The lead up to Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 was full of promise.  The long legs of the first title seem to have paved the way for another good beat-em up with an rpg feel to it.  Will the newest entry make the former proud?  Let’s take a look at how Alliance 2 stacks up.

Presentation 7.5

Now I’ve seen some pretty games and I’ve seen some ugly games, but you’ll be happy to know that Alliance 2 falls somewhere in the middle of these to ends.  It’s no ugly duckling, but it’s not the hot prom date you’re hoping to brag about the morning after.  All of the environments have a lot more detail over the 1st alliance, and there is improvement in the character models over the 1st Alliance.  Still I feel that some of the non-playable characters got better treatment then the ones that were useable.  Storm looked like an aging street walker, while Bishop and Cable looked exquisite in detail.  A lot of the fusion moves look cool but, it’s not quite enough pop as the ultimate power attack of the first one and I’m going to go more into that in the next section.

Gameplay 6.5

I think the mistake here is that instead of Activision going with Raven Software, they instead turned the reins over to Vicarious Vision.  It was almost like they looked at everything that made the 1st game great and decided that none of it was needed to come back.  I don’t know if this was an insecure thing…you know how you make someone else feel bad to make yourself feel better; but it was not a good move.  Here are just a few things that were stripped away from Ultimate Alliance 2 that were in the 1st game:

• Simulator Missions were reduced from one per character with a few bonus missions thrown in to about 12
• Unlocking new costumes used to also unlock new abilities; now it’s purely cosmetic.
• Leveling up heros / villans not only made powers stronger, but gave you access to new powers.  In U.A. 2, you’re locked into the 4 preset powers that are assigned to each hero.
• Fusion powers while cool at first grows old fast because they tend to follow the same format just different animations per character.  In U.A. 1 not only did you get a single ultimate attack, the ultimate would change if you had 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 keeping the variety fresh.

I think Vicarious Visions were striving to make the game more accessible, by stripping all of that stuff out.  On the flip side of that having all of that stuff in the first place is what made the first Ultimate Alliance a blast to play.  The one bright spot amongst all of this is that they made the equipment effect the whole team instead of an individual character.  However, that lone bright spot is not enough to make this game feel like it has any soul.

Lasting Appeal 5

Ultimate Alliance 2 features two view points to play through; Anti-Registration and Pro-Registration.  If you find yourself that invested with the events of the Marvel Civil War then you’re going to want to play this game twice.  If you find that you really don’t care after your first run through then that’s the end of the appeal.  I don’t think the allure of new downloadable characters can save this.  It would have been fun to play as cable, and Bishop and some of the other cameos as it were fun to play with the Juggernaut; however it will not be fun to play with them in this shell of a game.  This is a rent.

6 out of 10

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