Game Review – Marvel Ultimate Alliance for Xbox 360

Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Developer: Raven Software

Publisher/Distributor: Activision

ESRB Rating: M

Genre: Action

Official Website: http://www.marvelultimatealliance.com/Reviewed by Julie Gray
Review originally published January 2nd, 2007

Who didn’t want to be a super hero when they were younger? For most of us, reading about super heroes in comic books or seeing them on TV was the highlight of our day. There is something fascinating and appealing about wanting to be ‘special’ with your own super powers. Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a game that brings most of our favourite super heroes to the Xbox 360 – all at once! Talk about super hero overload!

After being presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Stan Lee last year at E3, I did my best to try and meet the man who created some of the most well known super heroes of our time. He is the genius behind Spiderman, The X Men, The Hulk and The Fantastic Four to name a few. And now we have the opportunity to explore the universe of the super heroes taking it one step further; off the comic book pages and into the realm of video games.

In Marvel Ultimate Alliance, you get to play as four different characters at once. As confusing as this may sound, it’s really quite easy to do. Instead of running around and kicking bad guy butt as one super hero, you get to control an entire party of super heroes! Obviously, as well as being able to control the super heroes, you can utilise their super powers, exploiting each character’s strengths as you come up against a barrage of enemies, putting down the bad guys, one by one.

Personally, I have never been a great fan of games where you’re controlling more than one character at a time. It’s not that I find it difficult to do; I just don’t like the switching back and forth. I also try to avoid games where there is the potential to get stuck in the world or if a game is particularly buggy, you can find yourself in frustrating situations where having to restart the game from your last save point is the only option. Thanks but no, thanks.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance does have a few little hitches with the environment and the character movement. This is almost impossible to avoid and I have yet to play a game which utilises multiple characters that has managed to overcome this problem. But managing more than one character at a time and physically placing your characters around the levels should not be as difficult or as frustrating as it is. Characters get stuck from time to time in this game, but it can be rectified if you try to keep all of your characters moving together. Should you find one of your characters has fallen behind; the other characters in your party will also get ‘stuck’ in the game. If you hold onto the left trigger, you can assemble your party to move in synch with the leader or leaders of the group but this doesn’t always work.

One good thing about having multiple characters to choose from is that if you find one of the characters in your party is lacking certain abilities or just proves to be more of a hindrance than a help, you can easily switch characters with new ones you haven’t yet played. That’s pretty cool. As you progress through the game, you can also unlock other characters from the Marvel universe.

The game modes in Marvel Ultimate Alliance allow you to play single player or Coop modes. The Coop mode is really a lot more fun than single player although you can achieve a lot of the same objectives playing in either game mode. Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the Xbox 360 allows for up to four players to play and is Xbox Live compatible so you can take on the enemies or other players online.

Movement and combat in the game depends on the type of character you play which is quite compelling. The last thing you want is several different characters that all do the same thing. Some characters like Miss Marvel or Storm can fly by pressing the ‘Y’ key in quick succession. This comes in particularly handy when you need to play more strategically when facing multiple opponents. Instead of a land based group assault, you can utilise one of your flying super heroes to attack from the air as well. Remember to use all of your super heroes equally and you’ll enjoy the game a lot more. After all, the game is about the Marvel Ultimate Alliance of super heroes, not just about one super hero in particular. It might be hard to remember this when you’re leading the group as one character but you’ll soon see the benefits of utilising all of the team’s assets and abilities.

The general layout of each mission is quite similar. This could possibly be a part of the game that might come off as a tad boring but that all depends on what you’re willing to make of each level. Characters will level individually. You will find that if you’re leading with one character, that character will more than likely level up quite fast. This is another reason why you should play different characters in the party as often as you can. The more you level up each character in the party, the better your team will become at beating the opponents and meeting the objectives. This game is very team orientated which is refreshing from a game play perspective.

The environment is also an important factor to consider as you progress through the game. Each super hero has two different indicator bars; one for health and one for energy. The health bar is pretty straightforward but the energy bar indicates how much energy you have left to use your super powers or special abilities. As you complete each mission, you will need to replenish these areas by bashing up anything and everything you can see as you move through the levels. It’s kind of amusing to see a group of super heroes bashing up an inanimate object. What sort of super hero would you be without the super abilities? Your super heroes can be injured and even temporarily knocked unconscious. When this happens, their icon on screen will fade out and you will not be able to use that super hero again until you get back to the S.H.I.E.L.D base. You will see a message come up on screen saying that your super hero has ‘fully rested’ which means that they can be revived.

The S.H.I.E.L.D base is where you can do such things as swap your characters around and look at your character’s abilities and skills. Throughout the game you will pick up ‘tokens’ that drop everywhere when you smash and bash things. These tokens are called ‘S.H.I.E.L.D credits’ and will give you the ability to upgrade your super hero’s outfit. Each item that the super hero wears gives that super hero special bonuses to their abilities. You will also gain experience as you meet each objective and defeat bad guys which will level up your super hero and increase their super powers. You can access your super powers by pushing in the right trigger which will bring your super hero powers up on the screen. From there you can choose to use whichever power you want by pressing the A, B, X and Y keys. You can even swap out your super hero powers for other powers as you gain experience.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance also offers you the opportunity to take a break from the main mission. There are other side missions intended for each super hero. These missions are designed to be more in synch with the super heroes and their roles in the comic books. For instance, Wolverine’s side mission is all about him visiting the labs where he was taken and experimented on. These missions are quite tough but well worth doing. You have to unlock these missions as you advance in the game, pretty much like everything else. There are some cool super heroes that you can unlock as you combat evil and complete more and more missions. You can even unlock Blade as a super hero!

Visually, Marvel Ultimate Alliance is really easy on the eye. The level of detail that has gone into each super hero is quite impressive and the environments are equally as detailed. The voice acting is also impressive but don’t expect to hear the voices of the super heroes you have come to know from the movies. I am glad to see that the animation isn’t ‘boxy’ looking which always ruins the realism of the animation. The cut scenes feature spectacular art work taken directly from the Marvel comic books. You can even unlock other art work and several other features in the game if you get far enough through it.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance turned out to be a lot more fun than I initially expected and that’s great news for all Marvel comic book fans. It’s a real relief to get my hands on a super hero game that has staying power and the ability to sustain the excitement long enough for me to stay interested in playing the game. I have played quite a few games based on comic book heroes in the past and I can assure you, many of them are poor additions to the franchises they represent and in some cases, would have been better off not being manufactured at all. Not so with Marvel Ultimate Alliance. This game is a definite must have for fans of Marvel and if you’re after a well made, entertaining game that blends a little bit of action as well as roleplaying all with an authentic comic book style, this game will not disappoint.

http://www.marvelultimatealliance.com/

You can view the original published article here.

Game Review – DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2 for PS2

DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2

Reviewed by Julie Gray
Review originally published January 27, 2007

An influx of manga/anime based fighting games has comfortably seen the video games market expand by fusing together several entertainment genres. The growth of anime and manga in the last few years has been quite phenomenal with sales in the US market alone reaching tens of millions of US dollars. It’s no wonder that some of the more popular anime franchises such as Bleach, Naruto and Dragon Ball Z have been successfully adapted into video games.

If you’re a fan of anime (Japanese animated movies) it will be easy for you to see the appeal in video games based on anime. The Japanese are some of the best in the world at creating and developing interesting and compelling storylines and characters which are easily adapted into games or even movies. So how does Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 measure up on the PS2?

First thing’s first: the voiceovers. I started playing this game without altering the voiceovers and found that the English was so annoying; I just couldn’t tolerate playing the game any longer without changing the voices to Japanese. Whilst the English dubbed voices may have no direct impact on how the game is played, you’ll enjoy the experience a whole lot more with native Japanese voiceovers and subtitles.

Dragon Ball Z is a very long running and overly popular franchise in Japan. The anime and manga have been around in Japan for many years and the games date back to the early 80’s. You will definitely notice this influence in every facet of the game; from the synth-based background music to the animation style itself. The DBZ games really are just extensions of the anime and manga and this is the best way to describe the aesthetics of the game. The animation is very 80’s with very broad lines and exaggerated expressions and dialogue. All of this helps to give the game an authentic appeal, even if it does look dated.

The story line of the game will be very familiar to fans of the franchise. One of the game options is called the Dragon Encyclopaedia where you can scroll through different aspects of the game including in-depth character bios which explain all about each character in the DBZ universe.

When loading up the game, you will notice the 80’s style theme in the presentation and cut-scenes as well. The game modes and options are clearly set out and easily accessed at the beginning of the game which makes it easy to navigate. You can quickly skip some of the rather annoying dialogue to jump to the part of the game you want.

I decided to check out both the tournament and duelling options in the game. Once you have decided on your game mode, you can then set the difficulty level which is a choice between 1, 2, or 3; 3 being the toughest. The different modes in the game are Dragon Tournament (versus mode where you can win money and buy items), training mode (to learn the basics of the game), Dragon Adventure mode (fighting various opponents from the DBZ universe in various maps on Earth and in space) and Ultimate Battle Z where you can fight in ranked matches. There is also a duelling mode where you can utilise two player mode and fight against a friend or the A.I.

The duelling mode for two players is actually kind of frustrating more than it is fun. The combat is the same throughout the game so no surprises there but the split screen format proved to be just a little too frustrating to have any major fun with it.

Played in third-person perspective, the controls in the game are relatively simple to use. Once you learn how to move in the game, it’s really just a matter of time before you will get the hand of the basic combat techniques. Punching and blocking are expected but you can also use special attacks (called Ki Blasts) which will send a bolt of energy at your opponent, rendering him immobile whilst your power recharges. You can also fly in the game (which is fun at first) and you can certainly dodge (like strafing) from left to right to avoid Ki blasts from your opponent. Aerial combat is definitely much more fun than plain old fighting on the ground. And the traditional fighting game cinematic is used to great effect in DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2 during the combat scenes.

The different fighting combinations are really what give the game a competitive edge if you’re the type of person that enjoys tournament matches or versus modes. There are many different types of combo’s that you can master for each character which are variations of punch/kick combinations. It’s pretty standard stuff for a 3-D fighting game.

DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is the third game in this particular series of games which means you would certainly expect hefty re-developments or at least some major changes in the look and feel of the game. Unfortunately, an extensive character pool doesn’t make a great game and the repetitive game play could only be fun for serious fans. In the long run, DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2 fails to really deliver anything refreshingly new. Throwing your opponents through buildings and fighting them in mid-air is fun for half an hour but that’s about it.

Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is one of the less spectacular fighting games around but would definitely be interesting for die-hard DBZ fans looking to buy extra commodities in the franchise. It’s a generic fighting game based on a franchise that is really only going to entertain fans and anyone else should probably look elsewhere.

You can view the original published article here.