The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Last week, Spaeth, Jonathan and I did our first foray in to MUA2, also known as Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2. Now, I hadn’t really heard much about the game. I very much enjoyed playing through the first one with my brother, where I was the Invisible Woman for no reason whatsoever, so I wanted to check it out. People at work had talked about how they took a lot of the RPG elements out of the game, and that it made it a worse experience, but these were also people who thought Transformers 2 was an amazing film. Enjoy working with them, love them, but don’t really trust their taste, perse. This was all the information I had going into the game.

After the first session, it’s pretty clear we’re going to keep playing it, but there are some very strange decisions being made here.

First off, the camera is kind of awful. It is zoomed in much, much closer than it was in the first MUA, and in the X-men Legends before it. It seems clear they expected this game to be played with four people online, not offline like we were doing. That’s just stupid, though, as that offline, all on the couch co-op was the whole appeal for the first few games for me. It’s not impossible to get over, much like the weirdness with the menus in Borderlands split-screen, but it does seem like sort of a stupid move.

Secondly, they really did strip out most of the RPG elements. You still gain experience and put points in powers. However, in previous games, you had four buttons to assign powers to, and at least 6, if not more, powers to choose from. Now, some are obviously more effective than others, but you still had the ability to spec out characters in ways that fit your gameplay style. For example, the Invisible Woman had a bunch of powers based upon stealth and crowd control, which I completely ignored to make her into a long distance caster for whatever reason. There’s no options of that sort in this game. The Invisible Woman has four powers she learns, and while you can prioritize some, it puts arbitrary blocks in your way to make you bring the other powers up to speed before putting more points into them. You don’t have very much control over builds.
Similarly, they’ve gotten rid of loot drops and equipment. Instead, the entire team has a set of “Boosts” that give their bonus to everyone. You can only equip three. This is a stupid idea, because a nuker like Gambit or my pointlessly beloved Susan Storm needs bonuses to power strength, MP regen, and things like that, whereas brawlers like Jonathan’s Superhero Black Man Luke Cage need bonuses to melee combos and things like heath siphoning and whatnot. It would make sense to have a varied team, but it punished you for it, by making you gimp characters you aren’t prioritizing with your Boosts. It’s kind of silly.

Thirdly, and this is an Invisible Woman only problem, they made her little grabby ball do stupid things. Her basic power lets you either charge up a force ball, or grab someone in said force ball and then toss them away. It’s really fun to use! However, the force ball is huge on the screen. I have to hold it in place to aim, and, for no apparent reason, it blocks projectiles from other heroes. Spaeth was playing Gambit, and this huge-ass ball would block his cards. Why they would make a character that actively hampered the usefulness of other characters is beyond me. Maybe they never expected anyone to play the Invisible Woman. Well, I showed them!

The last weird decision I want to point out is the conversation system. This has dialog trees like Mass Effect or something. But they are so bad. They zoom in on character faces which were only designed to be seen from above. They look so plastic and fake, it’s kind of hilarious. There’s also a questionably-defined morality system where you can respond “Aggressive,” “Diplomatic,” or “Defensive.” You apparently get different bonuses for favoring one over the other, but it’s not really clear in the game what you’re getting from it, and if it would actually affect the plot in any way. Plus, you just have to laugh as your character stands there, motionless, not emoting at all. It’s so bad.

Still, in the end, brawling through the stages with your friends is a lot of fun. The varied power combo system is much better than the generic bullshit in the first few games, and it really makes you strategically use combo powers, instead of it just being a happy accident once and awhile. I like that. And, hell, getting a bunch of people together on a couch to punch things is just fun, period. Maybe not fun for hours and hours, but great for a short session of fun. So, you know, we’ll probably give it another time or two before I send it back. Why not? SOMEONE has to use the Invisible Woman.