SSJmole said:
You seem to be thinking I don't like the game which I do , I even mentioned it in random gaming.
No I don't.**
I know you like the game.
I don't even dispute that
Ultimate Alliance is pretty good next to games like 2005's
Fantastic Four or the first movie-based
Spider-Man game, and is generally better than 80% of any game based on superheroes (or even any other pre-existing license property). Hell it gets plus points for letting me play the Fantastic Four.
But for me,
Ultimate Alliance lost points on three very crucial points that aren't ordinarily damaging to most games, but IMHO, pretty egregious for a superhero game:
First, it did not maximize the powers and skill set made available by venturing outside of the X-Men brand. Balancing design for these kinds of games is difficult. You want to make sure that no single power or character breaks the game too much, and in doing so, you also want to create a moderately uniform skill set where each character has a power equivalency.
For example, everyone has a boost skill: Wolverine has a rage skill, Iceman gives everyone ice spikes, Jean Grey puts telekinetic shields on everyone. The Thing? He uh, makes everybody like tougher... or something. Don't ask.
The other problem is that you have to nerf the potential of some characters: Mr. Fantastic only stretches as far as the pre-animated powers let him and Ghost Rider doesn't use his bike. There isn't even a REASON why he doesn't have his bike! Not even, "Hello heroes, Mephisto has my bike and now I will join you in the fight against him, because that is one sweet hog he stole."
Second, they also put artificial limits to the maps. In the first X-Men Legends game, you were encouraged to explore past lava pits and lakes of acid to find secret stuff or whatever. In Ultimate Alliance, they abandoned that and made it so that Spider-Man can't web swing outside of a rock bridge nor can Doctor Strange fly over a pit because the level designers decided that they didn't want you to.
If you're playing a game with superheroes, then they should be able to super their way to the best of their abilities by supergoing anywhere they super want to be in the map. If you want to put limits on that, it's okay. Just give an in-game reason why you can't.
Third, the writing and voice acting was pretty crappy. I'm a big fan of squad-based games of any variation, because they give you this sense of command that strategy games always give you, but focus on teams rather than armies. Which is why one of the things that matters to me most in this subgenre of gaming is quality dialogue.
I can tolerate the idea that the characters all sound the same with the same "Unit reporting!" speech clip if I'm playing
Command & Conquer,
KKND or
Dark Reign. But if it's a squad-based strategy game, you're expected to have a greater level of involvement and investment in your units.
Games like
Jagged Alliance 2 and
Commandos make it clear that when you close your eyes, you can tell whose who just from the dialogue. In JA2, Meltdown's "******* gun is out of ******* ammo!" is very different from Ivan's "****bag. I use all deh ammunishon for vepon." Hell even his nephew Igor sounds completely different.
But
Ultimate Alliance does what I hate most, which is being handed a pack of characters whose feedback audio communicates nothing about their personality. I dislike the fact that Sue Richards sounds identical to Spider-Woman, not just in the acting but in the WRITING of her user feedback audio.
I know it sounds like I think Alliance is a terrible game, having so many negative things to say about it. It's not. It just happens to be the same neat design from the
X-Men Legends series muddled by mediocre voice work and a nerfing decisions. In attempting to be bigger and bolder, they made a game that just wasn't as good.
**
You seem to have a strange habit of thinking that I think you are saying and thinking things that you are not saying or thinking, despite the fact that I have read your mind often times enough to know better. Hell, I laugh at your jokes.
