It took me a long time to get into MUA 2. I thoroughly enjoyed the original Marvel Ultimate Alliance, as well as the two X-Men Legends games on the old Xbox. MUA 2 was supposed to be bigger and better, or so I’d heard, but from the get-go the game just seemed fairly underwhelming. Luckily, after playing through the extremely boring opening stages (the ones that set up the Civil War) the action does pick up a little bit, mainly because you have a larger selection of heroes to choose from, and their resulting Fusion attacks can be pretty cool. It was fun to experiment with different combinations of heroes just to see what devastating special move they combined for. That part was fun.
The rest of the game sucked ass. The story, despite having all the intrigue of the Civil War story-line (from the comics, this pre-dated the MCU movie by a number of years) you basically end up fighting a bunch of random soldiers and robots. No matter what stage you’re in, you’re still fighting the same shit. And it’s linear too; your characters will start at one end of the map and have to run down a series of “corridors” to get to the other end. That in itself isn’t completely a bad thing, but when the first game had sprawling, labyrinthine levels that required exploration, just running from point A to point B in MUA2 got really dull, really fast. Especially since the levels were probably the most bland and uninspired setups I’ve seen in a long time.
The first Marvel Ultimate Alliance had you fighting on a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, exploring Atlantis, running through a hellish circus in Murderworld, escaping Mephisto’s realm, along with Mandarin’s Palace, Asgard, and Dr. Doom’s castle.. among others! The game was epic, and it was always changing its scenery.
The sequel has nothing nearly as creative. You’ll run around a few generic bases, a factory, a snow forest, and Wakanda. Wakanda is probably the most interesting location I visited, and really, it’s nothing to go on about. Despite the possibilities, it was just as dull as the rest of the game.
On top of that, the heroes and villains that you fight are probably the biggest crime in the game. Once the Civil War begins, every person you come across triggers the same token argument again and again. “You’re wrong!” “No, YOU’RE wrong!” “GRRRRRR!” Then you fight someone you should care about, but just can’t because they kept all the interesting characters for you to play as and traded out the lame ones to fight.
You’re supposed to pick a side, either pro- or anti-registration. But really, you’ll set your ideals aside and go with whichever side has the cooler heroes. I told Tony Stark to take a hike because siding with Cap gave me Luke Cage and Iron Fist, where Iron Man’s side would’ve given me Mr. Fantastic and Songbird (really). Not that it really mattered, I played with Wolverine, Spidey, Psylocke and Black Panther the entire game.
The thing that really, really sucked though, is that these characters are at each other’s throats for a few missions, until they all get possessed in some off-the-wall random enemy shit that gave the delevopers an excuse to recycle characters. The first MUA gave us so many obscure and well-known Marvel heroes and villains that it was not only a fun game, but a treasure trove of Marvel lore. Not only does MUA2 not have any of that, but the characters you fight are basically zombies. They have no personality, and few of them actually even talk, and none of them even have a motive for what they’re doing. They’re technically possessed. You’re fighting She-Hulk, but not.. really.. fighting She-Hulk. Does that make sense? If it doesn’t, that’s okay, because the game doesn’t make any fucking sense either.
The story in the original MUA was gibberish, but that was forgiven because it was just a vehicle to get your heroes to all these cool locations and have them interact with all these other characters. MUA2 had a shit story that took you to shit locations and had you fight shit heroes. Seriously, off the top of my head I remember fighting Cyclone, She-Hulk, an atrociously-designed Venom, Green Goblin, Penance, Songbird, Wonder Man, Colossus, and maybe a few others that I can’t think of. That’s it. And none of them had any personality whatsoever. It was just.. so.. boring.
Which is a shame, because as I said at the start, the combat was fun. They had a solid foundation to work with. How you fuck up a story and a game this badly is beyond me. The reason I’m being so hard on this game is because it came out in 2009. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was barely even a thing at that point. They weren’t pigeon-holed into only using the characters popular at the time (if you want to see what that looks like, check out Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3). They could have literally done whatever they wanted, but they didn’t. Instead they gave us this uninspired cash-in.
I only played the anti-registration arc. Apparently if you take sides with Stark, you’ll have a different set of missions, up to a certain point. I’m not going to bother forcing my way through it again. I can’t imagine that branch being any more interesting than what I’ve already seen.
I’m calling this one done, and throwing it on the fire.
