Gamefly has been pretty unforgiving to my spare time and sanity in the recent months. From Brutal Legend's tedious battle system to White Knight Chronicles ... well, everything. The game rental gods are determined to drown my inner-child with 15-hour plus game experiences. Gaming experiences which end with a fizz instead of a bang. This week I ejected from my PS3, Activision published and Vicarious Vision developed, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 -- presumably for the last time. Vicarious Visions did what they could, but giving this action-rpg-beat'em up the veneer of the popular Civil War comic run is beyond poetic justice. Ultimate Alliance 2 has it all, a convoluted story no logical thinking gorilla could make heads or tales of. Little design issues coupled with a mildly vanilla battle system and graphical bugs makes Ultimate Alliance 2 a prime candidate for an eventual $6.99 purchase at a Big Lots bargain bin near you.

 

 

The title screen looks like someone took Silly-Putty and placed it on every Civil War comic cover and proceeded to use the actual putty for the character designs. I'm harsh, but it's to compensate for the good intentions that UA2 'tries' to accomplish at every bullet pointed feature and ultimately comes up short. From the first [of many] cut scenes you get the sense that this epic tale has no intentions of presenting either the story or game mechanics in a direct and elegant manner. The voice acting grew on me, but I think its because I felt kidnapped as opposed to having a moving experiences that transported me to a magical mutant land. Having the option of playing with three friends is the main draw for most people who play this game religiously. At least it should be, the multiplayer is where the fun lives in UA2, otherwise most of the game consists of you trying to make sense of an odd pairing of bland and chaotic battles.

The world of UA2 may be familiar to the fans of this top-down isometric 'punch, punch, go' -fest, but I found the camera an inch too far from the action. There is minimal control over the camera. With the right analog stick you swing the scene around and by pure luck it may just zoom in to show you Gambits arm clipping into a wall. Clipping and jittery rag doll-bested foes aside, UA2 isn't a bad looking game. Unless you find yourself experiencing one of the many RPG tropes the game revels in, that being, talking to your fellow mutants and superhuman. In a Walmart-version of Mass Effect's dialogue wheel, you may choose from three conversational paths [Aggressive, Diplomatic, Defensive] all of which rarely impact the outcome of the grand tale, and all of which gives you a close up of a game with dead-eyed characters and awful motion captured disfigured bodies.

 

 

There is actually a fun element, but you have to peel back layers of mediocre level design and restrictive combat. You can beat up robots and SHEILD soldiers to eventually do a Fusion Technique which is, both, the biggest bonus and set back of the combat. Exploring the proper combination of characters for a given environment [Protip: Probably not a good idea to pick Iceman on stages with fire.] UA2 a cerebral feel, but when you can walk in the room with Deadpool & Marvel Girl most obstacles feel easy to overcome. This makes the many combinations of Fusion Techniques feel like wastes of energy especially when a fair amount of the combinations look exactly the some. Luckily there are little bullet points worth checking out. Leveling up your characters and finding the hundreds of secret dossiers and audio files make this game a completionist's dream. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 is not a terrible game, but it is very forgettable in an age where more refined games come out every other month.

I Give Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2

 

The "Awful Drawing By Rob Liefeld" Award

 

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