as all four members of the Fantastic Four you get one type of bonus. If you take a team of Avengers into the field, you’ll receive a different kind of bonus. There are a lot of combinations and you can have a lot of fun just trying to figure some of the more obscure ones out. The character selection is chock full of A List characters as well as fan favorites and Marvel movie characters. I was disappointed that there was no Hulk and that their choice of X-Men characters was lacking. I really don’t think that Iceman, Storm or Deadpool needed to be in there and I would have preferred maybe Cyclops, Emma Frost or Jean Grey. They could have even cut out all of the X-Men characters other than fan favorite Wolverine since he’s an Avenger now and put in some more regular heroes. I also didn’t think that Elektra needed to be included. She has a cameo in one sucky movie and then stars in another and she gets to be in a video game as a playable character over Hawkeye or the Vision because…? Speaking of another personal preference for a playable character, does anyone else think that the Punisher would have made a pretty cool character in the game? Think about it. Every one of his moves could include some kind of gun being used in one way or another followed by many big explosions. Frank Castle for president!

Besides the large number of playable characters, there are even more cameo appearances. It seems like just about Marvel character shows up at some point in the game. Even obscure X-Men/Spider-Man villain Arcade shows up. How about that for digging deep? Speaking of Arcade, he brings to mind the totally awesome levels that you can play in. We finally get the chance to live it up in places such as Murderworld, Asgard, the Shi’ar Galaxy, and Mephisto’s Realm. Mephisto’s Realm!!! ‘Nuff said. You also get to hang out at some cool base locations like Stark Tower and the moon. And did I mention that the Watcher makes an appearance? Yeah, the Watcher kicks ass!

Now as the comic geek in me has finally calmed down, we can discuss the innards of the game itself. I’ll start with the graphics. As I mentioned before, Activision just took X-Men Legends, dropped in non-mutant characters and changed the art for the levels. It’s not that generic, but you get a lot of the same dark and dingy metal hallways and boiler room looking levels. Murderworld was probably the most creative level because you got the chance to play in a giant pinball machine complete with exploding pinballs and electrically charged bumpers. And imagine this…playing a game of Pitfall but instead of Pitfall Larry or whatever the hell his name is, you can play as Wolverine or Captain America. Yeah, it’s in the game. Activision did try to mix it up a little bit with some overhead views and semi-grounded over the shoulder looks. The problem with those was that the camera views seemed too distant and the controls weren’t as precise. Now that we are on the subject of differences between Ultimate Alliance and X-Men Legends, one of the new features revolves around unlocking characters various uniforms. Well what’s so different about that you ask? Unlike in X-Men Legends where unlocking a new costume does nothing more than invoke more fanboy geekness, in Ultimate Alliance unlocking new unis also unlocks new powers unique to each individual costume. Each character has four uniforms, one to start with and three unlockables. This idea is either hit or miss and I find it missing most of the time. Take Wolverine for instance. Everyone knows that he has a healing factor and that in Legends, if you built his healing factor up enough, he would heal almost instantly. He still wasn’t invincible but was damn near close. Now in UA, Wolverine has a slight healing factor, but you can only build it up if you unlock the Astonishing X-Men costume. It really doesn’t make sense. As much as I love Wolvie’s brown suit, I’m deterred from playing in it because Wolverine doesn’t have his healing factor in it. The same goes for Luke Cage (even though I don’t recall him ever having a healing factor), but he has one with his street thug clothes and I’m deterred from playing as the classic disco era silk shirt Luke Cage that everyone knows and loves. Most of the costume features don’t really bring the excitement and variety that the game seemed to push in its’ prerelease days. Do you really need resistance and more XP stats when you could resurrect an ally or heal quicker?

On the flipside of the whole costume ordeal, instead of putting some characters in the multitude of crappy costumes that they’ve worn over the years, Activision decided to throw in comic geeks most popular. Included are the black Spidey outfit as well as the “Civil War” edition Iron Spider suit, Wolverine’s brown costume from the 70’s, World War II Captain America, classic Thor, Daredevil yellow as well as the black armor, original Ghost Rider, and snow man Iceman. And the thing is, those aren’t even the coolest costume in the game. In fact, the coolest costumes in the game aren’t just costumes. They are actually totally different characters. One of Thor’s costumes is none other than one of my favorite Marvel characters of all time…Beta Ray Bill. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would some day be able to play as Beta Ray Bill in a video game. I would have to say that unlocking the Bill costume was probably one of my personal favorite greatest moments in video gaming…followed immediately by unlocking Daredevil’s black armor. Some of the other character costumes include War Machine, US Agent, Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman and Phantom Rider to name a few.

In just a few short words, I would have to rate Ultimate Alliance as the greatest comic book video game ever made. With an epic storyline scripted by professional comic book writers, a list of heroes that includes Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Daredevil and the Fantastic Four, and equally impressive list of villains from every dark corner of the Marvel Universe that includes Dr. Doom, Loki, Ultron, the Mandarin, Baron Mordo and Bullseye, as well as an easy to use interface with simple controls and pretty good graphics, everything here points to hours upon hours of your precious life dedicated to stopping Galactus from devouring an innocent planet and finally putting an end to Dr. Doom’s evil plan of universal domination. Grab a friend, or two or three…yes, it is multiplayer and you can also play online with friends with no faces…and call your vacation time in because once you pick this game up, you’ll be hooked for a very very very long time, and you’ll love every frickin’ minute of it. Avengers Assemble!!!! It’s clobberin’ time!!! Spooooon!!!

Bottom Line: X-Men Legends with mainstream Marvel characters only a lot more fun.
Favorite Aspects: Creating various Marvel superteams, Beta Ray Bill, Daredevil black armor, fighting Mephisto, looking up the Watcher dress
Cheats: Play as Silver Surfer:
Go to a S.H.I.E.L.D. save point and select “Change Team”. Delete all selected characters. Once all slots are empty, press Down, Left(2x), Up, Right, Up, Down, Left, Start. A sound will confirm correct entry and Silver Surfer will appear in the character selection.
Overall Rating: