The Marvel Universe is a treasure trove for game developers. If you do one project about each of the superheroes (and super villains) per month, then it will be enough for the next hundred years. But no, Raven wants everything at once!
Our subordinates, you guessed it, are taken straight from the Marvel comics. The team can include "X-Men", "Avengers", "Spider-Man", "Doctor Strange", "Electra", "Blade" and others - a total of twenty-five characters. As in X-Mep: Legends, there are only four players involved in combat at a time, so choose carefully. The balance between superheroes, in my opinion, could be better.
For example, Captain America is too strong, and with such a superhuman in your team, you hardly want to control the relatively weak Electra.
Despite the word "Ultimate" in the title, the game has nothing to do with the Marvel Universe: Ultimates. Actually, it is difficult to say how this project generally fits into the “Marvel” chronology: on the one hand, we have the “All Stars” team, on the other, in one of the missions we meet Bruce Banner, who does not yet know who he really is. ... By the way, it's a pity, because given the ability to destroy literally everything, "Hulk" would be just in place here.
The good news is that games have finally grown to the level of movies. No, it's not about the quality of the videos, the acting or the budgets. It's about layering. There are so many quotes from classic games in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance that finding them turns into a great workout for the mind. All the same, he has nothing to do in this game, reflexes work most of the time.
Let's say elevator rides with opponents falling from above are "Metal Slug". The Flying Dragon Cannon Shooting is taken from Medal of Honor. The journey through the arcade sends the gamer to Pitfall (even three crocodiles in place!), And some angles straight from Contra. Postmodern!
The set of levels is incredibly fast, and the distribution of experience points can be left to the discretion of the computer. Objects, however, are not enough, but when did superheroes rely on "magic underpants +25 to impact power"?
There are borrowings from "God of War" - for example, the fact that some opponents are especially sensitive to combined moves, and to execute a series of hits, you need to quickly press the buttons in the specified sequence. True, this is not done so harshly here: if you try, then ordinary enemies can be killed in the usual way, without resorting to such tricks.
An interesting (albeit controversial) innovation was the rejection of bottles with health and "mana" - now these substances drop out of all the oncoming enemies. The game has become more dynamic - it is impossible to "eat out" and you cannot starve your opponent out. However, a mistake can cost the lives of several members of your team, which means that you will have to go to the next save location with an incomplete composition. However, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a fairly simple game (although an additional difficulty mode opens upon passing), so you most likely will not have any problems with a lack of health.
The "bosses" in the game are the best in the genre. No more boring "snaps" while sipping drinks. Instead, to destroy almost every of the final opponents, you need to develop your own tactics or solve a puzzle. For example, fill up with columns or teleport exploding cockroaches to it.
I really liked the voice acting of the game. Quinton Flynn speaks for the beloved "Spiderman" (voice of Raiden from MGS2, Iruka Umino from Naruto and Timon from the series "The Lion King"), and the rest of the actors did not disappoint - they work a little worse than their colleagues from the cinema. The music, however, pumped up a little: it is here, rather, to fill the pauses between battles than to create an atmosphere.
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance came out on nine platforms at once, and it shows. If on PS2 and Xbox the project squeezes everything out of iron to the last, then on Xbox 360 and PC it does not look as good as other projects of the same genre.I got the feeling that the "current-gen" and "next-gen" versions of the game differ only in the presence of "normal mapping" and post effects - the character models and the environment seem to remain unchanged. And the strangest thing is that on a personal computer, the game looks worse than on Xxx 360, although there is nothing in the picture of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance that is too heavy for a modern personal computer.
