Marvel Ultimate Alliance Review (Xbox 360)
Before Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix's Avengers, there once was an even bigger Avengers kind of game that encompassed the whole of the Marvel universe and beyond.
Developer: Raven Software
Publisher: Activision
Release Date: 24th October 2006 - 28th June 2007.
Platforms: Xbox, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, GameBoy Advance, PC, PSP.
Eons ago, (well, 15 years ago today but it certainly feels like it now) Raven Software released the greatest Marvel game ever. It was revealed at E3 2006 and was met with an incredibly warm reception, won countless awards and was a huge success on release. Its success saw two sequels, Ultimate Alliance 2 in 2009 which adapted Secret War and Civil war, and much later in 2019 Ultimate Alliance 3 was released for the Switch adapting Marvel’s Infinity event.
Ultimate Alliance doesn’t tend to adapt any one particular Marvel story but creates something new as a whole that carries on continuity of the main 616 comics universe as well as the Ultimate universe.
The story of Ultimate Alliance sees Doctor Doom being Doctor Doom in his Doomy ways and seeking a power to become dicatorial overlord of the world and now the universe. Helping him in his diabolical schemes are the Masters of Evil; Amora the Enchantress, Loki, Ultron, and Baron Mordo. He starts his plans by attacking the SHIELD Hellicarrier forcing Nick Fury to call in a task force, your superhero team you get to assemble. Eventually Doom captures, imprisons and steals Odin’s powers to become omnipotent ruler of Earth (what a bastard). But then you invade Castle Doom, beat him and his dark Fantastic Four goons, Odin gets pissed and steals Doom off back to Asgard where he and Loki will see punishment fit for their transgressions. The credits roll and you get a What If scenario narrated by Uatu the Watcher. The best thing about the story is throughout the game you get optional objectives where completing them or not affects the ending of the game. For example in Atlantis you can either save Namor by getting special seaweed to revive him or completely ignore the mission and move on to the main objective. If you have failed to save Namor here then during this What If sequence Uatu will say due to the failure of the surface dwellers to save their king, Atlantis will invade and conquer Earth for vengeance of their lost king. But if you had saved Namor here then there will be a future where Namor helped Earth’s heroes in another battle. There are so many of these little outcomes that serve as a surprise to see your actions had consequences on your first playthrough and beckons you to go through again a second time to try to get the best possible outcome. Except in Mephisto’s realm, nobody wins in that. There you’re forced to either save Nightcrawler or Jean Grey and whoever you don’t save will die and stay trapped in Mephisto’s realm for eternity. Best ending is to save Nightcrawler here but even then the loss of Jean, well…
The CG cutscenes in between gameplay were created by Blur Studios, the guys who did the videos for previous X-Men Legends games and would later become more well known for the studio’s Tim Miller directing Deadpool about 10 years later.
So the story is solid and expansive and the world you get to play in is just as gigantic enough to encompass it. Throughout the game you travel across all corners of the Marvel universe from Atlantis to Asgard, the Shi’ar empire and Skrull homeworld, Mephisto’s realm and Doomstadt. You can pretty much visit every concievable part of the Marvel universe. Except for the Baxter Building and the X-Mansion even though they’re referenced. Oh, and Wakanda and New York, they’re saved for Ulitmate Alliance 2.
But a big world and a big story that would have to mean a big cast of characters, right? Well the game has over 140 Marvel characters involved. 28 are playable across all platforms (some are exclusive to certain platforms over others), 8 DLC characters, 48 bosses and several hundred NPC characters. This game has an enormous wealth of Marvel encyclopediae from its characters, story, side missions, bonuses, and trivia (I’ll get onto that more in a bit.) The characters you start off with on the opening Hellicarrier level are Captain America, Wolverine, Thor and Spider-Man. After you fight through Ultron bots and Scorpion and get to Nick Fury then you get to pick and choose who you want on your team from a SHIELD point — which also works as a save point. Unless you’re on your second playthrough then you can pick and choose right away. And your wealth of heroes you get to choose from are…
Iron Man
Mr Fantastic
Invisible Woman
Thing
The Human Torch
Storm
Iceman
Colossus (Exclusive to Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii)
Spider-Woman
Blade (Unlocked in a claw game machine in the game)
Silver Surfer (Unlocked after completing the game)
Captain Marvel (PSP exclusive. No it’s not Carol)
Ms. Marvel (This is Carol. No it’s not Kamala)
Black Widow (Also PSP exclusive)
Doctor Strange
Moon Knight (Exclusive to 360, PS3 and Wii)
Nick Fury (Unlocked after completion)
Elektra
Black Panther (Unlocked through finding Black Panther figures throughout the game)
Daredevil (Unlocked through finding Daredevil figures throughout the game)
Deadpool
Ghost Rider
Luke Cage
Ronin (Exclusive to the PSP and not Clint Barton Ronin either but Maya Lopez/Echo)
DLC characters came in two packs, heroes and villains. Your heroes pack had Hulk, Hawkeye, Nightcrawler and Cyclops while your villain pack had Sabretooth, Venom, Magneto and Doctor Doom. Facing off against Doctor Doom at the end as Doctor Doom is… interesting. And Hawkeye was also a PSP exclusive character too.
And the bosses, well, you get pretty much every hero’s rogue to fight off against, both popular and obscure. Even right down to the grunts you’re facing familiar enemies from the comics; Dark Elves, Ultron bots, frost giants, Shi’ar soldiers, Skrulls. Everyone’s here! Mostly. Even beating these enemies are varied. Some enemies are invulnerable to certain attack types—Ulik being invulnerable to too much making him one of the more challenging bosses to fight. Some enemies are prone to certain attack combos, charged heavy attacks, shields you’ve got to grab away from them, or something you need to interact in the environment with. That variety makes facing all your enemies refreshing and always greeted with some new challenge to overcome.
So this game is huge and there is so much to do. It plays a lot like the previous X-Men Legends games… but better. You switch around heroes the same way with the d-pad, combat is the same, power allocation is the same with a slight altercation… ish. In X-Men Legends II they put in more superpowers for you to use for your heroes and holding R and pressing any direction on the D-pad you could cycle through what powers you wanted to use for quicker ease of access instead of pausing the game to allocate what power to what button you wanted on the hero menu. That power cycle mechanic is also used here and it makes for very quick and fluid changes in abilities and powers on the fly while you’re fighting off hordes of the impish and undead. You have your two basic assault powers for A and B, a status power on X and Y you get your character’s ultimate abilitiy, a screen wiping move that eliminates all enemies in your sight. To further bolster your heroes they can equip special items to boost their stats much like the X-Men games. It can be something character specific like Moon Knight’s coil or something special from beating an enemy like Dark Mjolnir. Much more like the previous X-Men games you have up to 4 player co-op—online and offline. So you can grab yourself 3 friends and extra controllers and all 4 of you can pick your favourite hero and save the Marvel universe from Doom!
This game is built upon the same X-Men Legends playstyle and improved dramatically. It shows here that it works just as perfectly here for every other superhero ever. Why it hasn’t been implemented in, say, a Justice League game I’ll never know. But this system makes playing as any one of these superheroes so much fun and such an incredible joy to play through. There’s technically a number of classes each character falls into. You have your brawler types like Spider-Man and Captain America, powerhouse tanks like Thing and Colossus, and energy users like Doctor Strange and Ms Marvel. Some playstyles for heroes can overlap as well, for example Ms Marvel has energy attacks but also a powerhouse. Most heroes have unique abilities as well. Typically they have melee or energy attacks but characters like Spider-Man have web swinging abilities when you hit Y twice so you can web swing along the level. Or if you’re Iron Man or Storm you can fly along or Deadpool or Nightcrawler you can teleport. Each character getting grouped into four different play types makes for a perfect balance on your team. And despite these groupings each character feels unique and plays differently making each one of them fun to play. Thing and Hulk are similar but smashing things as them are both remarkably different due in part to each having different superpowers to choose from and having different stats. Hulk’s is limited in that he can charge, stamp his foot or leap into the air for a groundpound while Thing can charge and stomp as well but he can also clap and throw uppercuts. Why Hulk doesn’t have his sonic clap I dunno.
The amount of characters you have to choose from makes for tons of hours playing around with each character to see which works best for you and your team, or if you’re biased you can stick to having your favourite supehero all the way through. But switching around team members is highly encouraged giving you chance to be introduced to new characters you maybe weren’t otherwise familiar with and perhaps get a new favourite. You can level up your characters, same as before, and power up your superhero’s powers.
Given the Fantastic Four are playable characters you can as expected play as the FF and have them as your task force. And with that they get a team bonus. Given the range of characters to choose from that means there’s also a range of notable teams to use. You can create your own one to your imagination’s delight but if you wanted you can have the Classic Avengers of Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther and/or Hulk or the Marvel Knights of Blade, Daredevil, Spider-Man and Luke Cage. Even the X-Men, Agents of Shield, or Assassins. You can have nearly any team you desire and whatever team you go for has different perks and bonuses. For example Agents of Shield gives +5 resistance, Fantastic Four gives 20 health per KO, Avengers +15% max energy, and so on. So you’re not only given incentive to play as different characters but incentive to play around with different team types.
Moreover, you also get the option to create your own overall superhero team and compile together your own roster and with it also comes its own bonuses. You can level up stats for the characters you’ve chosen in this roster such as increase the roster size (up to 12 heroes), exp gain, max health, max energy and so forth. You can level this up by gaining reputation and team points and reputation points are earned for completing specific objectives throughout the game. You will need at least 3 of your chosen team’s heroes in the party to earn these points. A little frustratingly is you will be 2 points shy of leveling up everything, so you have to be decisive on which bonuses you want to max out.
If having masses of heroes to choose from and play with wasn’t spoiling you enough, there’s the costumes. Each character gets four different costumes to wear (apart from Silver Surfer, he hasn’t really had a new outfit in the 60 years he’s been around. Man’s consistent.) These are unlocked by defeating a certain number of enemies and by completing comic simulation missions (I’ll get to that in a minute.) Each costume has its own perks and bonuses too. They all have a defence boost but their other two bonuses differ. They can range from more melee damage, more electric damage, higher max health, health recovery, more fire damage. Each one adds a specific bonus to each character and these can be upgraded through S.H.I.E.L.D. coins you pick up along the way. The coins can also be used to upgrade your hero’s powers but they’re mostly useful for the outfits I find. And each character’s alternate costumes are all torn straight from the comics. Thor for example, his first costume is his Ultimate Thor outfit. His other three outfits are his classic 616 outfit, King Thor and Beta Ray Bill. Some characters alternate costumes change their character altogether (minus the voice). So naturally using the Beta Ray Bill costume on Thor he becomes the worthy Korbinite. Iron Man has Rhodey’s War Machine armour, Spider-Woman in the game is Jessica Drew but she has Julia Carpenter from Secret Wars as an outfit you can change to, and I guess technically Spider-Man’s Scarlet Spider outfit makes him Ben Reilly so he’s someone else entirely too. Or perhaps not. I don’t know, clones are funny. But this game’s mass of heroes and their vast range of costumes to choose from inspired by their many appearances over the years I think is one of its greatest appeals because it draws so much from the comics source materials it is ridiculous.
And speaking of drawing a lot from the comics, this game is a giant encyclopedia of the Marvel universe and celebrates its history magnificently. In each 5 acts you get different hub worlds to stay in; Stark Tower, Sanctum Sanctorum, Asgard, Attilan, and Doom occupied Stark Tower. And in each hub world you get a trivia game to play and simulation missions to complete. Each act has different questions to answer in its trivia game, each one getting trickier as it goes but with more experience points to earn, and these questions pull deep from the Marvel universe. You can talk to numerous characters throughout the game within these hubs and they’ll inform you about themselves and teach you about the larger Marvel universe as a whole, its lore and other small bits of trivia to take note of, like who Johnny Storm’s college roommate was. But unless you’re already well educated on the Marvel universe you’ll have no trouble answering these questions and know that Wyatt Wingfoot was Johnny’s roommate. Or if you didn’t know that you can talk to Mr. Wingfoot yourself and he’ll drop that trivia bomb on you. Interacting with these NPC’s with certain characters gives you special conversations as well to show you even further the storied history of these characters. For example using Doctor Strange to talk to the Ancient One through a mirror in the Sanctum would give a different conversation than what you would get if you used Thor or speaking to the Inhumans as the Fantastic Four (all four of them) would each give them unique lines as opposed to Ms Marvel speaking to them.
To further educate you on the Marvel universe you have simulation missions to complete. These missions can be found throughout the game as discs in each level and each one is either villain specific (pick whoever heroes you want and go beat up this villain) or hero specific. The hero specific ones introduce you to the hero as they explain their origins—so you can hear Peter talk about his spider bite for the 50th time— and you have to fight through some enemies in a set time and beat that hero specific boss. So for Captain America’s mission he’ll tell you about his super soldier experiment and then you go off to fight Winter Soldier for example. Doing these missions and interacting with numerous NPC’s helps teach the player and newcomers to the Marvel universe who these characters really are and the world they inhabit. Outside of animated shows this is the perfect place to introduce new Marvel fans into what the Marvel universe is. (The MCU is kind of… not the place for that. Not if you want complete comic accuracy.)
Marvel Ultimate Alliance is the ultimate Marvel game. It has an expansive story that encompasses the entire Marvel universe using everyone from well known characters like Spider-Man to the really obscure characters like Weasel. It is finely voice acted with a strong soundtrack behind it and popping comic book-y sound effects to perfectly create its soundscape. It’s got tons of unlockable art of each superhero to view at your leisure. It isn’t just an Avengers game, not even just a Fantastic Four or X-Men game. It absolutely can be if you really want it to be because that’s the freedom you’re given to do. It’s your choice. It is a giant Marvel playground for you to frolick in where you get to learn of the wider Marvel universe, pick and choose to play with whoever you wish and to create the team you desire to beat all of Marvel’s foes and save the universe with. It is the most inclusive and varied Marvel game that plays so fantastically while paying respect to the source material and celebrates it with splendor. You can easily lose hours and days into this game and not for a moment feel bored because there is always something to do or explore.
For newcomers to the Marvel universe you’re gonna be spoiled rotten. For lifelong Marvel fans it’s a delectable treat, also getting spoiled rotten. Although, this is dated to the Marvel universe up until 2006 and the Marvel universe has grown even more since then. Either way it’s something everyone can enjoy over and over again.
Where to purchase (as of 15/10/21):
Amazon: £20+ /$19+
Ebay: £4.99- £145 / $9.99-$1,000
Cex: £2.50-£18