Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Co-Op Review
Review System(s): XBox 360
Way back in January, I chose Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 as my most anticipated title of 2009. The first game was the reason we bought an Xbox 360, and we've played it for hours and hours over the past two and a half years. I am exactly the target audience for this game: longtime comic book reader, RPG fan, and parent of two kids who have similar interests, making the co-op very important. To say that my expectations for a sequel three years in the making were high is a bit of an understatement.
The storyline for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is based on two recent comic book arcs, Secret War and Civil War. The first act features A-listers Cap, Iron Man, Spidey, and Wolverine, led by Nick Fury on a... well... secret war. The fallout from this event, plus a nice cut scene taken directly from the Civil War miniseries, leads to the heroes dividing. One side, led by Iron Man, supports the registration and deputizing of all superhumans. Cap leads the anti-registration forces. This story is quite compelling, and thought provoking. It led to a rather serious discussion with my eight year old son. He was torn between Iron Man and Captain America, and was confused about who was the "good guy". We had a nice talk about citizenship, abiding by the law, and doing what was right. He even made a checklist to help him decide which direction to take. I was very impressed by the storyline, following closely to the comics and initiating a good discussion about some rather weighty issues.
The second act of the game is basically spent fighting the opposing side. We chose the pro-registration side, and were tasked with disrupting rebel actions and hunting down Cap and his supporters. We've not made it to this stage of the game in our second playthrough, but I am sure the second act plays totally differently if you choose anti-registration. Some characters only unlock costumes on one side or the other, which also adds some replayability. I was a bit surprised to see that only three characters are off limits when you choose sides. I'd have expected the roster to have been more split, but playability took priority over comic accuracy in this case. I can't fault that decision.
While the story starts off quite strong, it tapers off rather quickly. I'm sure it won't be much of a spoiler to reveal that a larger threat comes in and unites the heroes, etc. etc. At this point, the narrative gets fairly mundane. In fact, the story at this point becomes quite a bit like that of Spider-man Web of Shadows. With the loss of tension due to the Cap vs. Iron Man struggle, the game flounders a bit, and becomes more predictable. Still, the story is much more memorable than the "kitchen sink" approach of the first game.
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Reader Comments 
I also believe the game is just far too easy. Even on Legendary there isn't much of a challenge to be found. I think anyone could sit down and easily win without effort which makes the game lack multiple play through for me. The series has progressively gotten easier, and my hope was that a new dev Team would give the series a fresh boost again. Sadly I would find this game more worth about $30 than $60. I don't feel I got my money's worth for $60.
X-Men Legends 1 was by far the hardest of the series, and each game in the series was easier, and easier.
While I'm a sucker for Co-op and a sucker for brawler smash em dungeon crawler games of this nature, I wouldn't consider this title a 'must have' in my arsenal of co-op games, and would advise people to wait for price drops.
I do agree with you about the costumes and replacement of gear with medals. Both were pretty lame simplifications to the original concepts. Like Im sure anyone is gonna equip the medal that gives 5% power to all fire-based attacks when there are only like one or two characters with fire powers.
I was also disappointed in how much the quality of the story declined by the third act.
In the end, I still think its totally worth it. I think that the improvements made make it superior to the first game. Sure, they dropped the ball in a couple of places, but this game has more replayability than the other (with the pro and anti stories), looks better, and is a lot more accessible. In the end, I think these facts make it superior to the first. Its definitely a heck of a lot of fun.
This might be a deal-breaker!
Wait, I missed this part...suckage!
The thing is you still keep your unlockables if I am not mistaken, also you still gain achievements so it's not too bad the first one had the same system where you had to progress on the hosts game.
Also the fusion powers have different uses when we played Legendary the other night with the three of us we would find ourselves using them frequently to keep our health tokens up, which actually turned out to be alot of fun.
Dunno if you like beat em ups this is a solid title.
I agree with your review overall but couldn't disagree more with your gripe about the item system going missing from the first game. The micromanagement of the inventory system in the previous titles of this genre drove me up the wall. I felt it was an absurd layer of complexity to what I really wanted out of a hack-n-slash game.
You do know you could just have ignored the items and still be able to play the game, right?
Personally, I don't want a deep game. But I like options and this review has helped me stay clear of this. X-Men Legends & MUA were popular for a reason...they had options
Why so negative to his opinion? I actually found the Team boosts to be more useful than the items for the first, and I hated trying to figure out which items if any were useful in the first place so I see his point.
Sorry had to reply to this since It seemed like your first sentence was directed to cut the guy down.
well he did make his statement seem like he was forced to deal with that awful gear that should be burned at the stake. Options are choices. As long as you are able to decide how to play and what options you want to take advantage of, I don't see why he has to treat depth like someone with SARS.
This one has bugs galore too.
Total Comments: 15
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Still can't ask for a better co-op experience than this provides, we had a good laugh doing 3 player co-op the other night joking about how The Hulk's only weakness was 9mm bullets.