I ordered the game online about a week before it’s release and to my surprise it was sitting on my desk when I got home on Wednesday. I dropped the disc into my 360 a started a brand new single player campaign. The opening cut scene is quite cool and the cut scenes in general look great. The in-game visuals don’t fall short either especially considering the amount of things that can be onscreen at once.
The roster of characters should be familiar to anyone who played the first one with a handful of additions and replacements, most of which are welcome. After the introduction level the game hands you a good number of characters to build your team with, none of which really lack when compared to each other. The RPG elements are all there from the first game too, but slightly toned down. You’ll be able to assign power points to 4 different powers for each character and ability points to 4 to 6 different abilities. The powers are a lot of fun, especially with the heavier character like Thor and Hulk.
My single-player adventure got me about 30 minutes into the game when I received an invite to an Xbox Live co-op game. Now this is where the game really shines; multi-player. When on Xbox Live each player can choose their character and level them up however they please. This is also when the “Fusion” powers become the most fun. The “Fusion” powers allow two characters to team up and do a single devastating move with one of three effects; clearing, guided, or targeted. In single-player you simply hold the left trigger and press the button corresponding to the character you want to do a fusion with. In multi-player the two players that want to perform a “Fusion” both press the left trigger and the same time. This makes pulling them off more exciting, it gives you a feeling of teamwork and the pay off is always satisfying. Seeing Hulk throw Wolverine like a shot-put at straight at Yellow-Jacket’s cranium and then a damage counter of 500+ appear warrants an outburst of something along the lines of “Holy Shit!”
The game is incredibly addicting, especially when playing with a couple of friends in the same room, which I did for about 5 hours straight. There are a ton of collectibles to be found in every level ranging from power-ups to concept art and videos to training mission holograms that you can play at the HQ. The training missions are difficult and pose different challenges then the game’s regular missions. The game looks like it has a good amount of replay value, especially with the two different sides you get to choose from about an hour or so into the game.
Having said all of that, there are a few things I didn’t like. For instance the “Fusion” powers, while awesome, dont have much variety. If I had to guess how many different animations there are in total for these “Fusions” I’d say about 10, maybe 15. Not awful, but when given a roster of 24 characters that can fuse with each other you end up just seeing the same “Fusions” rendered a different color which just seems like a cheesy shortcut. This is also noticeable in a few of the characters regular powers, like Iron Man’s, Spiderman’s, and Human Torch’s projectile power. Another problem can be found on Xbox Live. The game has a tendency to lag when the action gets intense which really slows down the momentum and on top of that, if one player leaves, the game is over for everyone. The game is also pretty easy on the hardest available difficulty, there is one more to be unlocked, but you must beat the game first. And my final gripe is a small one, the dialog system. You get three choices in every conversation; one aggressive, one diplomatic, and one defensive. This wouldn’t be so bad if it were true, but the speech choices often do not match their category. Also your characters will not talk during these conversations which is annoying
Overall though the sheer amount of fun that you can have while wrecking house in this game, which is most of the time, makes up for all of the shortcomings. Now that I’ve clocked about 8 hours into the game (and no, I haven’t beaten it yet) I think I can honestly say this game gave me a GREAT first impression.
Alright, I’ll be playing Ultimate Alliance 2 if you need me.
