Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Review
| Game Name: | Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 |
| Platforms: | Xbox 360 |
| Publisher(s): | Activision |
| Developer(s): | Vicarious Visions |
| Genre(s): | Action |
| Release Date: | 9/15/2009 |
| ESRB Rating: | T(Teen) |
| Price: | $55.99 (Amazon) |
I’m going to come right out and say it: If you are a fan of Marvel Ultimate Alliance, the X-Men Legends series, comics, or beat ‘em ups you need to play this game. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 improves upon the core groundwork placed by its predecessors and fixes almost every gripe I had with MUA. Saving and reviving limited to predetermined points? Fixed. Save/revive almost anywhere! Have no clue where to go? Fixed. Click Left analog stick for direction! Teammate(s) being greedy and stealing all the loot? Fixed. Now all players get loot! Lack of extremely cool powers? Fixed. Fusion powers are in! Powers take too long to regenerate? Fixed. Your stamina bar regenerates quickly now! You get the point. All of these solutions streamline the experience and make it much more enjoyable.
The only complaints I have are minor and most existed in MUA. On rare occasions a teammate would become stuck on an object or part of the environment. Sometimes this was caused by the camera angle which is known to cause some issues. The camera moves quicker in MUA2 but those minor glitches still occurred at times. Also, it was a little annoying yet unavoidable if I had just started a Fusion and a cutscene would occur triggering a boss fight which would automatically cancel the Fusion. Those Fusions are valuable and take time to build up so losing one was upsetting. Those are basically my only main complaints with the thoroughly enjoyable game.
Now would be the time to break out one of those Fusions.
Since the game is designed with multiplayer in mind let’s begin there. The online experience is easy to get into and each person can choose their own difficulty. I had no trouble finding random people to play with or hosting my own private match to play with friends. Also, I would highly suggest downloading the free Juggernaut compatibility content on the Marketplace just in case you want to play with people who have that content or who have download the pack already. Interestingly, even the free content will make players incompatible so you might as well download it before playing online.
Just like MUA each player can save whatever progress they made in an online match. A nice touch is the ability to modify whatever in-game boosts you pick up so you no longer have to go to the pause menu and stop everyone from playing in order to customize your character’s boosts. If for some reason your controller dies or disconnects the game will take control over your character so your teammates won’t be stuck waiting. Also, if someone quits the game you have the option to continue playing or go to the main menu. Another feature is being able to play with people who chose the other side of the Civil War. It’s these minor but much appreciated details that make a world of a difference in MUA2.
Playable Characters:
Captain America Invisible Woman Penance Daredevil Iron Fist Songbird Deadpool Iron Man Spider-Man Gambit Jean Grey Storm Green Goblin Luke Cage Thing Hulk Mr. Fantastic Thor Human Torch Ms. Marvel Venom Iceman Nick Fury Wolverine
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 begins with your heroes fighting together as a team like usual. The awesome storyline cutscenes from MUA are back along with brand new stylized pre-mission scenes that are reminiscent of Sin City with shades of black, white, and red. After too many public and large scale disasters the capes are required to register their true identities with the government forcing a Civil War. Iron Man is Pro-Registration and helps the government track down rebel heroes led by Captain America who is Anti-Registration. Every character has their own motives for choosing either side and you will have to choose who you agree with sometime during the Campaign. Each stance has a small group of side-specific characters that you will only be able to play with if you choose that side of the war. As expected each character has quite a bit of background dialogue and a unique personality. Hulk has some of the greatest lines in the game with his Hulku Audio Log and interview during the credits. Be sure to listen to those! One playthrough on the normal difficulty took about 11 hours to complete and while it felt a little short it was very satisfying. The story feels much more epic than MUA due to the larger conflict and as a result it is much more rewarding.
Since the player is forced to choose a side it promotes replayability not only to see the opposite side of the conflict but to level up your characters even more and play through on a higher difficulty. Once you complete the game you can replay missions or simulator discs or start a new campaign on Legendary from the final HQ’s terminal. Like MUA your characters will keep their levels and upgrades and you will maintain your stats and collectables. And there are a LOT of collectibles ranging from dossiers to upgrades to audio logs that fill in the story a little bit more. Each is worth collecting and they aren’t too difficult to find if you are thorough in your destruction of areas. Trivia quizzes also return and these can be answered in co-op. Simulator discs are back but they aren’t as numerous or annoying as they were in MUA. There are only 12 total and earning Gold medals isn’t too difficult especially when played cooperatively.
I could do this all day.
A really nice addition to the game is the thorough stat tracking. You can easily view your progress on the Stats screen and it tracks almost anything you can think of. It can be a little confusing figuring out if you completed the Heroic Deeds until you realize they are stated in past tense once you complete them. Example: “Lead the Thunderbolts” changes to “Led the Thunderbolts” upon completion. Some Heroic Deeds are side specific so be sure to complete them before starting a new campaign if you want all of the bonuses or costumes. Unfortunately there is only one costume to unlock for each character which is disappointing since there were so many to unlock in MUA. Achievement related tasks can conveniently be viewed under the Stats page as well. The achievements aren’t very difficult and you can easily obtain a majority of them by taking your time during the campaign and thoroughly searching each area. If you miss any of them then you can replay missions by accessing the terminals in each HQ.
Final Thoughts:
The game was very enjoyable and a nice improvement over its predecessor. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel it definitely enhances it enough to easily recommend it to super hero fans. All of the minor improvements add up to a much more enjoyable experience accompanied by an ambitious albeit somewhat predictable storyline that feels satisfying and I can’t wait to get back into that world especially with the promise of additional content/characters in the works.
Score: 4/5
I played this game and thoroughly enjoyed it. My only gripe is that the achievemetns were glitchy if you were the second player, in a co-op mode offline. It wouldn't save the second players progress at all, so if you were to log off or take a break, they would have all of their stats reset again if they played second player, or you would be starting from the beginning if they were first player. It was pretty bothersome for my friend when he ended up getting only half of the achievements he should have gotten.
Though that aside, I really enjoyed the game and the abundance of different characters you could play as, and like you said I did play the game twice to play as both pro-reg and anti-reg. Though personally it makes it seem like pro-reg is the bad guy, even if you were pro-reg.
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