some games were much more reliant on novelty over solid gameplay, and so have way less replay value for anyone who wasnt there when it came out
which is why metal gear solid on PS1 can feel downright tedious today, fully voiced characters were unique at the time, but playing from a modern standpoint where most games have decent voice acting, the simple AI, clunky item management, and constant backtracking prevent it from being very fun
>And also wishing Raven would make Ultimate Alliance 4.
I'm not sure how much of the MUA team is still at Raven since they've been in the CoD mines for over a decade.
True, instead of Raven the company it's more accurate to want the people who developed the games to return. I don't mind Team Ninja doing a hypothetical Ultimate Alliance 4 (especially the character designs), but they need to bring back the stuff that Raven does.
I found a lot to like in 3, and I think visually and tonally it's my ideal Ultimate Alliance game, but I really do wish it kept more of the RPG mechanics. The ISO-8 grinding isn't enough of a substitute for the lack of move/ability variety and actual stats. I do think X-Men Legends 2 was the high point in that regard, even if the balance was totally out of whack.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Iso8 grinding is the absolute worst. I'm all for bringing back gearing but it's annoying to have to deal with and grind for obnoxious stat boosts and changes. All the extra modes and gearing of 3 have a nasty MOBILE game quality to them that I can't say I very much care for,
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Apparently it was meant to be a mobile game. The fact that Iso-8 is common in Marvel mobile games is the most obvious.
Civil War was genuinely the death of my interest in Marvel's actual comics, it always kind of surprises me how much every subsequent event still manages to resemble it tonally. Maybe I'm just a little b***h but I don't really enjoy hero vs hero narratives, especially when they try to be serious and ideological. Ultimate Alliance 2 pulling from that event so heavily really soured me on it as well, along with all of the changes to the gameplay.
[...]
That's a very good way to put it, even now when I try to go back to it I get burned out very quickly, and I'm normally the type to grind for weeks on end in a Dynasty Warriors game without any issue. The end game is basically equipping the ISO-8 that increases the drop rates for rarer ISO-8s, then hoping you randomly get ideal combos on those ISO-8s for your characters so you can take them into the same stages and bosses you've already beaten, but they're marginally harder now and (surprise!) they drop an ISO-8. It's more than a little uninspired. I still consider it a step up from UA2, but honestly my ideal game would look like UA3 and play like a smoother Legends 2 or UA1.
>my ideal game would look like UA3 and play like a smoother Legends 2 or UA1
Yup this. UA3 artstyle is the best, would love a gameplay that has huge elements from Legends 2 and UA1.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
While I do prefer the more "stylized" look of 3 I wouldn't complain if they got a major graphics boost.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
What qualifies for a major graphics boost to you? Because going for realism only results in overly expensive stuff like Spider-Man 2 or ugly outdated realism like MUA2.
Honestly I’m surprised no one ever went into how 3 was made in the first place after so many years, Nintendo hasn’t been into licensed IPs for decades so why did they suddenly do one and that too a sequel.
Honestly Iso aside in terms of character roster on both the heroes and villains, the settings and general story of heroes from all over teaming up it felt like a true sequel than 2 ever did.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>What qualifies for a major graphics boost to you?
In this instance a bit more detail and better animations. Observe Psylocke's hair. The game's look works decently because of the art style but it's a pretty last gen looking game.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Observe Psylocke's hair
I'm having a hard time
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Observe Psylocke's hair
homie you gay
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Observe Psylocke's hair
I'm having a hard time
>Not having a fetish for long perfectly flowing hair
Not only are you both philistines you are the true homo.
I never liked these games
The best one was Ultimate Alliance 1 but only the co-op mode where you're locked to one character and compete for score on each screen
I remember being surprised that everything was voice acted. A lot of games at the time didn't have that although that's a bigger and longer lasting problem with Japanese games. But yeah the game's still good as long as you overlook the character models. Cinematics are nice.
IMO, much as I love XML2 and MUA and think they absolutely hold up, they also suffer from it. For every gorgeous location like Asgard (absolutely love Asgard in MUA1.), Hell (kinda generic, but it's hell so it at least does it well), Murderworld (I love circus-themed levels) there's some gray and boring military base. Shi'ar is kind of in the middle because you do get to fight enemies in space but the spaceship itself is gray and boring.
Very true! i especially hate how you start in the helicarrier and then go to the aim base cuz its two boring looking metal corridor areas in a row. worth it to see atlantis, mandarins castle and so on though
I like Marvel Mods, but I was always perplexed and annoyed that I could never find any that added character slots. Perhaps I was just blind or didn't search hard enough, but all the character mods I saw were just replacers.
God the Ultimate costumes suck so much
Anyway yeah this and its sequel are really fun. The idea of using the Xavier Institute as a hub is so obvious and comfy but surprisingly never done again, and I liked Magma in the first game and was sad she wasn't in XML2. I agree about the levels though, X-Men has such a wild variety of enemies and settings and they didn't really try there
I just switch to classic costumes on every character the first chance I get to unlock them.
I just wish you could do the same for cutscenes and briefings.
Why did they even bother? It's one thing that always annoyed me.
Those games are pretty much 616 in every way that matters (with XML2 being clearly taking quite a few cues from Age of Apocalypse), but for some reason costumes are Ultimate.
At the time the Ultimate Universe was the "thing" and they wanted to push it which is why everyone is Ultimate in these games, but they're just so much more drab and less colorful I don't really care for them. The only ones that work is Cyclops because it vaguely resembles 90s Jim Lee Cyke and Magma because she doesn't have an iconic costume so they could be a little more OC with her
I think I only kept Ultimate Storm in Legends 2 because she had that "goth girl phase" hairstyle which I thought was hot as frick, but Ultimate Alliance just switched to classic hairstyle Storm for their Ultimate version so what was even the point?
The game was ass, but it was interesting how it didn't even bother to pay lip service to balance. If you and a friend tried to pit Iron Man and Daredevil against each other, guess what? Daredevil ate shit every single time.
I think my ranking is 1 -> 3 -> 2, but miniscule differences in ranking. Ultimate Alliance 1 is a perfect time capsule of Marvel before the MCU, the main cutscenes are phenomenal and beat out a lot of modern stuff, and Clive Revill is my Doom voice. It's probably one of my top 10 games of all time. I like 2, i think what it ended up doing with the civil war plotline was better than the comics, but the locations weren't a good showcase of Marvel locations until Wakanda, and only two costumes sucks. I think 2's roster is also missing those less popular choices like Moon Knight and Spider-Woman. 3 does this better, a good mix of obvious characters and guys like Electra and Punisher, and locations as well. I wish it was a bit more gritty like the first 2, but i'm just happy it exists.
Yeah. There's a bit of the Ultimates leaking in but MUA1 really did feel like a true classic marvel celebration. It really did feel like it was digging into the comics. I really liked how every character had their own comic book solo mission. If there was one thing I really wish 3 had was something closer to this. It's got a lot of extra stuff to do but all of it's challenge modes feel samey and impersonal. And I really think it needed a hub. Because it is nice to just hang out in a headquarters before missions.
Don't forget about the special conversations between characters in the hub, or just chatting up characters and learning about their backstories, it makes the world feel lived in, if that makes sense. And the more i think about it, the more i miss the different endings you could get by doing or not doing certain objectives.
Yeah, they sort of understood that part of the fun of the superhero games isn't just playing with them but hanging out with them. In 3 it kind of felt like it never mattered who you were at any given time. Like you could put heroes against their arch nemesis and get more from 1 but in 3 if it's not in the cutscenes it don't matter.
True, instead of Raven the company it's more accurate to want the people who developed the games to return. I don't mind Team Ninja doing a hypothetical Ultimate Alliance 4 (especially the character designs), but they need to bring back the stuff that Raven does.
I'd be happy to give TN a second shot but they really need to up their combat. Which feels weird because you'd think they'd be better at it.
>Was it good?
Surprisingly yes. It was actually rather quite good. The story was a bit weak but it did a fantastic job of making the characters feel unique and fun to play and it was honestly just a blast to cruise through Midtown with a bunch of other players and a bunch of other heroes. It had a strong collection of playable characters and in the biggest twist a non shitty monetization system were you would get the money to buy new heroes at a solidly quick rate.
Yeah, I really want to dock 2 a lot of points for being so CW focused. 3 actually had a lot more interesting locations but the actual physical gameplay wasn't quite as good.
Not really that weird since the game is supposed to be an adaptation, not a 1:1 retelling of the story. The original comic storylines they used as source material( Civil War & Secret War(2004) ) were contrived and stupid anyway
Civil War was genuinely the death of my interest in Marvel's actual comics, it always kind of surprises me how much every subsequent event still manages to resemble it tonally. Maybe I'm just a little b***h but I don't really enjoy hero vs hero narratives, especially when they try to be serious and ideological. Ultimate Alliance 2 pulling from that event so heavily really soured me on it as well, along with all of the changes to the gameplay.
Iso8 grinding is the absolute worst. I'm all for bringing back gearing but it's annoying to have to deal with and grind for obnoxious stat boosts and changes. All the extra modes and gearing of 3 have a nasty MOBILE game quality to them that I can't say I very much care for,
That's a very good way to put it, even now when I try to go back to it I get burned out very quickly, and I'm normally the type to grind for weeks on end in a Dynasty Warriors game without any issue. The end game is basically equipping the ISO-8 that increases the drop rates for rarer ISO-8s, then hoping you randomly get ideal combos on those ISO-8s for your characters so you can take them into the same stages and bosses you've already beaten, but they're marginally harder now and (surprise!) they drop an ISO-8. It's more than a little uninspired. I still consider it a step up from UA2, but honestly my ideal game would look like UA3 and play like a smoother Legends 2 or UA1.
>Civil War was genuinely the death of my interest in Marvel's actual comics,
Yeah that's about where I check out too. everying including and after that just feels... wrong to me. It kind of feels like all the years of comics I've followed just sort of stop and a whole new line started to take over. I was kind of already losing interesting towards the tail end of the 90s but stuff like Busiek Avengers and Thunderbolts and some of the Heroes Return stuff was doing a great job of winning me back over and then that just kind of all hit a brick wall and I guess I'm just done. Like even if I wanted to get back into it I just don't think I could. I don't even mind the occasional hero vs hero mix up but I just don't have the heart for anything past that. I've enjoyed things. I won't say there's no good comics. But it's a good place for me to hang my hat. I got A LOT of memories and a lot of comics I can read.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
oh boo hoo bro
talk about the video games
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Civil War was a bad comic and it made for a bad story to set your massive crossover video game on.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
agreed
they should revive marvel heroes as it was before it was run into the ground
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Civil War was a bad comic and it made for a bad story to set your massive crossover video game on.
MUA2 had some really terrible voice acting, I really don’t like the accent Cap had. The lack of supernatural characters apart from Thor was also a downgrade and the game is frankly tried to be too realistic for it’s time that it’s just way too ugly now. So many unlikeable characters too, I find it hard to believe it’s set in the same world as the first game.
UA2 really went all-in on the whole cynicism that you can only really get from post-9/11 superhero stories. It even opens with a condensed version of the Secret War arc, too. The fact that the character designs are a bit drab and realistic looking is even icing on the cake. I distinctly remember Gambit just looking like some schmuck in a coat flicking unimpressive looking pink cards. If I had to describe the whole package in one word, I'd call it "mundane".
agreed
they should revive marvel heroes as it was before it was run into the ground
I really, really regret not playing it more while it was around. I remember running around in that one shipping yard area early on beating the yellow off AIM grunts for hours and having a blast. The music was pretty good too.
>even now when I try to go back to it I get burned out very quickly,
Ditto. I don't mind spending time building characters and maxing them out. I actually really like that shit. Like you said back when I was into Dynasty Warrior games I used to build up almost everyone for hours on end. But the difference here is I don't really feel like I'm building my characters. I feel like I'm scrounging for change. the Isos are too generic and the grid web thingy was too universal. I want to build characters not a mountain of junk. It reminds me of Strange Tales 181 where Adam Warlock is trapped in an illusion world of clowns who just make piles of garbage with only there be an occasional diamond to be found.
It gets even worse when you constantly have to break down other ISO-8s after every damn stage because the storage is too small. I was actually considering picking the game back up for a bit and you've talked me into talking myself out of it.
Honestly I've mostly just been sticking to card/board games for now, I feel like Marvel's licensed games in that area are significantly better at the moment.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
That whole era of super hero comics just felt very un super heroic. I mean yeah the game made up some shit about an Ai colony forcing the conflict to end early and the heroes to fight that but even then it was just.... eh. Like there was a lot of cool stuff marvel was doing before then. Like imagine if Annihilation was more of a focal point instead.
>I really, really regret not playing it more while it was around. I remember running around in that one shipping yard area early on beating the yellow off AIM grunts for hours and having a blast. The music was pretty good too.
It was so much fun. One minute you're fighting AIM jerks the next broodlings or sentinels were on the table.
>It gets even worse when you constantly have to break down other ISO-8s after every damn stage because the storage is too small.
See this is the kind of things when I call games busy work. You have to juggle like 9000 different kinds of currency and yeah, it feels like a mobile game. And I hate not liking the game as much as I want t o because you do get some kind of neat ideas in there.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Most all Marvel is unreadable post 9/11.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
sounds like most western media in general
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
I feel really bad for the kids who had to read 00's comics & have them think it was normal for the characters to act buttholes & warped desegregates.
>even now when I try to go back to it I get burned out very quickly,
Ditto. I don't mind spending time building characters and maxing them out. I actually really like that shit. Like you said back when I was into Dynasty Warrior games I used to build up almost everyone for hours on end. But the difference here is I don't really feel like I'm building my characters. I feel like I'm scrounging for change. the Isos are too generic and the grid web thingy was too universal. I want to build characters not a mountain of junk. It reminds me of Strange Tales 181 where Adam Warlock is trapped in an illusion world of clowns who just make piles of garbage with only there be an occasional diamond to be found.
Nah I hate the hero vs hero shit too. It totally ruins half the characters by turning them into ratshit traitors that it makes no sense for the other half to ever work with again.
If there is one praise I would MUA2 over MUA1, it's that it uses New York as a location. I would've taken New York streets over generic metal walls of military bases any day.
MUA1 had the far more interesting locations though. You were in Asgard, Atlantis, a Shi'ar battle ship, Mephisto's realm etc. 2 is the boring city street level crap.
Oh, sure. The point I was making is that I hate the metal walls that annoyed me since the X-Men Legends' games days.
Frick Helicarrier, frick Omega Base. If I could take sunny colorful NY from the second game and put it in place of those boring locations, I'd do so in a heartbeat.
I actually liked the Helicarrier because it was only the first level, and the setting is iconic, Omega Base was boring though. I will say that the Helicarrier interiors that Activision designed did look bland as hell though
Really wish Allison showed up in the sequel, just to see how she's adapted to being part of the team, but she wasn't included for some reason
Also it's really funny that this stick thin teenaged girl is the best tank in the game by far
Capeshit got too big and now the only capeshit we get is AAA, but AA is where the soulful shit like the Alliance games are, it's been 5 years since MUA3
The massive Insomniac leak already showed the other playable character in Wolverine’s game is Jean Grey, and she isn’t a pure psychic but a mix of Ellie of The Last of Us with some psy blasts, as in Jean has an actual bow and arrow.
Allegedly she's also a Morlock now or something like that. It's a weird alternate universe. I've already written the whole thing off, honestly. I actually started replaying Legends 2, the PC version. It's a shame the movement controls are so terrible on PC, I haven't really messed with GC or PS2 emulation enough to replay it that way.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Morlock Jean you say....
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
would
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Dolphin works out of the box if that helps
Ive done some tweaks meself to get it running in HD bit you dont need to, ROM loads fine
From the leaks the Wolverine game is trying to be more grounded with their abilities as Jean is in her first years of being on the action (but she isn’t a teen like when she first started like in the comics), in Insomniac’s verse Jean is just a solo woman looking out to find out who killed her father, the X-Men aren’t formed yet, that’s for the actual X-Men game they are making.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Just make that kind of surprisingly good Wolverine Origins again. Seriously that game was shockingly not shit.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Jean is just a solo woman looking out to find out who killed her father
What a boring way to introduce Jean Grey. Just giving her the most generic character motivation ever. They could choose a plethora of X-Men to team up with Logan that would be cooler. Nightcrawler or Gambit would be great since they often join the X-Men later.
Besides, Jean would be better served at introducing the X-Men, as the main player character. A lot like the original comic book or Wolverine & The X-Men.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Having a generic motivation is better than her being a mindwiping fujo.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Cyclops would've been a funny route to go, like he was sent to recruit Logan and they had a buddy cop dynamic. He'd also have more fun gameplay than fricking bow and arrow
Capeshit got too big and now the only capeshit we get is AAA, but AA is where the soulful shit like the Alliance games are, it's been 5 years since MUA3
Yeah vidya in general fell off a cliff, western studios mostly stick to boring "cinematic" crap, shooters, or remakes
I know people whine and b***h about the Mary Jane segments in the Spider-Man games, but at least they're being upfront that you'll be playing as the supporting characters in the game. I'm just waiting for the gameplay trailer to get an idea if we're in for more Uncharted but with shield combat and cat claws with a smattering of gunplay from Gabe and maybe the Wakandan spy, or something a bit more different.
Midnight Suns is more slept on than I feel it should've been, which is a shame. I picked it up on a whim because it was cheap at a used game store, and it ended up surprising me. The godawful cover art does nothing to indicate the true game.
The writing was awful
Theres an entire side quest about Blade, of all people, setting up a feminist book club to spend time with cap marvel cause hes too shy to confess his crush
Dogshit writing. Terrible gameplay loop with too many currencies.deck building is worthless since the best strategies are pretty obvious.
It could have been great if it wasnt designed like some shitty mobile game.I wanted xcom with superpowers. Instead we got island walking sim, shitty costumes with fixed alt colors, dating sim with no point, and half assed combat.
If you think this is a good tactics based rpg I suggest you expand your horizons.
I never understood the idea of making a video card game. Like cards are meant to represent the art work but if you can make an actual game you don't need the cards. It's just dumb.
Disney got strict on who can work on their games and what they put in them.
MvCI got ruined because of it
Capeshit got too big and now the only capeshit we get is AAA, but AA is where the soulful shit like the Alliance games are, it's been 5 years since MUA3
Because the general audience (i.e., normies) expect/want their superhero vidya to be AAA third-person action-adventure story-based affairs, and so the whole genre is stuck in a rut both creatively and financially >absolutely massive budgets for graphics, scope, voice acting, etc., mean the game absolutely has to be a success if it wants to make its money back, which means making it as common-denominator as possible >and only the big blockbuster studios can afford to spend that much money, so any experimentation is further discouraged since the industry leaders are rarely ever innovative these days
i remember there was a bad artsplash on sf5s horrible story mode and someone said it looked like shit then someone responded "you better not be talking shit about Bengus's art as he did the art for those splashs and then someone responded to that person with "Bengus sucks"
Having currently binged the 90's x-men cartoon to watch the revival series , It made me miss when superhero media appealed mostly to nerds, and mostly because capeshit nowadays has to appeals to normies of the lower end spectrum. So a niche experimental sub genre of gaming has to commit to the typical AAA slop game design i.e: slow paced cinematic adventure stories with bits of action in between. Also kinda miss when Marvel could use its entire roster of characters without legal rights or some shit like that
insomniac is possibly gonna do somewhat average with that upcoming Wolverine game, but after those leaks I dunno how to feel about that
>So a niche experimental sub genre of gaming has to commit to the typical AAA slop game design i.e: slow paced cinematic adventure stories with bits of action in between
I don't know what the point of this crap is, they interrupt the gameplay to force you to play an interactive cutscene for a story that's usually dogshit anyway. FFS If they want to make fake movies then why don't they at least hire competent writers
I think the mainstream audience has just become too accustomed to movies and TV, so they demand their games be like that as well. And on top of that demand, maybe even before it, it's also far, far easier for the big AAA companies to just simply copy the approach, techniques, story focus, actor focus, etc etc already set out by the other major pre-existing audio-visual medium, as opposed to trying to figure out how to make something which can only be uniquely done in video games.
For me it's the feeling that I actually experience a COMIC story, just in a different medium.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance was specifically so hype because it didn't take me to a watered-down MCUified version of the world, it's something straight out of the comic book pages.
Games posted ITT have that feeling in general. Hell, for all the blame Arkham games get for popularizing what you're saying, Asylum certainly retained that feeling of being a comic book story or a BTAS-based movie at least.
Even movie 2000s tie-in games, when not trying to adhere to the movie's plots filled the blanks with comic-like stuff. (Shocker being straight-up lifted from the comics in Raimi movie games comes to mind)
Nowadays capeshit vidya feels like discount MCUesque crap that barely has anything to do with the comics beyond the characters' names and filled with boring "realistic" designs.
>For me it's the feeling that I actually experience a COMIC story, just in a different medium.
pretty much this, when comic games embrace how bright and fun comics are you can get some memorable results , and to an extent Arkham even felt like a comic given the situation at present since it had Paul Dini on board.
When you make them flat as the current direction the MCU is headed, then the experience can feel null
Honestly, no. The combat isn't fleshed out enough and the difficulty curve is messed up. It's not bad but it has first game syndrome. The sequel and the Ultimate Alliance games improve on it immensely.
MUA2 had some really terrible voice acting, I really don’t like the accent Cap had. The lack of supernatural characters apart from Thor was also a downgrade and the game is frankly tried to be too realistic for it’s time that it’s just way too ugly now. So many unlikeable characters too, I find it hard to believe it’s set in the same world as the first game.
Every so often, the thought pops into my head that I should go back and finish UA3, then I go and play it and remember how utterly mind-numbing and dragged out the gameplay is, so I drop it again.
I like everything about the game except the game itself. It's such a shame.
Yeah. I want to like 3 a lot more than I end up doing but the actual physical combat is just.... dry? I guess is the best word. And maybe this is just a me problem but did anyone else lose track of their character like REALLY easily? Because I swear I'd be trying to do a combo or a special move and I was nowhere NEAR where I thought I was.
eeeeeeh it's alright, I suppose I'd call it? Like was said above you do get to go to more interesting locations and the roster is pretty solid but the actual gameplay is a bit stiff. Physical attacks really don't seem to have much impact at all. The story is mostly fine and feels comic booky but at the same time it also kind of lacks character outside of the cut scenes. And this is just a matter of personal taste there are times when it's trying to really hard to be witty. Not quite Joss Whedon esque but the character introduction slides get old fast all the same.
I enjoyed all of the time I spent with it, and at the very least I'd consider it a pretty decent step up from 2. It has a few frustrating points in terms of character balance and the post-game grind, but if you like Marvel and dig the artstyle I'd say it's at least worth a try.
>want to play Legends 2 with brother >buy it for PC >doesn't work with new Windows >buy it for Gamecube >error after 10 minutes of playing
At this point we just played with an emulator and it probably ran 100 times smoother than it would have. I have always been a fan of physical games, but it's so fricking troublesome sometimes.
Started playing the sequel a week ago, never played the original so I have no nostalgia goggles.
It's fun, no complaints. Doesn't appear to have aged nearly as badly as some other games from that gen.
>aged
its a perfectly valid criticism
some games were much more reliant on novelty over solid gameplay, and so have way less replay value for anyone who wasnt there when it came out
which is why metal gear solid on PS1 can feel downright tedious today, fully voiced characters were unique at the time, but playing from a modern standpoint where most games have decent voice acting, the simple AI, clunky item management, and constant backtracking prevent it from being very fun
no
Yeah but Ultimate Alliance is way better.
No but the sequel does
Wrong, MUA stripped out a lot of the rpg mechanics and combos
Ultimate alliance is the better game, time to accept it, anon
Never played the original so I'd choose 2. And also wishing Raven would make Ultimate Alliance 4. 3 has things right but lots of things wrong.
I also didn't like how Ultimate Alliance ditched the cel shaded look.
>And also wishing Raven would make Ultimate Alliance 4.
I'm not sure how much of the MUA team is still at Raven since they've been in the CoD mines for over a decade.
True, instead of Raven the company it's more accurate to want the people who developed the games to return. I don't mind Team Ninja doing a hypothetical Ultimate Alliance 4 (especially the character designs), but they need to bring back the stuff that Raven does.
I found a lot to like in 3, and I think visually and tonally it's my ideal Ultimate Alliance game, but I really do wish it kept more of the RPG mechanics. The ISO-8 grinding isn't enough of a substitute for the lack of move/ability variety and actual stats. I do think X-Men Legends 2 was the high point in that regard, even if the balance was totally out of whack.
Iso8 grinding is the absolute worst. I'm all for bringing back gearing but it's annoying to have to deal with and grind for obnoxious stat boosts and changes. All the extra modes and gearing of 3 have a nasty MOBILE game quality to them that I can't say I very much care for,
Apparently it was meant to be a mobile game. The fact that Iso-8 is common in Marvel mobile games is the most obvious.
>my ideal game would look like UA3 and play like a smoother Legends 2 or UA1
Yup this. UA3 artstyle is the best, would love a gameplay that has huge elements from Legends 2 and UA1.
While I do prefer the more "stylized" look of 3 I wouldn't complain if they got a major graphics boost.
What qualifies for a major graphics boost to you? Because going for realism only results in overly expensive stuff like Spider-Man 2 or ugly outdated realism like MUA2.
Honestly I’m surprised no one ever went into how 3 was made in the first place after so many years, Nintendo hasn’t been into licensed IPs for decades so why did they suddenly do one and that too a sequel.
Honestly Iso aside in terms of character roster on both the heroes and villains, the settings and general story of heroes from all over teaming up it felt like a true sequel than 2 ever did.
>What qualifies for a major graphics boost to you?
In this instance a bit more detail and better animations. Observe Psylocke's hair. The game's look works decently because of the art style but it's a pretty last gen looking game.
>Observe Psylocke's hair
I'm having a hard time
>Observe Psylocke's hair
homie you gay
>Not having a fetish for long perfectly flowing hair
Not only are you both philistines you are the true homo.
homosexual Superior you filthy human
I never liked these games
The best one was Ultimate Alliance 1 but only the co-op mode where you're locked to one character and compete for score on each screen
I remember being surprised that everything was voice acted. A lot of games at the time didn't have that although that's a bigger and longer lasting problem with Japanese games. But yeah the game's still good as long as you overlook the character models. Cinematics are nice.
I'm guessing Legends and original Ultimate Alliance are games that legally have no chance of ever being re-released right?
I played the first Legends but always wanted to try the sequel and UA games.
The first two Ultimate Alliance games got re-released a few years ago, but got de-listed because Activision.
First holds up but holy shit the levels
>military based
>abandoned military base
>sewer
>abandoned military base
>abandoned sewer
>military base
IMO, much as I love XML2 and MUA and think they absolutely hold up, they also suffer from it. For every gorgeous location like Asgard (absolutely love Asgard in MUA1.), Hell (kinda generic, but it's hell so it at least does it well), Murderworld (I love circus-themed levels) there's some gray and boring military base. Shi'ar is kind of in the middle because you do get to fight enemies in space but the spaceship itself is gray and boring.
Very true! i especially hate how you start in the helicarrier and then go to the aim base cuz its two boring looking metal corridor areas in a row. worth it to see atlantis, mandarins castle and so on though
The levels in Ultimate Alliance were so fricking cool. Arcade’s carnival, Atlantis, fricking Asgard, HELL
Shit was so cash
Gets a little repetitive sometimes but still good
I miss these and Ultimate Alliance games so much, UA3 didn't feel like the previous games at all.
UA3 finally completed the series downward journey from ARPG to standard beat em up
I know this is Cinemaphile and you’re a bunch of morons but MUA3 was much better than MUA2
MUA3 felt and looked like a phone game and is extremely boring because of simplified gameplay.
Anyway heres a mod that adds 300 characters to Marvel Ultimate Alliance
https://youtube.com/@Marvel_Mods?si=MqhhtXh4K-0QeIgY
>dc
It's shit
Man it's crazy to see people still making mods for this one. I didn't realize there was this much love still left.
I like Marvel Mods, but I was always perplexed and annoyed that I could never find any that added character slots. Perhaps I was just blind or didn't search hard enough, but all the character mods I saw were just replacers.
The game's just built in a funny way.
Marvel Heroes was so much better than any of the XL or UA games, then they shat the bed so hard that it died.
>then they shat the bed so hard that it died
How did they do that?
uhh the studio head was straight up moronic
i think including consoles helped kill it too
BRING BACK MH
is that unofficial one still going
God the Ultimate costumes suck so much
Anyway yeah this and its sequel are really fun. The idea of using the Xavier Institute as a hub is so obvious and comfy but surprisingly never done again, and I liked Magma in the first game and was sad she wasn't in XML2. I agree about the levels though, X-Men has such a wild variety of enemies and settings and they didn't really try there
I just switch to classic costumes on every character the first chance I get to unlock them.
I just wish you could do the same for cutscenes and briefings.
Why did they even bother? It's one thing that always annoyed me.
Those games are pretty much 616 in every way that matters (with XML2 being clearly taking quite a few cues from Age of Apocalypse), but for some reason costumes are Ultimate.
At the time the Ultimate Universe was the "thing" and they wanted to push it which is why everyone is Ultimate in these games, but they're just so much more drab and less colorful I don't really care for them. The only ones that work is Cyclops because it vaguely resembles 90s Jim Lee Cyke and Magma because she doesn't have an iconic costume so they could be a little more OC with her
I think I only kept Ultimate Storm in Legends 2 because she had that "goth girl phase" hairstyle which I thought was hot as frick, but Ultimate Alliance just switched to classic hairstyle Storm for their Ultimate version so what was even the point?
>God the Ultimate costumes suck so much
Filtered.
I think it holds it very well, you just need friends to play with it.
Also - wrong board. Or, since its the X-Men, they'd allow a small bit of covr?
I miss these games. 3 was so boring
The Thing is that cover looks terrible
this game was better anyway
You have got to be kidding me
i enjoyed nemesis playing with friends
The game was ass, but it was interesting how it didn't even bother to pay lip service to balance. If you and a friend tried to pit Iron Man and Daredevil against each other, guess what? Daredevil ate shit every single time.
This game is trash, it’s also fun. I also like the name Johnny Ohm
one of my biggest gaming dissapointments
Really? You expected it to be worth playing enough to be disappointed by it? You saw a roster with............Brigade on it and thought this?
Compared to 2, 3 was a breath of fresh air.
I think my ranking is 1 -> 3 -> 2, but miniscule differences in ranking. Ultimate Alliance 1 is a perfect time capsule of Marvel before the MCU, the main cutscenes are phenomenal and beat out a lot of modern stuff, and Clive Revill is my Doom voice. It's probably one of my top 10 games of all time. I like 2, i think what it ended up doing with the civil war plotline was better than the comics, but the locations weren't a good showcase of Marvel locations until Wakanda, and only two costumes sucks. I think 2's roster is also missing those less popular choices like Moon Knight and Spider-Woman. 3 does this better, a good mix of obvious characters and guys like Electra and Punisher, and locations as well. I wish it was a bit more gritty like the first 2, but i'm just happy it exists.
Yeah. There's a bit of the Ultimates leaking in but MUA1 really did feel like a true classic marvel celebration. It really did feel like it was digging into the comics. I really liked how every character had their own comic book solo mission. If there was one thing I really wish 3 had was something closer to this. It's got a lot of extra stuff to do but all of it's challenge modes feel samey and impersonal. And I really think it needed a hub. Because it is nice to just hang out in a headquarters before missions.
Don't forget about the special conversations between characters in the hub, or just chatting up characters and learning about their backstories, it makes the world feel lived in, if that makes sense. And the more i think about it, the more i miss the different endings you could get by doing or not doing certain objectives.
Yeah, they sort of understood that part of the fun of the superhero games isn't just playing with them but hanging out with them. In 3 it kind of felt like it never mattered who you were at any given time. Like you could put heroes against their arch nemesis and get more from 1 but in 3 if it's not in the cutscenes it don't matter.
I'd be happy to give TN a second shot but they really need to up their combat. Which feels weird because you'd think they'd be better at it.
I miss it
What was this?
MMO game in the early mid 2010s
Was it good? Never heard of it and I played the Facebook one that seems to be similar
>Was it good?
Surprisingly yes. It was actually rather quite good. The story was a bit weak but it did a fantastic job of making the characters feel unique and fun to play and it was honestly just a blast to cruise through Midtown with a bunch of other players and a bunch of other heroes. It had a strong collection of playable characters and in the biggest twist a non shitty monetization system were you would get the money to buy new heroes at a solidly quick rate.
Marvel Diablo. Fell somewhere between Diablo 2 and 3 in terms of gameplay.
>even when the cards were pennies I wasn't able to pull "the captain"
Yet DC Universe Online is still alive somehow.
Disney is on its deathbed
The second game is way better
These games are only fun with a friend.
Plus frick Civil War for ruining Ultimate Alliance.
Yeah, I really want to dock 2 a lot of points for being so CW focused. 3 actually had a lot more interesting locations but the actual physical gameplay wasn't quite as good.
It's so weird She-Hulk is de-powered because of the Civil War storyline but they put her in the game anyway.
the game took quite a few liberties with the story
Not really that weird since the game is supposed to be an adaptation, not a 1:1 retelling of the story. The original comic storylines they used as source material( Civil War & Secret War(2004) ) were contrived and stupid anyway
Civil War was genuinely the death of my interest in Marvel's actual comics, it always kind of surprises me how much every subsequent event still manages to resemble it tonally. Maybe I'm just a little b***h but I don't really enjoy hero vs hero narratives, especially when they try to be serious and ideological. Ultimate Alliance 2 pulling from that event so heavily really soured me on it as well, along with all of the changes to the gameplay.
That's a very good way to put it, even now when I try to go back to it I get burned out very quickly, and I'm normally the type to grind for weeks on end in a Dynasty Warriors game without any issue. The end game is basically equipping the ISO-8 that increases the drop rates for rarer ISO-8s, then hoping you randomly get ideal combos on those ISO-8s for your characters so you can take them into the same stages and bosses you've already beaten, but they're marginally harder now and (surprise!) they drop an ISO-8. It's more than a little uninspired. I still consider it a step up from UA2, but honestly my ideal game would look like UA3 and play like a smoother Legends 2 or UA1.
>Civil War was genuinely the death of my interest in Marvel's actual comics,
Yeah that's about where I check out too. everying including and after that just feels... wrong to me. It kind of feels like all the years of comics I've followed just sort of stop and a whole new line started to take over. I was kind of already losing interesting towards the tail end of the 90s but stuff like Busiek Avengers and Thunderbolts and some of the Heroes Return stuff was doing a great job of winning me back over and then that just kind of all hit a brick wall and I guess I'm just done. Like even if I wanted to get back into it I just don't think I could. I don't even mind the occasional hero vs hero mix up but I just don't have the heart for anything past that. I've enjoyed things. I won't say there's no good comics. But it's a good place for me to hang my hat. I got A LOT of memories and a lot of comics I can read.
oh boo hoo bro
talk about the video games
Civil War was a bad comic and it made for a bad story to set your massive crossover video game on.
agreed
they should revive marvel heroes as it was before it was run into the ground
UA2 really went all-in on the whole cynicism that you can only really get from post-9/11 superhero stories. It even opens with a condensed version of the Secret War arc, too. The fact that the character designs are a bit drab and realistic looking is even icing on the cake. I distinctly remember Gambit just looking like some schmuck in a coat flicking unimpressive looking pink cards. If I had to describe the whole package in one word, I'd call it "mundane".
I really, really regret not playing it more while it was around. I remember running around in that one shipping yard area early on beating the yellow off AIM grunts for hours and having a blast. The music was pretty good too.
It gets even worse when you constantly have to break down other ISO-8s after every damn stage because the storage is too small. I was actually considering picking the game back up for a bit and you've talked me into talking myself out of it.
Honestly I've mostly just been sticking to card/board games for now, I feel like Marvel's licensed games in that area are significantly better at the moment.
That whole era of super hero comics just felt very un super heroic. I mean yeah the game made up some shit about an Ai colony forcing the conflict to end early and the heroes to fight that but even then it was just.... eh. Like there was a lot of cool stuff marvel was doing before then. Like imagine if Annihilation was more of a focal point instead.
>I really, really regret not playing it more while it was around. I remember running around in that one shipping yard area early on beating the yellow off AIM grunts for hours and having a blast. The music was pretty good too.
It was so much fun. One minute you're fighting AIM jerks the next broodlings or sentinels were on the table.
>It gets even worse when you constantly have to break down other ISO-8s after every damn stage because the storage is too small.
See this is the kind of things when I call games busy work. You have to juggle like 9000 different kinds of currency and yeah, it feels like a mobile game. And I hate not liking the game as much as I want t o because you do get some kind of neat ideas in there.
Most all Marvel is unreadable post 9/11.
sounds like most western media in general
I feel really bad for the kids who had to read 00's comics & have them think it was normal for the characters to act buttholes & warped desegregates.
Better 2000s comics than 2010s
Cope.
>even now when I try to go back to it I get burned out very quickly,
Ditto. I don't mind spending time building characters and maxing them out. I actually really like that shit. Like you said back when I was into Dynasty Warrior games I used to build up almost everyone for hours on end. But the difference here is I don't really feel like I'm building my characters. I feel like I'm scrounging for change. the Isos are too generic and the grid web thingy was too universal. I want to build characters not a mountain of junk. It reminds me of Strange Tales 181 where Adam Warlock is trapped in an illusion world of clowns who just make piles of garbage with only there be an occasional diamond to be found.
Nah I hate the hero vs hero shit too. It totally ruins half the characters by turning them into ratshit traitors that it makes no sense for the other half to ever work with again.
If there is one praise I would MUA2 over MUA1, it's that it uses New York as a location. I would've taken New York streets over generic metal walls of military bases any day.
MUA1 had the far more interesting locations though. You were in Asgard, Atlantis, a Shi'ar battle ship, Mephisto's realm etc. 2 is the boring city street level crap.
Oh, sure. The point I was making is that I hate the metal walls that annoyed me since the X-Men Legends' games days.
Frick Helicarrier, frick Omega Base. If I could take sunny colorful NY from the second game and put it in place of those boring locations, I'd do so in a heartbeat.
I actually liked the Helicarrier because it was only the first level, and the setting is iconic, Omega Base was boring though. I will say that the Helicarrier interiors that Activision designed did look bland as hell though
Storm was so fricking hot
TUMMY!
For some reason the first game is pretty hard at points & you can only get healing items from enemy drops.
Liquid.
Hot.
MAGMA!
Really wish Allison showed up in the sequel, just to see how she's adapted to being part of the team, but she wasn't included for some reason
Also it's really funny that this stick thin teenaged girl is the best tank in the game by far
TUMMY!
No New Game+ was a serious let down.
why did cape vidya fall off a cliff
Capeshit got too big and now the only capeshit we get is AAA, but AA is where the soulful shit like the Alliance games are, it's been 5 years since MUA3
We're in weird era where you want to play as Spider-Man or Logan but they force you to play as Mary Jane.
In the upcoming Wolverine game you'll get to play as Silverfox or some shit probably
The massive Insomniac leak already showed the other playable character in Wolverine’s game is Jean Grey, and she isn’t a pure psychic but a mix of Ellie of The Last of Us with some psy blasts, as in Jean has an actual bow and arrow.
Why would Jean need a bow
She can just throw the arrows with her mind
Actually why does she need arrows she can just throw the dudes
Allegedly she's also a Morlock now or something like that. It's a weird alternate universe. I've already written the whole thing off, honestly. I actually started replaying Legends 2, the PC version. It's a shame the movement controls are so terrible on PC, I haven't really messed with GC or PS2 emulation enough to replay it that way.
Morlock Jean you say....
would
Dolphin works out of the box if that helps
Ive done some tweaks meself to get it running in HD bit you dont need to, ROM loads fine
From the leaks the Wolverine game is trying to be more grounded with their abilities as Jean is in her first years of being on the action (but she isn’t a teen like when she first started like in the comics), in Insomniac’s verse Jean is just a solo woman looking out to find out who killed her father, the X-Men aren’t formed yet, that’s for the actual X-Men game they are making.
Just make that kind of surprisingly good Wolverine Origins again. Seriously that game was shockingly not shit.
>Jean is just a solo woman looking out to find out who killed her father
What a boring way to introduce Jean Grey. Just giving her the most generic character motivation ever. They could choose a plethora of X-Men to team up with Logan that would be cooler. Nightcrawler or Gambit would be great since they often join the X-Men later.
Besides, Jean would be better served at introducing the X-Men, as the main player character. A lot like the original comic book or Wolverine & The X-Men.
Having a generic motivation is better than her being a mindwiping fujo.
Cyclops would've been a funny route to go, like he was sent to recruit Logan and they had a buddy cop dynamic. He'd also have more fun gameplay than fricking bow and arrow
well good thing you still play as Spider-Man for 99% of the game you fricking crybaby
Say... if it isn't my old nemesis, A FRIDGE!
>defending boring forced segments that only exist for ESG points
Yeah vidya in general fell off a cliff, western studios mostly stick to boring "cinematic" crap, shooters, or remakes
I liked the Guardians game. It was pretty fun and the VA was great.
That game was a very nice surprise. Hope they keep trying to find new kinds of games to make that work to each characters strengths like that.
I hope the new Cap/Panther WW2 game doesn't suck
I know people whine and b***h about the Mary Jane segments in the Spider-Man games, but at least they're being upfront that you'll be playing as the supporting characters in the game. I'm just waiting for the gameplay trailer to get an idea if we're in for more Uncharted but with shield combat and cat claws with a smattering of gunplay from Gabe and maybe the Wakandan spy, or something a bit more different.
Midnight Suns is more slept on than I feel it should've been, which is a shame. I picked it up on a whim because it was cheap at a used game store, and it ended up surprising me. The godawful cover art does nothing to indicate the true game.
The writing was awful
Theres an entire side quest about Blade, of all people, setting up a feminist book club to spend time with cap marvel cause hes too shy to confess his crush
I thought it was cute, especially Captain America naively joining in and unintentionally messing it up. Not like Blade is much of a character anyways.
Dogshit writing. Terrible gameplay loop with too many currencies.deck building is worthless since the best strategies are pretty obvious.
It could have been great if it wasnt designed like some shitty mobile game.I wanted xcom with superpowers. Instead we got island walking sim, shitty costumes with fixed alt colors, dating sim with no point, and half assed combat.
If you think this is a good tactics based rpg I suggest you expand your horizons.
I never understood the idea of making a video card game. Like cards are meant to represent the art work but if you can make an actual game you don't need the cards. It's just dumb.
I loved it tbh. But I had low expectations and didnt play any of their Xcoms
>I loved it but I’m a moron
I forgot I was in Cinemaphilemblr for a second
Disney got strict on who can work on their games and what they put in them.
MvCI got ruined because of it
Because the general audience (i.e., normies) expect/want their superhero vidya to be AAA third-person action-adventure story-based affairs, and so the whole genre is stuck in a rut both creatively and financially
>absolutely massive budgets for graphics, scope, voice acting, etc., mean the game absolutely has to be a success if it wants to make its money back, which means making it as common-denominator as possible
>and only the big blockbuster studios can afford to spend that much money, so any experimentation is further discouraged since the industry leaders are rarely ever innovative these days
budgets became far too big
Bit of an aside but man do I wish they could have gotten Bengus to do an actual book.
i remember there was a bad artsplash on sf5s horrible story mode and someone said it looked like shit then someone responded "you better not be talking shit about Bengus's art as he did the art for those splashs and then someone responded to that person with "Bengus sucks"
Even the best artists can turn out crap art now and again.
I like these glowing red X symbols, more X-Men designs should use them.
Having currently binged the 90's x-men cartoon to watch the revival series , It made me miss when superhero media appealed mostly to nerds, and mostly because capeshit nowadays has to appeals to normies of the lower end spectrum. So a niche experimental sub genre of gaming has to commit to the typical AAA slop game design i.e: slow paced cinematic adventure stories with bits of action in between. Also kinda miss when Marvel could use its entire roster of characters without legal rights or some shit like that
insomniac is possibly gonna do somewhat average with that upcoming Wolverine game, but after those leaks I dunno how to feel about that
>So a niche experimental sub genre of gaming has to commit to the typical AAA slop game design i.e: slow paced cinematic adventure stories with bits of action in between
I don't know what the point of this crap is, they interrupt the gameplay to force you to play an interactive cutscene for a story that's usually dogshit anyway. FFS If they want to make fake movies then why don't they at least hire competent writers
I think the mainstream audience has just become too accustomed to movies and TV, so they demand their games be like that as well. And on top of that demand, maybe even before it, it's also far, far easier for the big AAA companies to just simply copy the approach, techniques, story focus, actor focus, etc etc already set out by the other major pre-existing audio-visual medium, as opposed to trying to figure out how to make something which can only be uniquely done in video games.
For me it's the feeling that I actually experience a COMIC story, just in a different medium.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance was specifically so hype because it didn't take me to a watered-down MCUified version of the world, it's something straight out of the comic book pages.
Games posted ITT have that feeling in general. Hell, for all the blame Arkham games get for popularizing what you're saying, Asylum certainly retained that feeling of being a comic book story or a BTAS-based movie at least.
Even movie 2000s tie-in games, when not trying to adhere to the movie's plots filled the blanks with comic-like stuff. (Shocker being straight-up lifted from the comics in Raimi movie games comes to mind)
Nowadays capeshit vidya feels like discount MCUesque crap that barely has anything to do with the comics beyond the characters' names and filled with boring "realistic" designs.
>For me it's the feeling that I actually experience a COMIC story, just in a different medium.
pretty much this, when comic games embrace how bright and fun comics are you can get some memorable results , and to an extent Arkham even felt like a comic given the situation at present since it had Paul Dini on board.
When you make them flat as the current direction the MCU is headed, then the experience can feel null
did you play gotg
i feel like you're b***hing just to b***h
Honestly, no. The combat isn't fleshed out enough and the difficulty curve is messed up. It's not bad but it has first game syndrome. The sequel and the Ultimate Alliance games improve on it immensely.
Is the game really that difficult? I remember bringing two meatshields and spamming optic blast/party buffs with Cyclops and cruising through the game
The game starts off really hard while your abilities are unlocked. After you get them it becomes a fricking breeze.
MUA2 had some really terrible voice acting, I really don’t like the accent Cap had. The lack of supernatural characters apart from Thor was also a downgrade and the game is frankly tried to be too realistic for it’s time that it’s just way too ugly now. So many unlikeable characters too, I find it hard to believe it’s set in the same world as the first game.
Every so often, the thought pops into my head that I should go back and finish UA3, then I go and play it and remember how utterly mind-numbing and dragged out the gameplay is, so I drop it again.
I like everything about the game except the game itself. It's such a shame.
Yeah. I want to like 3 a lot more than I end up doing but the actual physical combat is just.... dry? I guess is the best word. And maybe this is just a me problem but did anyone else lose track of their character like REALLY easily? Because I swear I'd be trying to do a combo or a special move and I was nowhere NEAR where I thought I was.
Was Ultimate Alliance 3 any good?
eeeeeeh it's alright, I suppose I'd call it? Like was said above you do get to go to more interesting locations and the roster is pretty solid but the actual gameplay is a bit stiff. Physical attacks really don't seem to have much impact at all. The story is mostly fine and feels comic booky but at the same time it also kind of lacks character outside of the cut scenes. And this is just a matter of personal taste there are times when it's trying to really hard to be witty. Not quite Joss Whedon esque but the character introduction slides get old fast all the same.
I enjoyed all of the time I spent with it, and at the very least I'd consider it a pretty decent step up from 2. It has a few frustrating points in terms of character balance and the post-game grind, but if you like Marvel and dig the artstyle I'd say it's at least worth a try.
If you're gonna play it, emulate it with cheats so you can remove the ISO-8 bullshit grind
I still haven't gotten the DLC for 3
I'm not into beat'em ups where the enemies get hurt but pretty much don't react to it
>Tony Jay Magneto
Holy shit he must have killed it
>want to play Legends 2 with brother
>buy it for PC
>doesn't work with new Windows
>buy it for Gamecube
>error after 10 minutes of playing
At this point we just played with an emulator and it probably ran 100 times smoother than it would have. I have always been a fan of physical games, but it's so fricking troublesome sometimes.
dunno why the emulator wasn't your first choice
I think so?..