Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2

MUA fans may bemoan the lack of change, and they'd have a point. Bar the Fusion Powers there's little new going on here. But it's still a fun, albeit brainless romp that's sure to please Marvel fanboys. If you go in not expecting to play the game of the year then you're going to get a hell of a lot of fun out of MUA2.

It's hard not to let the experience of the first MUA color the expectations for MUA2. By those standards, MUA2 isn't as exciting a game, largely due to the choices it makes with the fiction. On its own, though, this is still an enjoyable action RPG romp that makes good use of the Marvel Universe in its own way.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, it just tightens a few of the lug nuts. This works wonderfully in its favor. Adding a new gameplay mechanic that you don't have to rely on in order to enjoy the same type of game you already experienced will make purists happy. Continuing the online functionality introduced with the first title doesn't harm the game either.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 adds in Fusion powers, characters, and a bunch of boosts, but in the end it's not enough to keep this from feeling like extremely well-worn territory. I don't have that spark to see and do everything because I feel like I've seen and done everything before. The Stark Tower hub is nearly identical, the cutscenes don't look good, the audio logs to find aren't interesting, and the presentation of the Civil War really doesn't do the emotional storyline justice.

So while Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 may not take the series in a big and bold new direction, or benefit from the kind of refinement you would look for in a sequel, it does deliver the button-mashing, power-flinging, over-the-top action fans of the original would expect. And it's just good fun, even if you don't know Iron Man from Iron Fist.

There’s nothing wrong with MUA2. It was made professionally, it’s addictive and fun (even more so in co-op), and it’s still a treat for comic fans. But it’s short on new ideas, with a fundamental template that hasn’t changed in the last five years. And in this brave, new, post-Arkham Asylum world, we need a little more than that to be really awed.