It started with X-Men Legends and then went on to incorporate the rest of the Marvel Universe with Marvel: Ultimate Alliance which showed up early in the Xbox 360’s life and was met with both critical and consumer acclaim and ended up selling accordingly. The first Marvel: Ultimate Alliance was an excellent brawler that had solid RPG elements and possibly one of the most vigorous line-up of characters that have ever appeared in a videogame before. Well Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 covers all the ground that provided the foundation for the first one and with the storyline following the recent Civil War conflicts that comic book fans will no doubt already be familiar with, there is still plenty of reasons for fans of the first game to come back for a second go.

Following a horrific and epic conflict between the goodies and baddies, the public started to whinge about Superheroes having to register themselves and reveal their true identities or end up breaking the law and everything they stand for.   Needless to say there are a few who don’t like this idea, including Captain America, and there are those that support it, leading the charge is Iron Man.  So what happens when you start to create two different camps of superheros that have a difference in the fundamental philosophy of being a superhero? Well all hell breaks loose, and that’s where you step in of course.  You choose a side, you do your part in the battle and you have some fun along the way.  Easy.

Settle down, it's not God, it's just Iron Man.

Depending on which side you choose will dictate which missions you’ll participate in, what characters you’ll be able to control and of course multiple endings depending on who you sided with and decisions you made along the way adding a little to the replay value. 

For those not familiar with the mechanics of the first game, it is probably easiest to describe it as a bit of a brawler that requires a little bit of button mashing to pull off attacks and combos.  You’ll have enemies coming at you from all sides and you pretty much just have to keep pressing the attack buttons until all foes are laying at your feet.  You have strong and weak attacks, of course each attack specially tailored to your superhero’s unique abilities. You can join up with a partner that is running with you in your pack and do special moves that combine both of your abilities.  Say you’re playing as Iron-Man, you can team up with Wolverine and blast your Ion cannon into his claws as he reflects the beam into the bodies of rushing enemies.  There are plenty of different combinations on who you use, and although one or two seem to pop up quite a bit, it’s great to see how one hero will react to another.

For those that love to level up their characters and mess around with upgrades and similar mechanics, you’ll love the light RPG elements.  They gain stronger attacks, more powers and abilities, costumes, characters – it’s a great system and really adds a nice amount of depth to what would a straight forward game without it.  Who doesn’t like levelling up Spiderman? Trust me this is what being a gamer and a comic book geek are all about!

Are you as awesome as this guy?  Thats what I thought.

Graphically the game can be both pretty in places and rather boring in others.   The characters all look great but the cookie cutter enemies get a bit annoying after disposing of hundreds of them.  Still the framerate is solid and the style and themes running throughout it are serviceable enough so you won’t get any real complaints here, just don’t expect it to look like Gears of War.  The camera feels a tad bit distracting and can be a little too far back to let you really engage in the action but you do have to remind yourself that this game is meant to be more of a RPG/Dungeon crawler than a dynasty warriors clone and you soon forgive and forget the static camera.  In saying that, I would like to of zoomed it into the action a little bit more.  But hey that’s just me.

There is four player co-op options that can be played online and with a healthy network code and easy pick up and play mechanics, I can see a lot of fanboys having themselves a good time with this online.

Hulk + Wolverine is more awesome than you as well, but you knew that already.

If you’ve played the first one then you’ll probably get a little deja-vu playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 but at the end of the day you’ll be satisfied with some fun gameplay, light and tight RPG elements, a roster that is more than impressive for Marvel fans and some really fun gameplay. It’s not going to set the world on fire and it does smell a little bit too much like the first one that showed up all those years ago, but I really enjoyed my time with Marvel and plan on getting back to it to complete the other side of the coin as soon as possible.