Review: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

Marvel Ultimate alliance 2 follows the secret and civil war story arcs from the Comics, and then throws in an interesting story twist for the final Act. Having read the civil war story in the  Marvel Comics I was happy with the way they handled the story. As you can imagine most of the major players from the first game are back such as iron man, captain America and Col. Fury.

The graphics and story line are much improved over the first game, and the choice of characters should appeal to a wide audience. With the story blurring the lines between good guys and bad guys it also allows for some characters who would typically be called bad guys, for example Venom and Green Goblin.

The combat has remained pretty much the same, with it being simple to get the hang of, but the major attacks that you had in the first game now come in the form of fusions. This allows two of your party to team up and use their abilities together, which in my opinion is a good addition to the game.

The Achievements were fairly straight forward if not a little tedious in places, for example defeating the majority of the bosses on super heroic or legendary difficulty which actually leads me onto my one major peeve of the game, the stats menu. In this menu you can see various stats so you are able to see how far along with an achievement you are. However if you complete a level with our a revival, then that gets marked as done no matter what difficulty you do it on. This can get a little confusing if your first play through was on heroic, and your next was on Legendary.

Overall the improvements to game play and graphics have really bolstered this game, it was enjoyable to play as well as act out one of the more dramatic story arcs of the Marvel universe with only minor issues while going for the full 1000g.You should get this game if you’re into the Marvel Comics or enjoyed the first one.

There is a DLC package out with a few new characters and a few new maps/missions to try along with Gamerscore. I’ve got enough in my back log without having to add anything else to it, so it’s one hold for the moment.

On A Suicide Mission!

You may have noticed that I've done a lot of reviews recently, but this is only because I've actually managed to finish a game and get all the achievements. It's ironic that since starting this blog I've actually completed more games to the full 1000G than I had done previously.

I'm very excited today as I'm about an hour away from going and picking up, in my opinion, the most anticipated game of this year, so far. Mass Effect 2. In preparation for this I booted up my previous save games. I then downloaded the "Pinnacle Station" DLC. It was a good combat refresher and I did enjoy it although when you fail a scenario it took a while to actually get back to be able to retry the mission. At the end of the DLC you get a retirement pad of the Admiral running the station, which will be interesting to see if you carry forward the retirement home.

Speaking of carrying through previous save games brings me to my main dilemma, do I start a brand new game with a brand new character or do I use one of my previous save files. Of course I'm not sure how it will work but I am looking forward to it.

What have I got coming up? well there is the the review of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 that I need to write, I'm hopefully going to have a discussion on Music based rhythm games i.e. Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and who knows I may even have the review of Mass Effect 2, lets see how it goes.

So It Can Suck To Be A Gamer, Who Knew!

I, like a lot of gamers, am subscribed to a couple of gaming podcasts. Namely the KOXM podcast and the Australian Gamer Podcast, and from listening to them i heard a couple of news stories that I felt needed bringing to light. Now I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while now, but never got around to it so I apologise if you’re already aware of the stories. I’ve also included links so you can read the full stories.

Only in America

First up is the story of an American man, Alfred Hightower, who was wanted by the police for drug trafficking. Before I carry on though I feel I need to clarify, when I say trafficking I don’t mean a large scale drug ring, it’s a guy who sold some weed to a friend, as well a couple of other “low level” drug offences. From a quick wiki Google, I discovered that selling of weed was the worst offence he had done.  But this isn’t a blog about the American Drug Classification System, so the police were tying to find Hightower however he remained elusive until the Deputy Sheriff and the US Marshals, found out that Hightower was an avid fan of World of Warcraft. The Deputy Sheriff, then put a call into Blizzard Entertainment, who eventually came back with enough details for the Sheriff and U.S. Marshalls to be able to get location for him and be able to go and catch him.
Blizzard Helps Cops Nab Drug Dealer Via WoW


Orc Story

Our second WoW story concerns merchandise, in particular a 6ft tall Orc Statue, and its owners ultimatum. Robert Cushnie had owned the statue for nearly 6 years, unfortunately when it came to moving in with his newlywed, she gave him the choice of me or the Orc. Robert made the right decision and chose his wife; however the story doesn’t quite end there, the Statue wasn’t just given away, he was given up for adoption. The “lucky” adoptees were a middle aged couple in Aberdeen, who both along with their 16 year old granddaughter love the statue. I can’t make too many comments on this story as I do own a 4 and a half foot tall promotional Cardboard cut out of a character from Warrior Kings Battles.
Husband chose wife over 6ft orc statue

Aion Roll Back

Imagine you had lived a day of your life, and were then told you had to re do it. Now imagine that on that day you went to the bank in the morning and found 34 Trillion quid in there. What would you do? Probably the same as everyone else reading this, you’d spend it. Send it to your friends. Now imagine that this was in a game, and you’ll probably feel something similar to the users of Aion, a MMORPG. Due to a glitch a small handful of users found 34 Trillion ‘Kinah’, the in game currency, and they did what anyone else would do they spent it and shared it effectively ruining the in game economy. When NCSoft heard about the glitch, 14 hours later, there was only one way around this and that was to roll back the servers. I don’t know about you but if I have to replay 2hours or more I’m pretty grump, in fact stroppy would probably be a better term for it. I do feel sorry for the poor bastard that was playing for 7 hours or more and hadn’t seen any of the money “Sucks to be you dude!”
Aion players get 34 trillion kinah in glitch

DLC dilemma
According to a recent survey about Downloadable Content (DLC) there are 3 types of gamers;

Those that know of and purchase DLC

Those that know of but don’t purchase DLC

Those that are unaware of any DLC

The survey goes on to say that only 15% of the people surveyed are in the first category, know of and purchase DLC, 42% are in the second category, which leaves a staggering 43% of gamers surveyed didn’t know DLC existed.

I have several issues with this survey, first of all the number of people that were surveyed, they only asked 800 gamers. The article I read didn’t specify where it took place only that it was done by a media consultancy firm. Apparently according to the results most of the people who were in the 3^rd category were typically playing consoles that don’t actively promote DLC for example the PS2 and the Wii. I used to think “This can’t be right?” however with the amount  or games that I’ve played recently a few check for DLC before you even start, i.e. Fallout 3 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. So maybe this is an issue, although I’m not sure if InfinityWard wouldn't agree what with the popularity of the Map Packs for the Call of Duty Franchise!
Nearly half of gamers dont know about dlc

Apologies

So, I know that in my last post I said that "I would post again tomorrow." and I didn't because I've been swamped at work and I just wanted to chill out when I got home, but i'm sure you didn't want to hear me complaining about my life and I now have a renewed sense of purpose with this blog. I'm going to start writing posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and to start this off I've even got one ready for today. 


As a quick filler I have done the following instead of writing here, I've completed Assassin's Creed 2, got through the majority of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 and in I'm in the process of mopping up the last few achievements for Lego Batman, so I've been completely slacking off. 


Oh and I'm close to the 30k Gamerscore mark!

Happy New Year

Hello again Game Fans, I hope this post finds you all well, and that you had a pleasant festive period. Mine was good, I did clocked up a few miles and got a few hours in on the Xbox while I was away as well. Me and the misses loaded out profiles up onto a memory unit and it was like we never left. . . except for the fact that I left a save file behind on my Sisters Xbox. oh well I'm back down there in Feb so I'll get pick it up then.


So I got what can only be described as an immense haul of games over xmas, so before i went away I got Left 4 Dead 2, Lego Batman and The Saboteur in my new Xbox bundle, and i had just recently bought Dead Space. I then got Ghostbusters, Xmen Origins: Wolverine, Dragon Age:Origins, Assassins Creed 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. My favourite so far is Lego Batman well thats the one I've spent most time playing, but only because my girlfriend it playing it with me. I also have a major gripe with it, but I'll save that for another post. 


My biggest discovery on the trip away started on Christmas Day, when my girlfriend's brother wanted to play 1 vs 100. I've got to say I really enjoyed it. it's free for gold members to play and is a lot of fun to play especially when you have a group of friends around. I do have a few issues with it, the first is every 15 mins or so there is an "ad break", with annoying adverts for Avatar and Bing but they do give you chance to check your stats and achievements. the second problem I've found is that although there is a segment in the live show for a live host, the UK season 2 doesn't have one, which is a shame. Apparently there was on in the Beta version last year, but for this season there isn't. this next one is only a small one, and that is when you load it up for the first time, it does take a while to down load, but once is has been downloaded you can get in fairly quickly. 


It's a good little game especially when you are paired up with 3 other people so you can see their answers and see how you are doing in relation to them with regards to score, as it gives you a bit more to think about that just the questions. 


Well I'm going to leave it there for now and do another post tomorrow night.


And before anyone asks no i haven't won anything on 1 vs 100.