Three years ago we recieved what looked to be the final chapter of a Marvel dungeon crawler series of games.X-Men Legends sold fairly well and its follow-up, X-Men Legends 2: Rise of the Apocalypse, actually did even better. A third installment came next but opened the door to the whole Marvel Universe. In what can only be considered an all-encompassing storyline, players traveled everywhere from Greenwhich Village in downtown Manhattan to the Blue Area of the Moon to the Shi’Ar Empire to Hell itself. It was a perfect endcap to the series.

But then Marvel Ultimate Alliance had to go and sell even more copies and get better reviews. So we waited three years and now we get to play the aptly titled Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2!

The first thing you notice about this game is the massively improved graphics from its predecessors. The two X-Men Legends games were tried true GameCube/PS2 games and even the first MUA was designed for those systems and was ported to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. This iteration was designed specifically with the 360 and PS3 in mind (and ported down to the Wii, Ps2, DS & PSP) and the visuals definitely show that. The camera is much closer into the action than the first and the texturing on the characters is phenomenal. When Deadpool shows up you can see every wrinkle of his costume, every stitching on his pouches, the gleam of metal on the hinges. These really are next gen graphics for cinematics.

However, if you’re like me, graphics are not the most important thing about a game. Story and gameplay take precedence over visuals hands down. The good news is that if enjoyed playing the first MUA then you’ll enjoy this one.The bad news is if you didn’t enjoy playing the first MUA then you won’t enjoy this one. The game plays remarkably similar to the first one. The angle of the view changes somewhat, but this is still a beat-’em-up/dungeon crawler. There are some deeper elements thrown in such as attack types and maneuverability with powers, but it’s less intricate the its predecessor. You essentially just plug points into which powers you use the most and there’s not much else.

There is one new twist to playing this game. Since the second act of the story follows the Civil War storyline, you have to choose to side with either Iron Man or Captain America. Some characters will only follow Cap (Iron Fist, Luke Cage, etc.) while others will only follow Iron Man (Mr. Fantastic, Songbird, etc.) so the others will be unavailable to you for two thirds of the game. If you’re someone who needs to collect everything and get every alternate costume (and it’s a fair assumption that a number of you are, just as I am) then you have to play through the game at least twice to experience it all. Of course, if you’re an achievement or trophy whore then you’re in for a few more play throughs given some of the requirements. Do’t worry, I’ll be right there with you.

The best part of this game is the story. I was skeptical of how they would make this work. We knew Civil War was going to play a part, but I was worried it would pale in comparison to the last adventure world/galaxy/dimension hopping. I can safely say that while the game stays much closer to home the story is actually better than the previous entry. The hero vs. hero motif is only one of three distinct acts which acts as stories unto themselves. The first act involves Nick Fury assembling a team of heroes one year after the end of the first game. In fact, not only is Doom’s death at the end of the last game mentioned, it’s the catalyst for the beginning of this game. And in comic book style, the events of the first act directly lead to both the second and third acts. It’s more of three issues of a three part series, but all three issues are also stand-alones.

(I won’t go into specifics so as not to spoil a neat surprise, but the first act is actually a translation of a previous Marvel event miniseries and it works extremely well in this context. The final act is an original work, more or less, and while it is the weakest of the three it is by no means bad.)

The other aspect of the game that was fairly heavily hyped was the fusion attacks. Instead of each character having their own screen-wide super attack, there would now be double-team fusion attacks where two characters would join forces and attack together. This was described has being a huge part of the game and a big selling point. All the marketing would point out that with 24 characters the combinations were just insane. Technically, that’s true. But when all of the physical/martial arts characters all do the exact same thing for their fusions the variety isn’t quite as high any more. There are some cool combinations (Thor and Green Goblin’s “Pumpkin Bomb Tornado” or Songbird and Iron Man’s “Disco Diamond of Death” spring to mind) but the majority go something like Iron Fist and Wolverine running around the screen together hitting the enemies twice instead of once. And don’t get me wrong, it would be no small feat to come up with that many truly unique fusion powers – but when you make claims like they’ve been making, you’ve got to be prepared to be called on ‘em.

It all boils down to this: If you enjoyed the other games in this series then you’re going to like this one. It’s certainly a notch or three up in the visual department, the story is fantastic and flows very well, and the gameplay is what you’re used to. If you didn’t care for the other games, however, this will seem like more of the same – and that isn’t wholly unfair. This could be considered a hyper-remake of the first game, bringing that version to a new level. Personally, I’m fine with that as I’m something of a Marvel Zombie. I get my thrill from playing the characters and watching the cinematics, but I’m well aware that this isn’t enough for most people.

If you’ve been debating about this game then your answer should be whether or not you want to play the first game again. If you haven’t played the first game (or X-Men Legends) then give this a shot. As a comic book reader you’ll definitely enjoy it more than someone who doesn’t know the characters and storylines.