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Marvel Ultimate Alliance Gold Edition Review (continued)
More User Submitted Marvel Ultimate Alliance Gold Edition Reviews
Date: 2007-06-07
how the game should have been
The gold edition is superior to the orginal in a few but effictive ways.First 8 new charactors to choose from (Includeing VENOM,HULK!!!) but maybe its just me or the graffics have been improved a little. luckly I just rented the orginal marvel ultimate alliense.Any way get this game NOW!!. Also I give the original alliense game a 3 out of 5
Date: 2007-05-29
An upgrade of a near-perfect game.
I had an absolute blast with this game. It combines old-school arcade beat-em-up madness with RPGish character advancement, a fantastic story, and let us not forget a roster of some 140 classic Marvel comics characters, over 30 playable. Then, of course, there is the much-hyped option of creating and naming your own superhero dream team. You start out with four heroes of your choice and the more you team these characters up on missions, the more experience and prestige your team gains. This leads you to upgrade your mighty force with great stat bonuses and an expanded roster. Cool, cool stuff if you're a fan of comics or superheroes in general. If you're a wise gamer, you can send any of several Avengers line-ups, the X-men, or the Fantastic Four along with many other "secret" teams into battle together and receive extra team bonuses as a reward. There are also some awesome sequences where your team all use their "extreme" powers at once. Picture this: Blade throws several vials of his serum into the air, shooting them so they explode into a deadly mist that damages the enemies, Spiderman then swings across the screen blasting every foe with webbing and ensnaring them as they are still recoiling from Blade's assault, Deadpool leaps into the air, flipping sideways in slow motion as he sprays the villains (now ensnared in webbing) with twin SMG's just as the Human Torch starts raining fire and Brimstone over the whole screen. That, my friends, is some hardcore superhero a**-kicking.
The story will take you throughout the Marvel Universe to other galaxies, under the sea, to the realm of the gods fo Asgard, and even to the depths of Mephisto's hellish underworld as you battle the Masters of Evil, an ambitious coalition of supervillains headed by Dr. Doom himself. The extra missions you complete (or don't) during the course of your journeys will all affect the game's ending; so though you may have saved the universe, depending on what side missions you did or didn't complete you are shown the future that has been created by your actions or lack thereof. My first time through, for example, I did much good and brought peace between some former enemies of humanity and helped defeat many future threats, but the combination of events that came about because of some details I neglected during gameplay doomed some of my favorite heroes of all in the end. I've never seen a story mode handled quite like this and it's very rewarding and really adds to the replay value of the game. All right, on to the characters. It would have been nice to play as the Namor, the Vision, or [insert your favorite obscure Marvel hero here], but the playable roster is an impressive combination of legendary mainstays like Spiderman, Wolverine, and Iron Man and hardcore fan-pleasers like Dr. Strange, Moon Knight, and the aforementioned merc with the mouth, Deadpool. Heck, even the cosmic power of the Silver Surfer is yours to command so who's to complain? Furthermore, this new Gold Edition includes Venom, Magneto, and the Hulk as well as 5 more extra characters to choose from and new dialogue added to the game just for them. There are many legendary Marvel villains and heroes that are MIA (no Punisher? Doh!), and some minor fanboy complaints about the upgradeable uniforms (why is Spidey's symbiote costume less powerful than his original cloth one?), but that just means that there is still room for this awesome franchise to get even better next time around.
Fans of the "X-men Legends" games will find the gameplay more than a little familiar (see: nearly identical) and will find some favorite characters from those games playable as well, but with some new tricks. You gotta love Colossus picking up enemies and using them to club their comrades; that's just good times all around. There are also interactive segments, mini-games if you will, that are pretty fun and look cool as hell. Running over psychotic clowns in a bumper car springs immediately to mind; and several of the larger boss battles and other situations have button sequences that need to be pushed as they appear to perform context-sensitive moves that look cool as hell. Then there's those games of old-school "Pitfall", and "Arkanoid" you play in Murderworld... Plenty to do in this game. You'll also earn several unlockable (and upgradeable!) alternate costumes for each hero and solo (or "comic") training missions for the playable heroes in the game if you can hunt down their discs. These missions are a godsend and allow you to learn each individual hero's abilities outside of the chaotic team battles and engage in some memorable duels with classic villains (Elektra vs Bullseye: round 2? You know you want it!). I only wish that each character's missions were a little more customized; they all consist of one of the same four or five levels with different bosses at the end.
Some of the cutscenes in the game look unbelievable (there is a Nightcrawler sequence that rivals the one in the 2nd X-Men film) while others are rather unpolished. The voice acting is spotty at best, but several of the character's voices closely resemble their animated counterparts and it's fun to hear your heroes banter during battle and the graphics during gameplay are a massive improvement over "X-Men Legends", so there's really very little to complain about.
Online multiplayer also looks to be a big draw this time out. There is 4-player cooperative where everyone shares and shares alike, and competitive where your baddie-stomping statistics are tracked for bragging rights and to the winners go the spoils. You can even play the comic missions with one player as the fearless hero and the rest of the players controlling the hordes of enemies. The fun just keeps on coming.
This is one of those games where, even after you've beaten it, you simply can't wait to start it over and play through it in a different way. This is an up of an incredible game and if you missed it the first time around, then now is a good time to catch up. If you bought the older version, the extra content is available for download on Xbox Live so I wouldn't recommend buying this edition just for that. Personally, I'm still relishing every action-packed second of M:UA and whether you're an average gamer who loves to mash buttons and kick tail, a hardcore comic geek looking for an epic adventure featuring your favorite heroes, an RPG fan who enjoys lots of customization, or just a person looking for a game you pick up and play with your friends at home or online this is that game. Buy it, own it, love it.
Date: 2007-05-20
GOLD EDITION
Basically for those who dont know, the Gold Edition of UA is basically the patches and hero/villian pack you can buy for 800 gamer points off Xbox Live, This is worth buying if you dont own it already, if you do, your better off just getting a gamer point card for 20$ and downloading the hero/villian pack. However for first time players, get this.
Date: 2007-05-16
played it first on a ps2, now got it for 360. HIGH REPLAYABILITY!!!
First off, I'm no hardcore gamer. I just happened to be browsing some gaming magazine when the ad got me. Being a big fan of the comics, I decided to give it a try. I mean, come on, who wouldn't want to be able to pair up Spidey with Iceman and The Human Torch and whoever catches your fancy? And the game delivers a lot of punch in many ways. The difference between this game and the normal edition is this edition comes with 8 extra characters that are already available as xb live downloadable content.
GAMEPLAY: Campaign mode is pretty straightforward. You can walk through the entire thing and it makes for a lot of gametime. It is kind of reminiscient of the Ninja Turtle series from back in the 90's where you pretty much follow a straight map (except in this case, there are some side rooms that you can explore in each level), kill some enemies, get to a minor boss, kill more enemies, then get to the final boss. Obviously, you have to expect the occasional roadblock - 'What am I going to do to get past this flaming doorblock?' situations where simple puzzles can come in play, but overall, getting through levels is a sort of linear kind of thing. The whole game probably takes about 18-25hrs to beat on normal. But then you won't necessarily unlock all the superheroes and costumes and whatnot. The side simulator missions are also a lot of fun and add an extra leveling up element to the game, so I guess that's what keeps you going. You unlock hard mode after beating normal once. Very replayable game, I've already beaten the story at least 4 times across three difficulty levels. GRADE: A
THE RPG ELEMENT: Activision markets this as an action/rpg game, and while there is lots of action (as I mentioned, the Ninja Turtle game flashback it brought me), there are elements of RPG. Whenever you pick up 'money' on the map and level up, you can spend points leveling up character skills and abilities. The items you equip your characters with will also matter in the same way. The system is rather straightforward and being my first game from the 'series' (apparently this is the successor to some XMen Legends game?), it did not take me long to learn about where this element kicks in. GRADE: A
THE CO-OP ELEMENT: Co-op is awesome and I definitely prefer that to playing alone. You can team up with 1-3 of your friends for some 2-4 player co-op. xb Live allows for some smooth gameplay even while online. While camera views can be annoying at times, you can easily tell that the programmers put a lot of time into making co-op gameplay here really smooth. One weird thing about this though, with comic missions, the main character is controlled by one player and enemies which are, surprise surprise, not controlled by the AI if you've been playing co-op. Kind of eliminates that whole challenge feel to it if you look at it in one way. GRADE: A+
GRAPHICS: Almost comical. Not as in funny comical, but as in like the comic books. Graphics looked much better than on a PS2, but still there were some problems. Heck, the cinematics looked awesome. But for the most part, gameplay graphics were pretty tight. I found some of the animations rather sorry, like the lime green-ness, almost-to-the-state-of-previous-gen-ness of the Fin Fang Foom, but other than that, I really don't have much complaints. So don't expect Gears of War graphics here. GRADE: B+
STORY: Any game that can capture the essence of every superhero's personality while at the same time painting this captivating story as it unravels gets my props. Although sometimes, in the middle of a mission, the small things that go wrong that you and your group must fix up, these things can make you lose sight of the big picture. GRADE: B+
COMPLAINTS:
- Dialogue is kind of key in this game for the most part. At times dialogue pops up in the worst time (immediately after a fight) such that I found me or one of my friends mistakenly hitting the 'continue' button (A) right through the dialogue as if the fight was still going on (A = the attack button).
- Reviving characters: So in battle, if one of your group gets KO'ed, there's a resting period. When the resting period is over, a message pops up saying that the character of interest is fully rested, but instead of letting him/her pop out just as if to rejoin the group, you always have to get to some save point to activate that character again.
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Once again, being not that hardcore of a gamer, I can't really say much in the way of in-depth game reviews. But here's the bottom line:
- This game is definitely one to be played co-op. My brother and I grew up playing these types of games and having hours and hours of fun together with these (heh... Ninja Turtles).
- Don't get this if you're looking for straight RPG. True, there is an RPG element, but not as much in the way of world-exploration and stuff that have surrounded some of the world's best RPGs.
- This game is mission-based, with different levels separated into 5 acts that will load from your home base. Think Splinter Cell or soldier FPS games where you have one level, side missions that pop up when things screw up, and then an overall mission goal that must be beaten for you to return to home base.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance Gold Edition Reviews Page: 7 of 7 Prev<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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