Five years ago, the great game known as X-Men Legends came out and oh what a glorious day it was for every comic book and gaming nerd. The premise was you take 4 X-men on a walkabout through various levels ending in the defeat of the ultimate bad guy at the end with various mini-bosses on the way. Simple enough yes but the joy came out of being able to play as any number of X-men and I did love it. 

Since then the series has grown and evolved with another X-men Legends coming out this time dealing with Apocalypse and then moving on to include the entire Marvel Universe in the Marvel:Ultimate Alliance title. Now Marvel:Ultimate Alliance 2 has come out and now it is time to strip down the game and poke sticks at it. 

If you've played any of the previous games you'll know what to expect coming into MUA2 because nothing has really changed aside from the addition of fusion powers which I'll get to later. You take four characters from the Marvel Universe and using their unique abilities you work together in order to solve a global problem. The RPG elements are still there but they don't fell as in depth as they used to. One of the big problems I had in the previous games was choosing what ability to upgrade. It used to be an agonising choice. In this version I was quickly able to choose the three abilities I wanted to upgrade and through a convenience of level requirements, I was able to level up all three of the abilities I wanted immediately and so the game went on for until a few levels later when I was able to upgrade the skills again. There was no internal debate when it came to what skills to level up which is something an RPG requires in order to prevent people ending up with the same characters. Also the fusion powers while certainly a nice addition, did end up being a bit repetitive. Yes the game boasts 250 fusion powers but in the end it still breaks down into one of three categories. 

The story in MUA2 started out good with the whole idea of a civil war between super heroes over something that would require them to put their names to paper and become police officers but it quickly descended into fighting an artificial intelligence trying to take over the world and then the super heroes making up again. You, the player, end up choosing either to side with the police or become rebels but in the end you fight the artificial intelligence thing. It's like taking two paths to get to the same location; yes you may get to enjoy a different view but in the end your still going to the same spot. That criticism aside, it is a good way to get some additional replay value out of the game so I can't knock it too much. 

The game also appears to be a lot shorter than the old one but that could be partially because in my days playing MUA I was playing with three friends and this may have slowed the whole game completion process down a slight bit. 

My biggest criticism would come, not from this game in particular, but from the epic flaw that has always come with this series of games. Promising players that they can play characters from a gigantic comic book universe is all well and good but you don't give them a character they want to play, you're going to be paying for it. Disc sizes will always limit the number of characters available for players to choose but one will always hope for the day they can pick any character they want and not be constrained by the characters chosen by the game developers. 

On a quick side note, the characters I chose to use throughout the game were Invisible Woman, Wolverine, Juggernaut and Ms Marvel playing the Invisible Woman most of the time. It was a surprisingly solid combination with great clearing abilities and having Juggernaut throw Wolverine at a boss for epic damage worked very very nicely.