Raven Software really opened up a whole new genre to Xbox gamers with Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Growing up my brothers and I had always watched X-Men, bought the comics, and were immersed in the generation of Spider Man and Thor. Now, the developers at Raven have given a whole new life to so many of those characters that we forgot about. Numerous games in the past have touched upon this genre and had games similar, but the graphics and variety of playable characters is fantastic. Before I get into the characters, I'll start out with the basics.

Overview
The story line follows Dr. Doom as he tries to take over the world. Beginning this war by attacking a S.H.I.E.L.D. air ship, this prompts Nick Fury to enlist the help of our cast of super heros by sending out a distress call, and enter in our array of super heros. The game comes with 25 unlocked and immediately playable characters and 8 locked characters. In alphabetical order, they are: Black Panther, Blade, Captain America, Colossus, Daredevil, Deadpool, Dr. Strange, Elektra, Ghost Rider, Human Torch, Ice Man, Invisible Woman, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Mr. Fantastic, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, Nick Fury, Silver Surfer, Spider Man, Spider Woman, Storm, Thing, Thor, and Wolverine. There are two versions of the game, the original and the Gold Edition. The Gold Edition includes a Hero/Villian pack which unlocks 8 more playable characters, and also adds 12 new achievements to the game. Those characters are: Cyclops, Hulk, Hawkeye, Nightcrawler, Dr. Doom, Sabertooth, Magneto, and Venom. This pack is also available for those who have the original edition as a downloadable pack on Xbox Live for 800 Microsoft Points. 

Using this pretty impressive spread of super heros, the player must navigate through a labyrinth of Dr. Doom's henchmen in order to stop him from taking over the world. With over 140 characters in the game, there is sure to be many that rekindle memories of the past, and most likely some that you don't even recognize. But half of the fun running through the game was seeing who you would have to fight next. The story line was a little weak in my opinion but the variety of villains really kept you interested. 

Game Play / Objectives - 8.5 / 10
The game is more a less a smash and grab meets slasher without the gore. From that standpoint, although there is violence, the game does not have blood and gore which is a plus for the wary parent buying games these days. The camera is more or less an aerial shot the whole game, which you can control and rotate to a degree, but some screens make it difficult. Three buttons pretty much dominate your attacks, they are a light melee, heavy attack, and grapple move. There are two modes of play during the game, and of course the multiplayer mode on Xbox Live. One feature I love about the individual console multiplayer is the immediate play option. If a player wants to join at any moment during normal game play, player 1 can pause the game, turn on a second (or third or fourth) controller and activate the new player into their game. A simple but handy feature as its nice to not have to restart the level in order to add a player in. 

Co-op Mode - This is the standard multi player mode on an individual console, where all of the players are aiming to achieve the same objective as a team. Each console can accommodate up to 4 players.

Arcade Mode - A neat feature, this is more like the old arcade games where you are playing as a team, but at the end of each level or segment in a level, each player is evaluated on their performance based on the number of kills, finishing moves, and coins collected. Then the top player is rewarded with experience points for being the best player in that section. This is definitely a different feature to me but I like it because it incorporates some of the old with the new. 

Multiplayer Online - Identical to the co-op mode you can play on an individual console, the Xbox Live feature allows you to connect up with other players from around the world. There is also an Arcade Mode option within the multiplayer on Xbox Live. This is fun and can be entertaining without having to start from the beginning of the game each time. The host of the game can load a starting point for the Xbox Live play from one of their saved missions on their console. A handy feature if you are having trouble getting through a level or want to obtain any of the online achievements that are in the game. 

Throughout the game there are practice missions for almost all of the characters you play with. They are simulations you either play through as that individual character or as a team of four. These simulator discs provide practice and give you a chance to use all of the characters, in addition to providing you with coins you can use to upgrade each of the characters. Each character has four outfits that you can change at any save point. Each outfit obviously changes the character's clothing, but also provides three different categories of strength that the outfit provides. They may be increased max health, increased defense, increased experience points per kill etc. Using the coins you collect throughout the game, you can upgrade each of these categories under each outfit as you see fit. Each Upgrade has slots you can increase by buying them one at a time, which is where the coins come in. Each coin has different values and they accumulate in your bank to be spent on upgrades for each of the different outfits for each character. You don't need to upgrade each outfit, but whichever one you use the most you can make that one as strong as possible to make it easier to fight enemies. The only down side to this is the cost of the upgrades. They obviously start out small but they increase in price drastically and to upgrade all of the four characters you play with gets very expensive. A minor detail but the good side of this is that you can use the simulator missions (some have endless enemies running at you) to accumulate a large amount of money very quickly for these upgrades. 

There is another way to upgrade your characters and thats by equipping them with items that you pick up throughout the game. Some items are dropped by bosses after you defeat them, others are found hidden in levels. Each character can be equipped with one item to help boost a variety of attributes such as their strength, health, or experience points. The down side to this is you can only equip one item per character. Another down side is that you can only hold so many items. Later on in the game if you do not sell any item you pick up, (which you can do at any time) you will get an "inventory full" message and have to either pick something to sell, or pass by the newly discovered item. The game has an auto equipping system which I left on because I didn't really want to deal with having to equip something for each character I play with. The auto equipping didn't really make a huge difference in my play, at least that I felt. It may have had more of an impact if I had gone through and done it by hand. 

Graphics - 7.5 / 10
The graphics were a bit lackluster. I hold the bar high with most Xbox games and this one just didn't meet my expectations. A very large majority of the game the camera angle is an aerial view that you can (most of the time) rotate around 360 degrees. It does get hung up however and you aren't always able to get behind your character, which makes navigating through the map a bit challenging sometimes. This aerial view really didn't give the player a good view into a lot of the detail in the game. The distance away made it hard for me to really appreciate any intricacies in the objects/scenery in the levels. The cut scenes were great, full of vivid detail and crisp clear movement, but the game play itself just didn't match the quality. 

Sound - 8.5 / 10
Sound was decent but not outstanding. I appreciated the little sound effects they put into it such as the sound of feet running on metal grates, but the soundtrack itself was somewhat bland. Another effect that stands out in my mind is one of Wolverine's attacks that creates the sound of his claws scraping together, which I thought was a neat addition. MUA isn't exceptional in its sound choices but they certainly aren't bad either. Oddly enough though I have encountered numerous times throughout the game where there is no sound playing at all, which did stand out to me as a bit odd. Eventually, though, the music picked up again as the game went on. Nothing special here just your standard background noise and relatively simple sound effects.

Overall I can't say I expect much from soundtracks with very few exceptions. Certain racing games I've played have basically had a jukebox built into the game where you could pick the kind of music, the group, etc. I know it's not reasonable to think that would be in every game but if it doesn't have something like that, so long as the sound effects aren't sounding too shoddy or cheap I don't really nitpick in this area. 

Achievements - 9 / 10
The game has a total of 58 achievements worth 1250 points. The hero/villain downloadable pack (which you can get off Xbox Live for 800 Microsoft Points) however, adds 12 new achievements to the game which brings the total to 58. Without the hero/villain pack there are only 46 achievements. I had a great time getting the achievements for this game. Some are a bit difficult though, as in win 100 arcade mode levels, or complete 25 levels with 4 players on Xbox Live. Overall though, they are all attainable and within reason. Also, getting achievements that involve the simulator disc missions and unlocking the character outfits help you immensely in earning money to upgrade your characters.

Down Sides
Working the camera proved to be a difficult task for me at times. Certain corners or levels with a lot of trees were a little annoying to navigate through as the camera wouldn't always go in the direction you wanted it to. Also, the simulator missions were a bit of an annoyance and could be extremely difficult if you didn't collect them all on the easiest difficulty setting. The four player missions were a good way to gain a lot of money in a short amount of time, but the single player missions for individual characters could be a big headache. The money you gained from these missions didn't always go very far as the upgrades for each outfit get more and more expensive as you level them up.

Overall - 8 / 10
When it comes down to it, the game is pretty simple. Simple graphics, simple story line, just plain simple. For that reason it doesn't score higher than an 8 with me, but some would wonder why I would give it an 8 if it is so simple. I'm a big comic book and X-Men fan. I like games like this simple or not. So if you can find it used for cheap, which I'm pretty positive you can, pick it up for some decent entertainment.

© Copyright 2009 - ace3502

Any Questions? Feel free to message my Xbox Live Gamertag: DJTherapy1

Other Xbox 360 Game Reviews:
Call Of Juarez
Civilization Revolution
Project Gotham Racing 4
Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
Spider-Man: Friend Or Foe
Spider-Man: Web Of Shadows
Viking: Battle For Asgard

Recommended: Yes