Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Xbox 360 Review

Activision’s action RPG, X-Men Legends offered up fifteen playable characters, whilst last years sequel, Rise of Apocalypse provided sixteen, but also allowed you to play as bad guys too. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (developed again by Raven Software, and a spiritual successor of sorts to the X-Men Legends series) offers an even larger cast, this time comprising of over twenty playable characters from the entire Marvel universe.

All of the most famous of Marvel characters, such as Spider-man, Wolverine, Captain America and Iron Man are here, each with all their unique powers. A team of up to four can be assembled, granting much scope for mixing and matching the characters. Furthermore, experimentation is encouraged as certain combinations of characters will award stat boosts for your entire team.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a simplistic fighting game, with rudimentary RPG elements thrown into the mix to give the game additional depth. Dr Doom has amassed a range of nasty bad guys to bring an evil plan to fruition, and it’s up to your equally impressive team to make sure his plan isn’t carried out.

You’ll spend your time, beating up nasty people, with basic punches, kicks and of course your fantastic powers, as well as the occasional dip in the menu to strengthen your team.

RPG elements are lighter than X-Men Legends and if you so wish they can be left completely behind the scenes for the CPU to deal with, which does an amicable job of bolstering your team, allowing you to continue the pummelling with no interruptions.

At heart, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a dungeon crawler, a genre that isn’t exactly renowned for its interesting environments, and the game does admittedly have its fair share of dull stages, but mercifully on the whole, they’re far more appealing than in X-Men Legends.

Without doubt the best element of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is the games multiplayer. Up to four players can play this, either off or online. There are two modes, cooperative allows for you to team up with up to three other players, whilst the arcade mode is essentially the same, but adds a touch of competitiveness to proceedings.

Much like X-Men Legends, the chaotic action in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance can be detrimental to the experience. The camera is so far out, the action is so fast and effects are so blinding, that too often you’ll lose sight of your character.

Less confusing action and more variety would have been nice, but even so Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a comic fans dream come true and a moderately entertaining dungeon crawler for everyone else.

7/10