I had nothing better to do last night, so I popped Marvel Ultimate Alliance, a game that came with the Xbox 360, in last night to see how REAL superheroes mixed things up.
You’re thrown right into the mix of things; Dr. Doom and his legions of supervillains are attacking a giant airborne aircraft carrier commanded by Nick Fury, a WWII NCO who has been given life extension treatments that have led him into an odd taste for cigars, biting one-liners and skintight electric blue leotards.
He won’t give up to Doom without a fight, and so he calls upon ALL METAHUMANS REPORT! Answering the call are Thor, Wolverine, Spiderman and Captain America, another WWII vet.
From there follows a very standard adventure game consisting largely of running back and forth, especially since the confusing architecture of the helicarrier has you turning in circles time and again. It was very standard RPG fare, which I played largely without Spiderman and Thor because they sucked (in Thor’s case) or were annoying (in Spiderman’’s case); and really, Wolverine and ol’ Cap should be able to handle anything that happens.
I was impressed by how on “rails” the game was. It’s unusual to find a modern game which so carefully constrains you – to the absurdity of having these four superheroes unable to step a couple of inches over a sill. Assassin’s Creed just let you point the joystick and the hero would use his abilities to get there. Here Thor, the thunder god, who can FLY… cannot with all his powers step up two inches. Instead, he must run around on catwalks until he comes back to where he was, just two inches higher. Similarly, Spiderman, the web slinger, to who gravity is something for the other guy to worry about… can’t swing around on webs.
Combined with how small the characters looked on my non-HD TV… it wasn’t very much fun. It wasn’t hard. It just wasn’t fun either. I really expect superheroes to be super-heroic. I did enjoy trashing the helicarrier. All those barrels and stuff are gonna be really expensive to replace, but Nick Fury doesn’t seem to mind, as long as I stay off of his lawn.