Wii Review: Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

Review by: wiifan001

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a fighting adventure some game. Over 20 different Marvel characters to play as- including some from the X-Men, Avengers, The Fantastic Four and other known Marvel characters. There are even 2 next-gen. characters intro'd in the game. They are known as Luke Cage and Moon Knight. I have to say that the super powers were implented well and almost to their fullest extent. There is a variety of attacks- from throws to projectiles, signature move, and even attacks where you swing your Wiimote and execute the attack. You even get to have 4 Marvel characters team up and all fight together and switch to another one of your 4 characters any time you want.

The problem comes when you're constantly switching and looking for your control schematics. When you can unleash your signature move, you must first scroll through some other control styles before using it while enemy combat is occuring causing you to possibly to lose health. If you haven't played it yet, I just simply put that the controls on the Wii were just slapped on and very unorganized. The Wiimote doen't always respond right to the attack you called on it. This is probably the biggest downfall of the game. On top of that, there are some puzzles occasionally. The puzzles in this game are dorky and shouldn't be in the game. The camera is pretty bad as well. To move the camera, simply rotate the nunchuck. The camera is so aggervating that it could make you a little sick to your stomach or give you a headache.

Throughout the game, you'll see a wide variety of creatures and dozens of bosses. Some can be fought head on and some you must use some strategy as to beat them. The boss battles are actually nice with only a few lousy ideas as to bosses. The bad guys have all joined together and is led by Dr. Doom. As you may expect, you must track down Doom and his minion and put a stop to the threat of ruling the galaxy. It's amazing that you'll be fighting in a wide variey of places. Before you know it, you'll be in Atlantis, in the skies, the depths of hell, a space stations, and even inside a pinball machine(?!) Along the way are Sketch Books and Simulator Discs. Simulator discs are extra side quest mission to complete. Most of them are individual with a few in a group of four. These missions aren't much fun, though. There are 2 kinds of multiplayer mode. Cooperative mode is working together to progress through the game. Arcade mode is competing against one another and collecting kills. Both modes are capable of 4 players. However, the Wii version being the only one without online mode hurts.
Naturally, you gain experience as you fight and collect items as you go and defeat enemies which boost your attack or defense or something among the sort. There will also be different costumes to collect. Classic Marvel fans will recognize costumes back in the old days and there are some recent costumes too.

As for graphics, the textures in the Wii version are rotten. The only good points in this game that stand out here is the movie trailers given every once in a while. Had the game looked that good during the play time, this would easily be the best looking Wii game out there. I've seen better background textures on a few N64 games.

The sound effects are one of the top achievements of the game. Numerous sound effects are throughout the game. There are several songs to be heard. The game has voice acting all throughout the game (considering there is a lot of text) from all the bosses and some villains.

Playing this game the first time through should take you about 25 hours if you skipped the Simulator Disc missions and other out of the way side quests. There are 3 levels of difficulty- Easy, Normal, and Hard. You may or may not want to check out the other modes.

Overall: It was very hard to choose between a 7 or a 7.5, but I gave it a 7 because the controls were just slapped on plus clunky and the lack of online multiplayer, bad camera and not so good graphics. I must give it credit for being an improvement to Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects.