I’ve heard so much good stuff about Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, especially compared to the third game in the franchise. So I was really looking forward to playing this game.
Title screen for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 on Playstation 2.
I finally did play it. Let’s talk about what I liked and didn’t like!
Game Basics
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is an action RPG. The PlayStation 2 version was developed by n-Space and published by Activision. This version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 isn’t the best version but this is what I had access to. The sequel to Marvel Ultimate Alliance, this game has a lot of similarities with its predecessor. You can form a team of four from an assortment of Marvel’s most popular superheroes in an adaptation of the Civil War comic book storyline. The RPG elements that the game uses include using an experience system to gain character levels, having character attributes that become better as you gain levels and a set of unlockable and upgradable powers and skills.
All the playable heroes in the Playstation 2 version.
During gameplay, you’ll be controlling one of the four characters in your team and the rest will be A.I. controlled. You can quickly shift to a different character by pressing a direction on the D-Pad. All characters have their own Health and Energy bars. When you take damage from enemies, your Health bar gets depleted. Meanwhile, the Energy bar is for using special abilities. When defeated, enemies usually drop red and blue orbs that will refill your team’s Health (red) and Energy (blue) meters. The Energy bar regenerates over time, but you’ll need to find red orbs in order to replenish health.
Your starting lineup.
You can save your game and change team members at S.H.I.E.L.D. Access Points. When a character’s health is depleted, they are knocked out. They can be revived at Access Points after a five-minute period. Unlike its predecessors, there aren’t any extra modes outside of the main game. However, Ultimate Alliance 2 will let you keep your character levels when you start a new game after beating it.
Superhero Roster
The main draw of the Ultimate Alliance games is the many different Marvel superheroes that are in them. Despite having more than twenty different heroes to form your party with, I was disappointed with the roster of Ultimate Alliance 2. When you start the game, you have Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Wolverine in your team. Sometime later, more heroes get unlocked. From the Fantastic Four are Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, and Human Torch. From the X-Men, you have Iceman, Deadpool, and Psylocke. And you also have Daredevil, Blade, Luke Cage, and Ms. Marvel available.
You’ll need to get Silver on these Bonus Missions to unlock more heroes.
This is the first reason why I was disappointed with this game’s roster. I like using comic accurate teams but the roster is quite limited at the beginning. As you progress, you’ll be able to unlock more characters. There’s Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Storm from the X-Men. The Thing completes the Fantastic Four. Thor and Hulk are good options for Avengers teams. And Thunderbolts members Venom, Green Goblin, Songbird, and Penance get unlocked close to the end of the game.
Only a few characters like the Hulk can get rid of heavy obstacles.
What makes the problem worse is that some characters become unavailable. Near the middle of the game, you’ll be asked to make a choice. One choice will make Captain America, Storm, and Luke Cage unplayable until near the end. The other choice will make Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, and Ms. Marvel unplayable. For the majority of the game, I wasn’t able to play the team of heroes that I wanted to play because of this.
My final team of Cap, Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk.
After thinking about different line ups, I had finally settled on playing an X-Men team. I wanted to play with Cyclops, Wolverine, Gambit, and Storm. But it took a while to unlock Storm. And when I finally did unlock Storm, I was already at a point where I could use every available character in the game except one. There were only a few more levels to get through, so I didn’t get to enjoy my desired team as much as I wanted to. The later editions of Ultimate Alliance 2 had more characters and part of me wishes that I had played those instead.
Moves and Abilities
Each hero in Ultimate Alliance 2 has the same basic move set. They have a weak attack and a strong attack. Both attacks can be linked into three-hit combos that can either stun, knock down, or launch enemies in the air. All the heroes can jump and either do a double jump or fly. They can also block attacks and grab enemies. Each hero has a unique “finishing” move that they can do with a grabbed enemy.
The first mission will teach you the game’s basic moves.
Each hero also has a set of different Abilities. Abilities can be passive (always on) or active. The active Abilities visually show each hero’s superpowers. For example, Cap throwing his shield as a projectile is an active Ability. So is Cyclops shooting his Optic Blast. In fact, the different ways that Cyclops uses his Optic Blast make up different abilities.
Cap’s shield bounces around when he throws it.
You can assign four active Abilities to each hero at a time. As your heroes gain levels, they also gain upgrade points which you can spend on upgrading Abilities. What I like about Ultimate Alliance 2 is that the game allows you to reallocate spent upgrade points. If you don’t like an Ability that you put a lot of points in, you can take them back and reassign to other Abilities.
Each hero has multiple Abilities that you can choose from.
Ultimate Alliance 2 still retains the combo system of its predecessors. But in my experience, combos aren’t as essential as it was in the X-Men Legends games. And as far as I can tell, there isn’t a way to call out for a combo, unlike in the older games. Basically, a combo is when two of your heroes use an Ability on the same enemy at the same time.
You’ll get notified loudly when your heroes do a combo attack.
In the previous games, you would gain additional experience points whenever you performed a combo. The more combos you did, the faster your heroes would gain levels. In this game, all you get with a combo is additional damage.
Limited Customization
I don’t want to compare Ultimate Alliance 2 to its predecessors but it’s hard not to, especially because this game is missing features that all the previous games had. While I appreciate all the heroes having a lot of Abilities that can differentiate how they play, there’s only one more way to change things up in this game. As you play, you’ll find different Medals that can be equipped.
These are the Medals that I used in my playthrough.
Initially, you’ll only have one Medal slot but you’ll unlock more as you progress (up to a maximum of four slots). These Medals have different positive effects to your team. Finding more of a specific Medal will upgrade that Medal and make it’s boost effect more powerful. And that’s about it. There are no alternate costumes in this game, no team bonuses, nor equipment.
Overrated Fusion
Most people who prefer Ultimate Alliance 2 over Ultimate Alliance 3 raved about this game’s Fusion system. Essentially, you’ve got another meter that’s represented by four Stars. These will fill out gradually as you fight enemies, but you can also pick up Fusion power ups. Once all four Fusion Stars are filled, you can perform a Fusion Attack between your controlled hero and another party member.
Instructions on how to perform Fusion Attacks.
Fusion Attacks have special animations that combine the powers of two superheroes. At first I was impressed. Later on, I found out that the Playstation 2 version of Ultimate Alliance 2 only had ten different Fusion Attacks available. The one that I performed the most often was Beam Split, which can be done by Iron Man with Captain America or Wolverine. Cap can also do this attack with Thor and Ms. Marvel. Storm can do the Beam Split with Invisible Woman, Jean Grey, and Psylocke. Since I seldom changed characters, I often saw the same Fusion Attack over and over.
Cap and Iron Man performing the Beam Split Fusion Attack.
Thankfully, Fusion Stars have a secondary purpose. If one of your team members get knocked out, you can spend two Fusion Stars to revive them at full health and energy. This was quite useful, especially during boss battles. Overall, I was quite underwhelmed with Fusion Attacks of this version of the game.
Ultimate Letdown
Ultimate Alliance 2 is an adaptation of the popular comic book storyline Civil War with a sprinkle of Secret War (another comic book storyline) sprinkled in. And honestly, the way this game told that storyline didn’t work for me. Normally, I don’t want to discuss spoilers but I need to do that to be able to express why I was disappointed. This game starts with Nick Fury leading a team of heroes into Latveria, Doctor Doom’s country. They succeed in their unsanctioned mission but there were casualties on Latveria’s side. Some time passes and Latverian forces launch a counterattack in New York.
The game diverges into two paths with this choice.
Because Fury’s mission was not approved, the US Government decides to implement the Superhuman Registration Act which requires all heroes in the U.S. to register with the government. You then have to decide whether to be Pro-Registration or Anti-Registration. Whatever your choice, the story leads to the Pro-Registration side bolstering their forces by using nanites to take control of different supervillains.
The villain behind the scenes.
However, the nanite-controlled villains start acting on different orders and start attacking Wakanda in order to get their Vibranium supply. This results in the heroes uniting to defeat the new threat. After making such a big deal of Registration, the game just forgets about it. The conflict of ideologies between the heroes never gets resolved, with the winning side defaulting to what side you chose.
Enemies and Boss Battles
Speaking of boss battles, Ultimate Alliance 2 has plenty of them. The big draw for this game is that you’ll not only fight different supervillains, but different superheroes as well. Most of the characters used as bosses are popular enough for me to know them, but the developers also included some obscure ones like Scorcher and Man-Ape.
The battle with Electro.
Similar to the first game, the mid-level bosses are just like regular enemies, only with special powers and more health. These battles were fun but were simply a matter of doing as many special attacks as you can to whittle their health down. Most of the end level bosses involve a special mechanic. For example, you’ll need to disable generators in order to attack Electro. Battling Man-Ape and Yellowjacket involve getting some quick time sequences right.
Storm will help you as an NPC against Yellowjacket.
My only problem with this game when it comes to bosses involve the final ones. In the first Ultimate Alliance, Doctor Doom was the main enemy. You had to face Thanos in Ultimate Alliance 3. In this game, your final battles will be against the Tinkerer and a nanite-controlled Nick Fury. Both characters definitely are not at the same level as Doom and Thanos.
Visuals, Sound, and Presentation
In terms of graphics, Ultimate Alliance 2 seemed like a major downgrade. During the actual gameplay. characters don’t look as good as they did in the first game. When zoomed in, like in the character selection screen or the Details screen, they look much worse. Everything else, like the levels and textures, were fine. But the main draw of this game are the superheroes. It was such a pain for me to go to the Character Details screen because I’d have to look at these terrible depictions of my favorite superheroes.
Another shot of the in-game graphics.
In terms of sound design, I was also disappointed. I can only recall one theme which was quite dull and was overused. There are plenty of voice lines during the game, and the sound effects were decent. The music just doesn’t have much to write about.
One of the mini games that felt out of place.
I do have a lot of positive things to say when it comes to this game’s presentation. Loading screens and menus all followed the two-color motif of the comic book series with heavy use of off-white and red. There are plenty of FMVs that do well to move the game’s story forward. The HUD is clear and easy to understand, with all the health, energy, experience, and Fusion bars easy to see.
Final Thoughts
The Playstation 2 version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is easily my least liked game in the franchise, even if you count both X-Men Legends games. There are so many things about this game that I didn’t like or found annoying. The graphics were a downgrade in my eyes. The roster selection was too restricted. The game’s music was lackluster. And I didn’t like how the Civil War storyline was adapted.
And yet, I can still stay that this game was a fun experience for me. But that’s because I’m a big fan of Marvel superheroes. As I’m writing this, I’m currently in the middle of a second playthrough just so I could see the game’s Pro-Registration ending. And boy, am I dragging my feet with this game. Should you play this game? Honestly, I’d say skip it unless you really enjoy playing superhero games. I’d rather just replay the first one or spend more time with the third one. Or maybe play the better versions (Playstation 3/XBox360) instead.
For more video games based on Marvel characters, click here! And click here to check out every Playstation 2 video game that I’ve played.
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