Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 may not have reinvented the wheel but it sure as shit is fun.

I borrowed Marvel: Ultimate Alliance from a friend a couple of years ago and had a grand old time smashing and bashing stuff with a massive cast of Marvel superheroes. Hell, I was pretty excited about MUA2 coming out.

I've had a busy and sickly week so I haven't been able to put too much time into gameplay (only about five hours) but I'm having a grand time. The story revolves around the Marvel Universe Civil War (see trailer). Battlelines have been drawn yadda yadda yadda. Who cares? It's clobberin' time!

I have a lot of fun putting together my team of heroes and micromanaging their powers. I tend to go with brawlers/goon squad (i.e. Juggernaut, the Thing, Hulk, Wolverine) but sometimes I'll throw in Storm or Gambit.

All in all it's a solid game, enjoyable, action packed, with a decent difficulty curve. The extra training missions and ability to replay previous levels makes for extended game play, especially since you can bulk up on experience and skill points by going back to previous levels and exploring.

The one downside is the music. I turned it off after awhile, it just kind of annoyed me. Other that the game is aces.

Two long overdue reviews: Dead Space and Prototype

I apologize for being lax in my reviews lately. These are the two games I am currently playing; Dead Space and Prototype.



I had been relatively uninterested in Dead Space. I figured it was just another sci-fi survival horror game. In some respects it is just another sci-fi survival horror game. Limited resources, gribbly critters, and a situation that goes from bad to worse in the blink of an eye. In most respects - like those silly little things like story and plot development - Dead Space excels. I'm about half way through the game and though it is a fairly linear game I am really enjoying the story. Hell Dead Space is far superior to most Sci-Fi horror movies I see these days. Quite possibly that is because Warren Ellis worked on the project. That explains a lot.

Prototype is a solid game through and through. It's a sandbox game linked together with linear missions and a good story about evil government genetic projects gone horribly awry. The main character, Mercer, is a morally ambiguous type with a penchant for revenge. I think I'd actually call him a sociopath with little regard for anything except his sister and revenge.

The real draws of this game are the setting and the violence. Prototype takes place in a quarantined Manhattan. Plague has broken out, turning victims into raving, flesh eating loonies aka "the Infected". As the game progresses so does the extent of the plague. What starts as your standard hustle bustle NYC slowly becomes a madhouse filled with ravening monsters, beleagured military forces, and the general public screaming bloody murder and fleeing hither and yon. Every so often I have to wonder - shouldn't people just listen to the nice men in black helicopters and stay off the streets?

Violence in video games, blah, blah, blah...who cares? In Prototype Mercer himself is a bio-weapon, capable of creating blades, mauls, fleshy spiky ropes, and the like. He gains power and health from consuming the genetic code of others - human and infected alike. What's really fun is the wide array of ways to make people/enemies go squish. One of my favorites is the body surf, launch an arial attack then land on your target with enough force to surf on their corpse. I also enjoy the long range whip attack, reel in the target and then chuck them like a bowling ball. Prototype is a pretty bloody game so don't let the kiddies play this.

Battlefield: Bad Company

Whatever your feelings are about EA Games they do make some polished quality games.
Battlefield: Bad Company is no exception. I've really been enjoying the online mode even though there aren't too many options for missions - i.e. Deathmatch, Conquest, etc. - but this doesn't bother me too much because more often than not I end up playing Team Deathmatch anyway.

How does B:BC compare with Call of Duty 4 and Rainbow Six Vegas 2? As far as story goes B:BC has the most enjoyable storyline. It's more along the lines of Kelly's Heroes than a Tom Clancy potboiler or other modern military mumbo "evil dictator has a nuke" jumbo. It's fun and I found myself laughing more often than I do during comedies. One of favorite lines so far has been,

Sweetwater: But that place is heavily guarded.
Haggard: Well we're heavily armed!

B:BC doesn't take its self too seriously and that allowed me to have fun even at a higher difficulty level. Playing isn't punishment or profanity inducing - okay it induces profanity but it's more along the lines of, "FUCK YEAH!" than "FUCK YOU!" Part of the fun is that things blow up real good. I've developed the habit of blasting holes in walls instead of using doors. Hey, it works. I've also learned the joy of ferreting out snipers by reducing cover to bits with a well placed mortar attack.

Game control is standard FPS controls. There's not much in the way of a cover system a la RS: Vegas but you don't really need one. COD4 needed that because the game was punishing.

I'm not saying B:BC is the end all be all for FPS but for a summer diversion it definitely fits the bill. Whatever problems I could have with B:BC can be remedied by playing the other FPS out there.