Bub... you're a mess.

I've had the pleasure to get my fevery hands on the new Marvel action-RPG during the last couple of days, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. This game is very similar to one of my favorites, X-Men Legends. But this time, you get to play with more than just the X-Men...

First, I'd like to say that I'm pretty happy not having waited for the french release of the game and having played it in english, cause considering the quite numerous language twists proper to each caracter, I can only fear the worst when thinking of the butchery the translation will be. The game itself starts of with an AWESOME introduction, one of the most beautiful pre-rendered I've ever seen (and I've played numerous Square prods...). You get the pleasure to view more pre-rendered cut-scenes which are of as good quality as the intro.

The plot is quite twisted and really throws you quickly deep into the game... and it's REALLY hard to drop the joypad (yeah, it's really best played with a pad... with a LOT of buttons) once you get started. Just like with X-Men Legends, you get to set up your own team of heroes... actually, most of the game mechanics are almost 1:1 copies of the X-Men Legends games. This is not bad at all... but a bit fussy, since there a quite a lot of things to get used to and you don't necessarly have much time to learn them. This is maybe one of the dark spots of the game: the first hour, you'll do alot of try and error to get behind the controls, learn what does what, aso. A training disc from the beginning on would've been a nice idea... well...

There are quite a bunch of heroes to choose from, picked from around the entire Marvel Universe, and like with the previous games, you get to create special teams (Avengers, Fantastic Four, etc.), which grant you special bonuses. My choice fell on an Avengers Combo which I actually used all the way through, composed of Iron Man, Spider-Man, Luke Cage and my one and only love, Wolverine. I'd like to say that I'm a little bit disappointed by the relative low number of heroes to choose from... I mean, when you read the title, you would expect more than about 25 dudes... but there aren't. Additionnaly to all the stuff you could already do in X-Men Legends, you can now customize your heroes a bit more, like changing their clothes and improve these. Sadly, the "gear" shop has disappeared and you can't equip more than one gear at a time, which will mean alot of zapping through the gears in order to equip the best ones at a chosen moment... this can prove quite a pain in the ass, I encountered this problem before a couple of boss battles. Speaking of which... boss battles... wow! I mean, the whole game is just full of bosses! This is really a neat point and breaks the monotony which can arise due to the quite low number of different "standard" foes.

The environnements are all superb and original... some of them are twisted and reflect (even respect) wonderfully the comic books' spirit and design. Big point for the underwater level...
Graphically, well... to be honest, the game can be absolutly beautiful... IF you have a recent high-end graphics card. On my 6600GT, I was unable to play in high-res with advanced lighting enabled. This is a bit exagerated... but well... it didn't turn down the experience.

I finished the game with all sub-quests in about 20 hours (on normal setting), which is pretty fair. And there are a bunch of things to do even when you've beat the game, like the training missions, proper to each hero. This all adds some lifespan to it, although I regret the quite short and flat sub-quests (some are just about items to pick up on your way... so you never really leave the main quest).

Overall, I was really anxious to see a "sequel" or better said, a game similar to X-Men Legends, and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance did the job to keep me entertained, by delivering a great looking, a little short game with a rich and superb scenario. Although I don't think I'll play it through again, I guess it was worth the bucks I spent on it... ;p