Gamer Review:
WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS!
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Are you ready to fight epic battles with the help of Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, Booster Gold, and more to save the WORLD!?! Then you’re playing the wrong freakin game because then it would be called DC Ultimate Alliance 2 you mo-ron. Go play Mortal Kombat vs DC or that Justice League Heroes game that was on PS2 and original Xbox. That game gives me shivers just thinking about it and I never even played it. But I’m sure nothing compares to the Fantastic Four movie game. Anyways as the title or massive picture of Spider-man and friends on the cover implies, this is Marvel’s fourth group action/RPG title but the sequel to the first Ultimate Alliance. Unfortunately, though being a sequel it has nothing to tie it to its predecessor other than the 2 in the title. Although they make a slight mention to MUA1 if you talk to Thor in Stark Tower where he talks of Odin still punishing Dr. Doom and a tale of how he beat Galactus the Devourer of Worlds (WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE CAUSE IT’S GALACTUS). Sorry. If you did play MUA1, then you may remember at the end where Galactus seems to have set his eyes on Earth as his next main course because nobody steals from Galactus and lives. Thankfully MUA2 didn’t get crappier the second time like X-men Legends 2 did coming from X-men Legends. I will admit that after having played Legends, Legends 2, and MUA I’d felt that I’d seen all that Marvel had to offer. MUA2 actually surprised me a bit. 
The story this time around is based on one of Marvel’s greatest series Civil War written by Michael Bendis. Civil War is about how certain events happen causing a bill to be passed mandating that all super powered individuals must be registered and trained by the federal government. The result causes a split down the middle of Marvel’s heroes. Captain America becomes the symbol to rally those opposed to the registration and Iron Man is the leader for those pro-registration. Civil War is a powerful story that is still causing ripples throughout the Marvel Universe. Being such a big fan of the series and having read all the stories dealing with Civil War, I guess I can appreciate what they tried to do with MUA2 better than most. Although MUA2 follows the basics of CW, it still leaves out a couple major events like the death of Goliath by the cloned version of Thor and Spider-man publicly revealing his secret identity to the entire world. Also they leave out Iron Man’s implementation of the Avengers Initiative project; the purpose being to place a licensed superhero team in each of the 50 states of the US. MUA2 completely cuts out the end of CW and adds its own version. Supposedly the electronic device used to keep the supervillains in check develops its own AI called the Hive and tries to take over the entire world. But without trying to be nitpicky MUA2 does a pretty solid job conveying CW into a video game setting.Visually it’s not much different than its previous titles except the usual smoothing out of graphics and such. Unfortunately, I’d have to say the CGI cut scenes didn’t look near as good as MUA1 or even Legends 2 for that matter. Granted in those games there was only like 5 CGI cut scenes but that just made you treasure their visual beauty that much more. If you’ve ever picked up any of the previous titles then you’re already familiar with MUA2’s controls despite a few changes. I can’t remember if it was this way for MUA1 but I noticed they replaced having to collect stamina jars to continue using attacks, with a stamina meter that simple runs low and forces you to wait a couple seconds to replenish (which makes the most sense). Once again you take control of 1 of 4 heroes that you have in your group that help you throughout the game. Sadly, MUA2 has maybe half the amount of characters to choose from that you could in MUA1. Among the characters you have, half of them you’ve already played with if you’ve played MUA1. Some of the new faces are Hulk, Songbird, Venom, Green Goblin, Penance, Iron Fist, and Cyborg Nick Fury. They are however slowly releasing additional characters as DLC (curse those money hungry SOBs). The biggest change that MUA2 tried to implement was its power fusions.
With its predecessors’ each hero would have their own special big attack but with MUA2 they wanted to form more of a team strategy kind of thing. Personally, despite a few different fusions I thought were cool, I didn’t enjoy the concept. The fusions fall into 1 of 3 categories: Clearing, Guided, and Targeted. Clearing was in case you found yourself surround but hordes of enemies and needed to quickly thin their ranks and make it more of a fair fight. Targeted are for specifically dealing a lot of damage to a particular enemy (usually bosses or mini-bosses). And guided is pretty much same as clearing yet with guided you’re characters are using the fusion to physically push forward rather than staying in the same spot. What I didn’t enjoy about it was that all the fusions were basically the same exact thing. I mean there’s like 7 different fusions and all the rest are just imitations of the same thing but with different color. For example, out of all the 23 other heroes Wolverine can do fusions with (freakin Wolverine) half of them are fast ball specials and the other half are him charging around with the other character slashing at enemies. Oops my bad. I just forgot that he has a couple where the other hero shoots an energy beam at his claws and he deflects it out to all the enemies around him, but still 3 moves out of 23 different heroes. What kind of crap is that!?!
As you play the story for the first time through and decide whether to be pro or anti-registration it limits some of the characters you’re able to play with during Act 2. I actually kind of liked that because what sense would it make if you went pro-registration, trying to kick Captain America’s teams butt while you had Capt in your party? Once you’ve played through either story once you can go back and play through it again using all the characters you’ve unlocked at whatever level they were. Unfortunately, you can only do that on the Legendary difficulty. Although by the time I finished the first time through I believe most of my characters were already like level 50 so it’s not that much more of a challenge but some of those boss fights can get aggravating at that difficulty setting.
Once I had unlocked all the heroes, the group I decided to stick with was Hulk, Human Torch, Captain America, and Thor. Hulk is by far the strongest character you can have in your group (as well he should be). But even on Legendary it was almost laughably so because he has this charging move that deals a lot of damage and usually ends with him tackling an enemy while pummeling them into the ground. What made it so hilarious was that 3/4 of the bosses were so much smaller than him that it allowed you to actually tackle them. Then once they started getting up you just charge them again and again until they finally died and they never got off a single punch. That’s why HULK IS STRONGEST THERE IS!!! I liked Torch’s fire abilities plus with all the explosions and fires in the levels it was good to know at least one person in your party wasn’t affected by it. Even though Hulk is the strongest, Thor could give him a run for his money on MUA2. Some of the blows Thor dishes out with Mjolnir deals almost as much damage as Hulk. His lightening attacks are pretty useful and he
also has this great attack where he slams Mjolnir to the ground causing everyone to fly up in the air thus knocking them off guard and off their feet. The choice of Captain America was just because you gotta love Capt and ever since his death at the end of Civil War (which isn’t in the main CW issues but a separate Capt comic); I missed the ‘ol red, white, and blue (because I don’t like Bucky as the new Capt.).Thought I’d close with some of my favorite boss battles even though this is probably the longest blog I’ve written so far and considered splitting into 2 blogs. But I’ve really enjoyed writing this one more so than the others I think (probably because I love Marvel so much). Most of the boss battles were ok but the 2 that stuck near and dear to my heart were the ones against Multiple Man and Colossus because they’re 2 of my favorite Marvel characters. I mean seeing Colossus wasn’t that much of a shock to me because I’d already played with him in the previous 3 games but I bout cut a flip when MM came on the screen. I sometimes think people tend to underestimate him but you can see how he could easily be a force to be reckoned with. The more his dupes kept popping up, the bigger the smile on my face became. MULTIPLE MAN ROCKZ! Though I will have to say Colossus gave me more of a fight than the last boss battle with Cyborg Nick Fury (which felt like one of the easiest battles in the game even on Legendary). The villain that gave me the most trouble in the game (on normal and especially Legendary) was surprisingly Crimson Dynamo. He consistently kept taking my guys down because I couldn’t really seem to find his weakness. The only other boss on Legendary that was kicking my butt was She-Hulk which pissed me off to no end because I had HULK and she’s just his half as strong cousin. She was also one of the bosses Hulk couldn’t tackle which is what made it so hard.
Overall, it made my Spidey sense tingle so I give it 4 Boop BOOPS out of 5.
EXCELSIOR!
A Greystone Production
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