Ultimate alliance, ultimate gaming

A friend from church came over last Friday for a little relaxation after a busy week. Turns out that all three of us (him, Chan, and me) have an interest in video games. In fact, I dare say I’m the least qualified gamer of the three, as I can’t even match my own wife in video game obsessions.

As the title would suggest, we picked up a copy of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and an extra controller, and played for 4.5 hours straight. I was quite impressed with the game, much more than I was with the X-Men franchise. But what can really go wrong when you have X-Men, the Fantastic 4, Captain America, and your friendly neighborhood Spiderman at your disposal? Here’s what I thought about the game:

The Good

The graphics were outstanding, especially the intro sequence. But that’s to be expected, intro cutscenes are those that usually feature the best work in any video game, much like how you’d only hear surround sound during those THX or Dolby sequences in the theater, but I digress. The rest of the cutscenes and in-game graphics are still outstanding, and I’m particularly glad I don’t have to watch any ploygon-shaped figure that is supposed to pass as a human.

Gameplay was good as well. It features the same button-mashing you’d expect from this type of game, and add in a few combos and special powers and you have pretty much all you need to plow through a level. Where the game shines, though, is in the co-operative gameplay. It’s not like X-Men where you have to pass the level in single-player mode before you can play co-op. No, you can just jump right in with four players. Nice.

The Bad

I suppose one can only expect this from a video game — especially one based on comic books — but the storyline and acting is pretty trite and cheesy. Witness this brilliant exchange when our heroes find out the next mission is in Atlantis, under some ocean (I’m paraphrasing here, but the original isn’t any more profound):

Hero: But we can’t last long under the ocean!

Captain America: Don’t worry, we have new nanotechnology that allows us to breathe underwater!

How convenient! Too bad we don’t have nanotechnology that allows us to have superhuman strength, turn invisible, shoot spiderwebs out of our palms, and breathe ice cubes out of our mouth! Not that our heroes need that kind of technology anyway — all they need is to breathe underwater! We’d hire Aquaman, but I think he’s under contract with DC Comics. Phew, am I glad our scientists came through at just the right time!

Ok, maybe I’m being a bit harsh. A comic book adventure is just that, simple and action-packed, not too complicated for a six-year-old to follow. But that means I’m tempted to skip all that useless talking in between the action. How complicated can a mission be? All you do is follow the map and beat up the bad guy.

Summary

In short, Ultimate Alliance is a great multiplayer game featuring great graphics, marred with a lame storyline — but who cares? It’s perfect for inviting your comic book geek and — I’m probably being redundant here — video gamer friends over for (pardon the pun) a marvel-ous good time.