Excelsior!
Ultimately the game works, and works well. The beat-em-up action is broken up by trips to your headquarters and the occasional level puzzle. Though there’s a nice flow of action and downtime for the first few levels, the game starts to get that “rushed” feeling towards the end. Shorter levels, less detailed puzzles and fewer NPC interactions give a feeling of being short-changed instead of impending doom. Some of this “rushed” feeling comes through in the occasional bugs and glitches. A random enemy that turned invisible and a boss fight without background music, fortunately these things are more annoying than game breaking. What can be game breaking is the character balance. Though there are no truly useless characters, some have a better selection of powers than others. I found that Deadpool and Iron Man have a combination that makes the entire game trivial. Still its up to you whether to abuse these imbalances or not. Its these few problems that keep Ultimate Alliance from a full five star rating. Its not only one of the best dungeon crawler released for the PS3 (not hard to beat
Untold Legends), its also one of the stronger games of the past year. A must buy for fellow Marvel Zombies and something that “normal” gamers should check out as well.
