TheChez.net

by Hydro033

I know this review is very late to the game but just bear with me because I just got around to playing it. I’m a big fan of co-op games and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance for Nintendo Wii is built for co-op. You take four Marvel superheroes and try to stop Dr. Doom from being a dick. Sounds great right? Well, it is and isn’t. The game is great fun when playing with friends, not so much alone, but the constant glitches, confusing menus, and poor presentation really hamper the experience. The game is still a lot of fun to play but the frustration is sometimes overwhelming.

The game has a huge cast of superheroes to choose from. Selecting different heroes and using their unique abilities is by far the best asset of the game. It’s always a pleasure to try out a newly unlocked hero and use that newly unlocked move. The characters are as follows: * Captain America, Colossus, Deadpool, Elektra, Human Torch, Iceman, Invisible Woman, Iron Man, Luke Cage. Moon Knight, Mr. Fantastic, Ms.Marvel, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Storm, Thing, Thor, Wolverine, Black Panther, Blade, Daredevil,  Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider, Nick Fury, and Silver Surfer. It’s a great cast to choose from.

The main mechanic of game, going around and just beating the shit out of stuff, works great. The boss battles on the other hand… suck. They are often confusing puzzles that require quick-time events to defeat the boss. Other times, the bosses are just ridiculously easy or ridiculously difficult. It’s very inconsistent but the puzzles are by far the worst. There is no clue as what to do and my friend and I literally spent a half hour on one boss battle just running around trying to figure out how to damage him. It gave absolutely no hint, clue, or anything.

The glitches are also abound in this game. Sometimes we would just die without even noticing. Other times people would get trapped or fall off a cliff or something stupid. The enemy AI was pretty shabby at times too. They sometimes only chased one character while avoiding the other or didn’t even attack us at all. The controls were pretty much awful also. The Wii motion sensing controls just blew. We all ended up using the control pad to scroll through attacks and use the A button instead of using their gestures. The gestures just didn’t work. The menu also had confusing buttons and you could accidentally sell items without any warning screens. You couldn’t even trade items, you needed characters to drop them and have your teammate then walk over to it and pick it up in order to trade. It was stupid and annoying.

Besides the slow menus, the game was slow in general. The story kept dragging on and just tried to include as many Marvel characters and places as it could. There were no twists as the games story was pretty awful as was the dialogue. It was straight-forward, eye-roll inducing, and in need of much debugging. I guess it was rushed to stores. The graphics were pretty shabby too but that’s just because the Wii version and the PS2 were identical, which sucks because the Wii got held back to last gen graphics when it’s capable of more.

Other than that, the game was fun. Like I said, it’s all about playing with friends. It was a good time playing together and we even laughed at how bad the game was at times. Of course the greed factor played a roll when items were dropped, but shit happens. If it wasn’t a Marvel game it would blow pretty hard, but since I’m biased and Marvel rocks house, It was a decent experience. I just hope the sequel improves the many downfalls of it’s predecessor.

2/5 Chezwicks