This is a question that I feel needs to be answered. What happened to the popular Marvel: Ultimate Alliance series? With the success of comic book movies today, it's a no-brainer to think that a game based on those same characters wouldn't sell massive amounts of games on every console. Might be hard to remember for some of you but there was a time, namely 2 years before the first Iron Man movie was released when Marvel actually let a video company use the characters in a dungeon crawler style game.
X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse was released the very next year on every console at the time. As the title suggests, you had to deal with Apocalypse this time around. Now if you know anything about the X-Men: Age of Apocalypse or watched the semi-decent movie X-Men: Apocalypse, Apocalypse is basically the most powerful mutant ever. The game, like much of the storyline of the comic & movie, lets you take a mix of the X-Men & Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to stop Apocalypse.
The total amount of playable characters increased to 19, & depending on which system you played on could increase even further. This game was basically one of the first games that had system exclusive characters which is a practice that we see more & more today.
Basically, we got to play the video game version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe before it existed. The game featured over 140 characters in total. Sure you can take the Avengers, X-Men or maybe the Fantastic Four but what if you wanted to combine them into your own specialized team? This game was the first to let you form your very own customized superhero team. The game sold well enough to have a sequel which improved upon Ultimate Alliance in nearly every way.
Gazillion Entertainment released Marvel Heroes back in 2013 on PC/OS X & later rebranded the game to Marvel Heroes 2015, Marvel Heroes 2016 & finally Marvel Heroes Omega (PS4/Xbox One). The game was released a free to play the game but was supported by the in-game purchase of items such as costumes, characters, etc. The gameplay was nearly identical to the Legends/Ultimate Alliance formula.
The game was pretty good at keeping content fresh, especially when it came to a Marvel movie or TV show release. Spider-Man & Iron Man received their costumes from Spide-Man: Homecoming, Daredevil & Elecktra also sported their TV show look. The Punisher & Luke Cage also got the same treatment.
Activision released X-Men Legends in 2004 on PS2, Xbox & Gamecube. Legends let you select from 15 different X-Men & let you play with 3 others as you played through a new X-Men universe. Throughout the game, you end up fighting against classic X-Men villains such as Juggernaut, Sabretooth & of course Magneto. A solid first entry that did well enough for Activision to develop a sequel.
X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse was released the very next year on every console at the time. As the title suggests, you had to deal with Apocalypse this time around. Now if you know anything about the X-Men: Age of Apocalypse or watched the semi-decent movie X-Men: Apocalypse, Apocalypse is basically the most powerful mutant ever. The game, like much of the storyline of the comic & movie, lets you take a mix of the X-Men & Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to stop Apocalypse.
The total amount of playable characters increased to 19, & depending on which system you played on could increase even further. This game was basically one of the first games that had system exclusive characters which is a practice that we see more & more today.
It also introduced online play, player vs player & the combo system we would later see in Ultimate Alliance. The success of both X-Men Legends I/II would eventually set the table for Activision to develop Ultimate Alliance.
Now this game was ahead of its time. Had this game been released a few years after the Marvel Cinematic Universe started, it easily would be one of the best selling games ever. Instead, the Ultimate Alliance franchise is put into the nostalgic section of video game history. Think about it, this game lets you play as 24 different characters & had 16 more as downloadable content. More importantly, this was the first few times you got to play as characters such as Black Panther, Luke Cage, Daredevil, Blade & Vision.
Ultimate Alliance 2 was released in 2009 & was an improvement on Ultimate Alliance in nearly every way. This game introduced 'fusions' which basically let you combine powers to destroy things. Remember in the first Avengers movie when Iron Man shot a blast into Captain America's shield to destroy multiple enemies? That was basically the concept of 'fusions' except you can combine with multiple characters. Whether you wanted to throw a Wolverine fastball with the Hulk or wanted to recreate the bridge scene with Iron Man & Captain America, it was up to you! Fun fact: the game was also the first time that Stan Lee made a cameo in a video game!
The storyline of the game was based on the Civil War storyline from Marvel Comics. If that sounds familiar to you it should, especially since the last Captain America movie was based on the same storyline. The game featured 23 playable characters & again up to 11 more depending on the system you were playing on. While playing the game you had one major decision to make & that deciding to align yourself with Cap's anti-registration team or Iron Man's pro-registration team. Once your decision was made, your playable roster was cut in half for the majority of the game. The game itself received mixed reviews as the majority didn't feel it was as good as the first game. Despite that, it sold well enough to join Ultimate Alliance in the PlayStation Greatest Hits collection but not Xbox's Platinum Hits Collection. Should have been good enough another sequel right?
Gazillion Entertainment released Marvel Heroes back in 2013 on PC/OS X & later rebranded the game to Marvel Heroes 2015, Marvel Heroes 2016 & finally Marvel Heroes Omega (PS4/Xbox One). The game was released a free to play the game but was supported by the in-game purchase of items such as costumes, characters, etc. The gameplay was nearly identical to the Legends/Ultimate Alliance formula.
The game was pretty good at keeping content fresh, especially when it came to a Marvel movie or TV show release. Spider-Man & Iron Man received their costumes from Spide-Man: Homecoming, Daredevil & Elecktra also sported their TV show look. The Punisher & Luke Cage also got the same treatment.
In what was a sudden move, Disney announced on November 17, 2017, that they would end their relationship with Gazillion Entertainment, effectively killing the game. With that move, the only way you could get your Marvel dungeon crawler fix was to purchase the Ultimate Alliance remakes on the PlayStation Store or Xbox Marketplace.
So here we stand, nearly 10 years after the last Ultimate Alliance game was released. Ultimate Alliance understood what comic book fans wanted. It captured every nuance of the comics long before the movies did. Hopefully, Disney realizes the potential of this game & puts it back into the hands of a trusted developer. Think about it, did you have an idea of who Tony Stark was before the first Iron Man movie? Deadpool? Black Panther? Exactly! If you were to tell me 15 years ago that some of the best actors/actresses in the world would be playing comic book characters in blockbuster movies, I would have laughed. Now I know it might not be the greatest game ever but it was a solid game overall. I just hope to see one last sequel someday!
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