Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Review

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Review / April 17, 2017
Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is a top down action adventures beat’em up that has several RPG elements. It is the second Marvel Alliance game but it is truthfully the fourth game in the series since it is just a Marvel expansion of X-Men Legends 1 & 2. You can play between 1 and 4 players but the computer controlled AI most of the time does no damage. So the game encourages you to play with more than 1 player but at all does work out regardless of how many people you are gaming with. Nick Fury is leading a team comprised of several Super Heroes to stop Latveria newly elected Prime Minister Lucia von Bardas. After the death of Dr. Doom she surprisingly rose quickly to power and won the first ever Latverian election. Shield however has evidence she has been supplying weapons to dozens of Super Villains across the world.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 had us looking forward to playing through the storyline of Super-human Registration Act. This is the center point of the Ironman/Captain America conflict (a.k.a. Captain America Civil War Movie). There is potential for a deep story but it falls short. There are dialog choices but it makes no impact on the game. It does not matter what decision you make. Plus the game itself graphically is really really weak. Even through Marvel Alliance 2 was a late PlayStation 2, Gamecube and Xbox generation game the PS4 a Xbox One version does not look like anything like a full HD video game.

The second problem is the way the game sets up the powers. For example Luke Cage hits harder than Daredevil. It’s a proven fact, we are pretty sure we saw it on an episode of Mythbusters but when you start the game Luke and Daredevil do the same damage. When you get to start upgrading up each character that’s when the powers start to really separate from one another. It starts to get really good but for the first 25% of the game the powers are not different enough. There are also team stat boosters if for example you pick four members from the X-Men or play as the Fantastic Four. They are cool but since your team is divided with some joining Ironman and some siding with Captain America the teams you create to get stat boost are severally limited. You can also team up while fighting but the powers are all the same and hard to direct or sometimes you waste it because the game takes over to tell a story scene. This is a Super Hero game and at no time should gamers be frustrated with how the powers work.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 took us between 10 and 12 hours but that is misleading. After you pick a side and play the story and then go back and play the other side of the storyline you realize that you are just replaying the same areas you played your first time. Instead of stopping the convoy you are protecting the convoy. Instead of fighting a giant Yellow Jacket you are fighting a giant Goliath instead. But a main bad point of the game is that we did not like beating up Ironman or Captain America or Reed Richards or any of the Marvel Heroes, plus the game is really repetitive. Just hit the A button over and over again. Luckily Deadpool and Gambit save things. We kept one of them in our group at all times because we liked their power ups and web sling with Spider-Man or Ice Surfacing with Iceman are cool ways to get around the levels. But even with these positive points the replay value is still well below average. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is worth paying $14.99 or less for and if you find it under $4.99 it is a Must Buy Price! It is just too bad they did not put the time in. To be honest both X-Men Legend games and Marvel Ultimate Alliance are much better than Alliance 2.

7.0 out of 10
Average Game

7.0 out of 10
Average Game

Rated
T for
Teen

Rated PEGI 16