Uneasy Alliance
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 has buffed the familiar super-powered hack-n-slash to a brilliant sheen, but hasn't really added much else.
Published: December 1, 2009
It's never easy to take over someone else's work -- especially not when that work stretches back almost a full generation -- but that's precisely what Vicarious Visions had to do when they were assigned the latest entry into a dungeon crawler that stretches back to Raven Software's 2004 debut X-Men Legends, itself rather heavily inspired by the brilliant Snowblind Studios' Baldur's Gate: Dark Allience hack-n-slashers.
That's quite the legacy to live up to (so huge it made me create a paragraph-long run-on sentence!), but it's not as though VV wasn't unfamiliar with the series'; they'd been working on the PSP versions of things for years now, and their own in-house Alchemy Engine was the backbone of the series going back to the very first game. With Ultimate Alliance 2, all that technical familiarity has come to bear in an engine that's unquestionably taking more advantage of the PlayStation 3 hardware than the first game (which, incidentally, was one of the few launch efforts to actually run at 1080p).
The question, though, is whether or not it's a better game. It looks better, plays more tightly, offers an entirely new storyline and lumps together a solid (if a bit mixed) cast of Marvel characters that can combine their powers in new Fusion Attacks (which aren't really all that new, but they look cool). All of these things should have added up to a much more entertaining sequel, so why, then, does everything feel so... flat?
Make no mistake, I'm not saying Ultimate Alliance 2 is a worse game than its predecessor, but it's certainly not a massive improvement either. The fact that we've all been thumping on enemies, combining special attacks and leveling up individual skill points and powers for three games now means that the formula has had a chance to become about as rock-solid as it possibly could, and evolution -- mutation, if you will -- should be the next step. Instead, the Civil/Secret War storyline that turns the Marvel universe against itself doesn't have enough pop to keep it all interesting between hours of button mashing, and the levels themselves, while pretty and certainly varied, just don't offer enough stuff to do to keep them interesting through yet another dozen--plus-hour trudge through the two branching storylines.
I'm also more than willing to admit that I still have a soft spot for these games. Repetitive and a bit mindless though they may be, it's still the best way to experience the what-if scenarios of Spidey and Deadpool trading quips outside of waiting for some kind of crossover in the comics. It's just that in between moments of gleeful head pounding there are often large chasms of repetition, of tapping out the same basic combos, smashing the same objects and unleashing the same special moves over and over again. Everything about MUA2 feels "safe" and while Vicarious Visions didn't rock the boat when taking things over, they didn't really add anything interesting to the mix either.
That's quite the legacy to live up to (so huge it made me create a paragraph-long run-on sentence!), but it's not as though VV wasn't unfamiliar with the series'; they'd been working on the PSP versions of things for years now, and their own in-house Alchemy Engine was the backbone of the series going back to the very first game. With Ultimate Alliance 2, all that technical familiarity has come to bear in an engine that's unquestionably taking more advantage of the PlayStation 3 hardware than the first game (which, incidentally, was one of the few launch efforts to actually run at 1080p).
The question, though, is whether or not it's a better game. It looks better, plays more tightly, offers an entirely new storyline and lumps together a solid (if a bit mixed) cast of Marvel characters that can combine their powers in new Fusion Attacks (which aren't really all that new, but they look cool). All of these things should have added up to a much more entertaining sequel, so why, then, does everything feel so... flat?
Make no mistake, I'm not saying Ultimate Alliance 2 is a worse game than its predecessor, but it's certainly not a massive improvement either. The fact that we've all been thumping on enemies, combining special attacks and leveling up individual skill points and powers for three games now means that the formula has had a chance to become about as rock-solid as it possibly could, and evolution -- mutation, if you will -- should be the next step. Instead, the Civil/Secret War storyline that turns the Marvel universe against itself doesn't have enough pop to keep it all interesting between hours of button mashing, and the levels themselves, while pretty and certainly varied, just don't offer enough stuff to do to keep them interesting through yet another dozen--plus-hour trudge through the two branching storylines.
I'm also more than willing to admit that I still have a soft spot for these games. Repetitive and a bit mindless though they may be, it's still the best way to experience the what-if scenarios of Spidey and Deadpool trading quips outside of waiting for some kind of crossover in the comics. It's just that in between moments of gleeful head pounding there are often large chasms of repetition, of tapping out the same basic combos, smashing the same objects and unleashing the same special moves over and over again. Everything about MUA2 feels "safe" and while Vicarious Visions didn't rock the boat when taking things over, they didn't really add anything interesting to the mix either.
