One step forward, two steps back.

It's been a few years, but the follow-up to Marvel Ultimate Alliance from Vicarious Visions is finally here, and it marks a pretty decent follow-up effort to the original, but unfortunately leaves you wanting just a bit more content than what you get. I was a big fan of the X-Men Legends titles, and not so much the original MUA, so I was happy to find myself enjoying MUA 2 quite a bit, but at the same time, I feel like half of this game is waiting in the wings via DLC, and I don't think I'm the only one that will have that thought.

The game follows the events of last year's big crossover event in the world of Marvel Comics, Civil War, where the heroes were split into two sides over a superhero registration act put forth by the US Government. The storyline itself was solid, spinning out of a smaller mini titled Secret War, and the game follows the overall plot of both Secret War and Civil War up to the last third of the game. From there it seems to spin off in its own direction, I'm assuming so they can give you a nice and tidy ending to the game (as opposed to the series that changed a few major players in the MU). The story itself works well, and the voice acting of each character in the game is presented fairly well, but nothing stands out as exceptional. One thing that the Marvel Universe has going against it in multimedia is that lack of any one particular voice actor to define a role, so while Batman: Arkham Asylum benefited from having familiar voices in the form of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, the Marvel staple doesn't seem to have any one person that would really nail the voices. You're left without any particular performance here that feels instantly recognizable or notable in any way.

Outside of that, the gameplay is nearly identical to the original MUA. You take on a team of four superheroes (with a few villains available), and make your way through the story themed levels, beating up groups of bad guys and knocking out mandated objectives along the way. The game doesn't offer up a great deal of exploration, but it does pay off to search the nooks and crannies of each stage in an effort to find hidden power-ups or other collectibles. However, there's no alternate pathways or different ways to finish a level or get to the end goal, so the experience is pretty linear. Most stages end in a boss fight or two, and while a couple boss fights stand out as being interesting (most noticeably the Yellowjacket fight), a lot of them are prolonged exercises in button mashing and blocking. Enemies are generally the same size as you, and the only real strategy that's enforced is figuring out when to move and when to attack in order to miss some of the more devastating attacks. The default difficulty might be a little easy for most, but if you crank it up a bit you'll find that you need to block and dodge more often, which makes some of the more mundane fights a little more interesting.

I am disappointed in the lack of overall characters and powers in the game. The game roster really feels like they're holding back in an effort to pad out some DLC for the game, and while it does manage to touch on a lot of fan favorites, like Spider-Man, Captain America, Wolverine, Iron Man and so on, there's just so many characters they could have crammed into the game since they're not tied down to a particular team anymore. Instead, you're forced to come up with a fairly small selection, and since one of the cooler aspects of the game is coming up with the team bonuses (selecting X-Men characters grants you fifteen percent extra stamina, etc.), you don't have a lot to pick from. Also, each character only has four powers, and then a series of abilities that are passive. The passive abilities are nice, but you'll have a couple of them locked depending on which side you choose, which is a little annoying and unnecessary in my opinion. While four active powers is probably plenty for the game, I would have loved to have seen a little more variety for each character, giving me a reason to play the same guy twice but with a different power set than last time. Finally, there are only two unlockable costumes per character. Two! That's probably my biggest pet peeve of the game to be honest, and while it's a pretty minor complaint for most, I'm almost positive the X-Men Legends titles offered up more selections than that.

So yeah, the game isn't without flaws. It looks better than the previous title, it has a more interesting storyline, the gameplay feels more refined and improved as far as combat goes, but at the same time it feels like it's lacking in the bonus features department. I can't imagine that the game was rushed in any way, it seems like it's been in development for a bit, but I can totally imagine that they held off on content for DLC, which is pretty disappointing and annoying as a consumer. I could be proven wrong here, and if I am, then it's just a big misstep for them not to create more options for powers, costumes, and overall character selection. Either way, I'm not particularly pleased with the amount of content separate from the gameplay, and had honestly hoped for more.

That said, if you enjoy the games for how they play and the co-op aspect of it all, you'll still get a kick out of MUA 2. It's definitely fun to play when you're not getting hanged up on the details, and the game is really a blast with a friend in tow. The online stuff works well, the trivia mini-game is still in place, and there's a series of challenges available to help give you bonuses to equip that add some interesting modifiers to the gameplay. Overall, I did enjoy the game, I'm just a little miffed that it seems to be lacking in overall content. It's well worth playing, and I'd say worth picking up if you were a fan, otherwise just stick to a rental. Either way, I still look forward to seeing a third entry in the series, and hopefully it'll feel like a fuller affair than this release.