'Ultimate Alliance 2' ultimately inconsistent

• By JOSHUA WASCOM
• Special to 2theadvocate.com
• Published: Nov 3, 2009

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It really seems like the transition from comics to video games should be easy. Both forms of media rely heavily on distinctive visuals and unique characters, and the action that normally plays a large role in superhero comics should translate well into familiar game mechanics.

Yet, games like “Arkham Asylum” -- which perfectly captures the spirit of the character while also presenting fun, engaging gameplay -- are rare, and games like the Wii version of “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2” -- which captures the spirit of a halfhearted attempt to cash in on the popularity of some comic book characters -- are all too common.

“Ultimate Alliance 2” starts with a good foundation, story-wise. It pulls most of its concepts from two of the more ethically interesting recent storylines in the Marvel universe. When evidence arises that a country in Eastern Europe is essentially creating supervillains, a group of superheroes decide to take unilateral international action. Unforeseen consequences of this action eventually lead to a huge rift in the superhero community. What it means for you is a lot of fighting against and beside well-known superheroes and villains.

There are 26 different heroes and villains from which to choose, though most of these have to be unlocked as you progress through the game. The different characters are one of the best features of the game is the variety between characters, as they have some substantially different power sets. Each player controls one of a team of four characters, with the computer picking up the slack when fewer than four people are playing.

Well, I say “picking up the slack,” but I mean “doing a ludicrously bad job.” The AI of the computer characters seems custom-designed to waste your time and your characters’ health. When they aren’t swarming around you to maximize enemy explosion damage, your “allies” will be relentlessly failing to perform the combos that are almost the only way to refill your life and energy.

Which brings up another problem: checkpoints are few and far between, and there are often easy but tedious fights before difficult encounters. This, combined with the unfortunate AI and the slow life restoration, left us often replaying repetitive, boring stretches just to get back to the part where we were actually failing. To make matters worse, the difficult sections usually aren’t the sort of hard that requires interesting or creative strategies; they just involve enemies with simple attack patterns but huge amounts of life.

The difficulty isn’t the only area of unpleasant inconsistency. The level design goes from bland set-paths with invisible walls, to a more branching layout with innovatively frustrating invisible doors, thanks to questionable camera angles. Playing with multiple people is a must, thanks to the bad AI, yet the game frequently strips control from everyone but Player 1. Even the character variety can raise problems, since some characters are significantly more interesting to play than others, but by the time you realize this, you’re so far from a character swap point that you just have to go on not having fun.

“Ultimate Alliance 2” is simply not going to impress anyone, even fans of Marvel’s characters – the voice acting alone will see to that. You can almost hear the voice actors not caring, The Invisible Woman sounds more like the Invisible 12-Year-Old Girl, and the less said about Thor, the better. If you can get two or three other people together to play it, it may be worth a rental. Otherwise, avoid it.