I’ve always wanted to play Marvel Ultimate Alliance since I heard of the game but I never got the chance to play it until recently. While the game had some opportunities and flaws, I genuinely enjoyed my experience playing it.

 

Let’s talk about what I liked and didn’t like!

 

Game Basics

Marvel Ultimate Alliance is an action RPG that was developed by Raven Software and published by Activision. The spiritual successor of X-Men Legends II, 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 as you assist Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. against Doctor Doom and the Masters of Evil. 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 upgradable skills and abilities.

 

 

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 – taking damage from enemies depletes the Health bar, while the Energy bar is depleted every time a character uses a Power. The Energy bar replenishes over time, but the Health bar does not. Often, enemies will drop red and blue orbs that will refill your team’s Health (red) and Energy (blue) meters.

 

 

You can save your game and change your team members at S.H.I.E.L.D. Access Points scattered across the levels. 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. It does allow you to keep your progress if you start a new game after beating it.

 

Superhero Roster

The main draw of Marvel Ultimate Alliance is the many different Marvel superheroes that are in the game. You start the game with Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, and Wolverine. As soon as you get to the first S.H.I.E.L.D. Access Point, you can choose to form your team from a total of 16 different heroes. You have the Fantastic Four members: Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and Thing. Three X-Men members (Storm, Iceman, Wolverine) made it to the roster, as well as Spider-Man, Elektra, Luke Cage, Ms. Marvel, Deadpool, and Spider-Woman. As you play the game, you’ll be able to unlock Doctor Strange, Blade, Ghost Rider, Daredevil, and Black Panther. And much later on, you’ll be able to unlock Silver Surfer and Nick Fury.

 

 

That’s a total of 23 different characters to choose from! Unfortunately, despite having more than the previous games, I felt that this game didn’t have enough. The concept of the game is to form a team of four and you even get bonuses when you use a thematic team. But you can only really form different Avengers teams and the Fantastic Four out of this roster. There aren’t enough X-Men characters to form a team. The New Fantastic Four is missing the Hulk. The Defenders are missing Hulk and Namor. Another supernatural character would have fit well with Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider, and Blade.

 

 

Future versions of this game added a handful of characters. I regret playing the PS2 version a little when I could have played the PSP or the Nintendo Wii version instead. But this is a minor complaint – I still had a lot of fun with this game when I was playing it.

 

Moves and Abilities

Each hero in Marvel Ultimate Alliance has the same basic moveset. They have a weak attack and a strong attack, which can be linked into three-hit combos that can either stun, knock down, or launch enemies in the air. They all can jump and either do a double jump or fly. Each hero can also block attacks and do grabs and throws. When grabbing an enemy, you can also keep punching them and do a “finishing” move that is unique to each hero.

 

 

Each hero also has a set of different Powers. You can assign three Powers to each hero at a time. And this is where the real fun of the game is for me. I mostly played with Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and Ms. Marvel and didn’t get to try all of their powers. But I was really satisfied with what I tried out. Cap’s shield bounces all over the place and even bounces from one enemy to another, just like in the comic books. Thor throws his hammer Mjolnir like a projectile, which stuns enemies. Iron Man has different projectile attacks.

 

 

I think that most of the heroes were properly represented with their varying powers. And the gameplay experience did feel different when I used different heroes. I’m honestly considering playing this game again using a different team in the future.

 

Ultimate Customization

The character customization options in Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a lot simpler compared to its predecessor. When a character levels up, they can get upgrade points that you can spend to level up Powers. And in case you end up disliking any Powers that you’ve been upgrading, the game will allow you to take the upgrade points back and spend them on other Powers. I like that the game doesn’t punish you in case you initially picked weak powers to upgrade instead of the best ones.

 

 

Costumes are very important to superhero fans and I’m glad to say that each hero has a total of four skins to choose from. Of these, two can be unlocked just by using a hero and getting a certain number of enemy kills. The fourth skin can be unlocked by getting a Silver rank in that specific hero’s Disc Mission. These costumes have their own set of passive abilities that can also be upgraded. I dislike this a bit, actually, because theme is very important to me and it doesn’t feel good to be forced to use outfits that I don’t like just to get the best passive abilities. Thankfully, these are really just bonuses and not required to be able to beat the game.

 

 

Finally, the game has an item system. Items are either in weapon caches or dropped by bosses, and they grant the wearer different passive abilities. Each hero can only equip one item, so give the best ones to your favorites!

 

Enemies and Boss Battles

What I enjoy the most with superhero games are the battles between supervillains and superheroes, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance did not disappoint. Regular enemies are usually minions that fit the current stage, such as Ultron drones, Doombots, and Skrull soldiers. The game uses a lot of different supervillains as mid and end level bosses. And these range from obscure choices like Hussar and Warstar of the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, to popular characters like the Winter Soldier and Mysterio.

 

 

Mid-level bosses are usually just stronger enemies with special powers that represent the characters being depicted. But end level bosses usually involve a special mechanic or have a unique twist to battle. Against Mephisto, you’ll need to destroy statues to make him vulnerable. Galactus requires playing a quick time event with Silver Surfer to distract the planet eater. Obviously, the final boss of the game is Doctor Doom, right? Let me just say that I was satisfied with the final battle against him.

 

 

Finally, there are these disc missions that you can take on for each of the heroes. All of these missions end with a boss battle so it’s another way to keep experiencing these hero-villain bouts. This is what I came for and I got it in spades.

 

Visuals, Sound, and Presentation

I liked the graphics of Marvel Ultimate Alliance. The playable superheroes and all of the enemies looked great and were animated well. Their special powers and attacks were clearly depicted with energy effects. There were occasional framerate issues wherein the game was obviously skipping frames, but nothing too bad to impact my immersion.

 

 

This game will take you to many different locations in the Marvel Universe: Atlantis, Mephisto’s Realm, Asgard, Murderworld, and so on. All these areas looked great and made for a really good visual experience. There were several sequences where the devs changed the perspective of the scene, such as when battling the frost giant Ymir. I really liked these sequences as the perspective changes really emphasized that something special was actually happening that moment.

 

 

When it comes to sound design, the game did a decent job. There’s a lot of voice acting every now and then, breaking the monotony of battle. Sound effects are apt and the stage themes fit the areas that are on when they play. This game doesn’t have a lot of memorable themes though.

 

 

As for the game’s presentation, I really liked it. There are a lot of cinematic sequences that really help move the game’s story along and really let the game’s characters shine. Mission briefings are done through these FMVs, with either Nick Fury or Captain America laying out the mission objectives. The game’s menus and HUD are all clear and easy to understand. And the game still kept the loading screens with really good artwork of the game’s heroes and villains.

 

Final Thoughts

Despite not being satisfied with the game’s roster, I loved playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Sure, the game’s storyline isn’t as personal as what X-Men Legends had but that’s what happens when you have a roster of loosely connected characters. At the end of the day, Doctor Doom’s overall plan did make sense and it gave a good excuse to take several Marvel superheroes on an adventure across different famous Marvel Universe locations. It was a great reason to bring a lot of supervillains into a video game.

Currently, Marvel Ultimate Alliance isn’t available on any virtual store. And I still see people on Reddit asking how they can play this, or if they can buy Playstation accounts that have a copy of this. Even though I only played the Playstation 2 version and not the superior ones released later on, I still had a great time. Marvel fans should definitely try to get their hands on this game. I know for sure I’ll be replaying this again.

 

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.