game-worn

A Decent Game, but Ultimate? Not So Much...
As my title states, Marvel Ultimate Alliance doesn't deserve criticism as great as it gets in my opinion, but it's definitely not the greatest comic-adapted game that's ever been released. To most definitively state my opinion about the game, for pretty much every pro there's a con, and regarding gameplay specifically I would say there are more cons than pros.

The game plays like a pretty token Action RPG, or what's more specifically thought of as a dungeon crawler; I myself haven't played either of the X-Men Legends titles which I know are extremely similar to this game, as they share the same developer as this game once again, but if you've played titles such as the Gauntlet franchise and/or the Diablo franchise, you won't find too much new here. There are the standard hub levels, generic baddies, money, (which is rationalized as credits of SHIELD) unique variations on aforementioned generic baddies, and super uniques, which could actually be thought of as simple bosses I suppose... All of this sounds decent again if you're familiar with said games, but it doesn't get much more than decent, as the archetypal weakness of said games is the fact that they're often little more than grind fests. All you need to do is the same monotonous actions over, and over again to get through the game, regardless of which characters you choose; (we'll get to that in a moment) some groups have it easier for sure, but as long as you actually rack up experience and/or money, you'll derive very little challenge from this game, if any at all. To the game's credit, a lot of the powers are rendered as cool, and I think it's interesting that what functions as spell casting can be rationalized as sci-fi based superhuman abilities (unless we're dealing with Dr. Strange of course, tee-hee). Some of the boss fights are fun too, though most are comically (no pun intended) simple, even for kids I would believe. You also get team commands, and basic physical combos, though those don't' actually come off as too necessitated as far as I go, but none of the features actually come off as a hindrance or overly gimmicky, so I'd say they're more preferable than not. With all that said, overall the gameplay is a mediocre affair; it's reasonably fun at first, but by about a half hour in things get mundane, even when you switch up characters as the characters function more as classes than unique beings, and thusly we segue the presentation.

You get 27 playable characters present within MUA... That may seem totally cool, but when a lot of characters have almost completely replicated moves about them as at least 3 or 4 others, it comes off a little annoying. Furthermore, there's a blatant imbalance in the power level of most characters... This is bad enough in itself, but when characters who aren't even that powerful within the comics (most notably Captain America) are the absolute most powerful in the game, even when measured up against someone like Thor, things become rather disappointing if you're actually into comics. Not everything is bad though with regards to the source material... Within the game you collect simulator discs, which allow you to play through key or notable storylines of whatever character the disc corresponds to, allowing your characters to grow stronger individually, while granting the player even more augmentations to annihilate all the general baddies (although that was already easy enough, but again added effort for game depth should be respected). The menu system is pretty standardized; all the basic options are present, there's nothing fantastical about it, so it isn't a highlight or something glaringly poor. Most character quotes are pretty cool, although certain characters are seemingly made too PC (notably Ms. Marvel, Deadpool, definitely Wolverine, maybe Blade, etc.)

With reference to the quotes' execution though by the way, - and regardless of the pedantic nature of this - the voice cast is probably the most generally achieving thing about the game. It's no surprise that it's listed within the manual, as the cast is made up of so many all-stars the game budget must've truly been great. The voice director was Kris Zimmerman, who also served as the Metal Gear Solid franchise voice director, and she did wonders for this title as well; many notable MGS voice actors are present, such as Quinton Flynn, (Raiden - Spider-Man and Arcade within the game) Cam Clarke (Liquid Snake - Thor within the game) Kim Mai Guest, Tasia Valenza, Greg Eagles, Paul Eiding, and the list goes on... Other voice actors of more miscellaneous notability include Crispin Freeman, (Siegfried within the Soul franchise) Dee Bradley Baker, and April Stewart... And again there is even more notable talent. While there was no limit to the expense of the voice acting, and all the quality was great, some of the voices didn't fit the characters too well in my opinion... April Stewart as Ms. Marvel came off too flat, Gregg Berger as Galactus came off way too gruff and generally malevolent.... However the mismatched voices regarding the nature of the characters are primarily exceptions, not the rule... Furthermore, I will say that pretty much every character who'd appeared within a film had a voice very analogous to their film's incarnation, despite the fact that none of them were voiced by their live action actors. Regarding other facets of sound, the soundtrack ranges from mediocre to pretty great. At no point does it come off really annoying, but there are definitely tracks I'm more partial to than others, most notably the main track within Mephisto's realm... Something that did bother me was that each of the tracks have a sort of a lull about them whenever you're not fighting enemies, which occurs a little bit too much for a dungeon crawler I might add, but this is again more of a pedantic complaint, and said lulls usually don't last more than 30 sec - a minute, unless you're in the middle of a puzzle of some kind (those are kind of insulting by the way, though IGN covers that well in their review so you can check that out if you're curious there). The sound effects are pretty standard; nothing is overly great, nothing is overly poor... I've never been one to scrutinize sound effects anyway to state it frankly though...

I don't want to reveal too much of the storyline, but definitively I will say it's well executed and developed, but it comes off a bit too far-fetched if you're into comics, and again a little bit too PC in my opinion... Dr. Doom is the main antagonist, (that's SO unexpected of course) and assembles a new incarnation of the Masters of Evil, one which is ludicrously large I should observe too, though the generals are easily marked as Loki, Enchantress, Ultron (yeah that makes tons of sense...) and Baron Mordo (the Mandarin also serves as a former general; find out more in game). Your team of (surrealistically large and misfit) superheroes/anti-heroes is dispatched by SHIELD to stop them, and because of said events this has your group span pretty much every corner of the Marvel Universe (okay not totally, but the destinations are really dynamic and some very unique) to stop Doom/other Masters of Evil (as if those other guys matter :-P). The story is compelling enough to merit at least one play through if you find the gameplay as monotonous as I did at first, though again don't expect it to come off really realistic, and it probably isn't the most epic storyline you'll ever deal with within a video game either, referencing games derived from licensed material or otherwise... Still, I think Marvel could've produced something a lot worse, and overall I thought it was better than not (as mentioned, it was the main reasoning for me playing through the whole game aside from the achievements).

Overall, Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a game that achieves more than it fails, though not by much. If you're a fan of comics and/or action rpgs/dungeon crawlers, this is probably worth picking up, (especially at the price it's at now) and again with reference to how inexpensive the game is, I would suggest it to most people too... Don't expect an utterly flooring storyline or gameplay experience, and you'll probably have a decent time playing through... Do so though, and try not to write an extremely critical (and biased) review, as the game isn't THAT BAD.

Great game
This is a great game. My copy got scratched due to a problem with the Xbox. I bought another Xbox and went to buy a copy and now they are charging over 0 for this game? What happened?????? A profit is one thing but that is ridiculous!

Don't pay the asking price here!
You can buy this game at Gamestop for under . The prices they are asking here are RIDICULOUS!!!

Good for my 9 year old Marvel Fan
Great for kids, but as an adult, I prefer the more "open-world" type games like Web of Shadows and Force Unleashed. This game was released 2 years prior to those, but I found the gameplay "crowded" trying to manage a team of 4 superheros onboard a ficitonal "helicarrier." I prefer a focus on one character and better character development in a game. Also, upgrades menu is somewhat difficult to figure out. Why??? Game creators could've done a lot better with that. I haven't finished the game yet, but after a few levels, it's moderately fun and entertaining. My kids love the fact that they can be any marvel hero or villian they want. Doctor Doom, Magneto, Hulk, Iron Man, you name it!

DLC vs. Gold? Gold for multiple people on same Xbox
The most compelling reason to buy this over the Hero/Villain DLC is that the DLC is tied to a single account and the gold edition of the game is not. Sadly I found this out too late and now my son must play on my account to get use of the Hulk or Dr. Doom.