Marvel Ultimate Alliance for Game Boy Advance (GBA)

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance absolutely sucks on the GBA. I've heard good things about the console version of this game, but this GBA version is a mess. The controls don't respond well, it's hard to hit your targets, and it is generally lacking in every aspect. I expected this to be like a toned down version of the X-Men Legends series, but instead it's just a lame Double Dragon style fighting game.

I've enjoyed quite a few of the games based around the Marvel Superheroes line of comics, so I had high expectations for this one. The Xbox and PlayStation versions of this game both got four-star reviews on this site, so I figured this GBA one would be good, too. I ran into a similar problem with the Dynasty Warrior games. The PS2 games were great, but the GBA version was a lamer.

The main selling point for this game is that it lets you play using 10 different characters from the Marvel comics. Some of these very popular characters include Spiderman, Wolverine, Blade, the recently deceased Captain America, and even Ghost Rider makes an appearance. A game with all that going for it should have been better. Each of the characters has some special movies, but they aren't that special. No matter which character you play, all you do is run around hitting stuff. There's no strategy to be employed and not that much fun to be had.

The controls for this game are where it really lost me. For one, you don't move around very well at all, and it's too hard to line up for a hit. If you stand in the same space as an enemy, you'll both just swing at each other and not hit. That's very poor programming, in my opinion. At its core, this is just another side scrolling fighting game, and this style gameplay has been around since the early days of the NES. With as many games like this that have been released over the past 20-something years, there is just no excuse for a poorly executed game like this.

I did think this game had pretty good graphics and the Marvel characters looked appropriate. Even the enemies, which become rather boring after a while, have a nice amount of detail to their armor and weapons. Some of the explosion effects are also nice, and the backgrounds and settings have the steely detail you might expect from a Marvel-based comic game. The sound effects were nothing special and tend to be very repetitive, but that's a given for this type of game when all you do is punch and jump over and over again.

There's no excuse for how bad Marvel: Ultimate Alliance turned out to be. Hey Marvel and Activision, this game was the ultimate let-down.