Holy Alliance!

The more I hear about the upcoming Marvel: Ultimate Alliance game, the more I like. It looks like it's going to be a lot more polished than the previous X-Men Legends games. Don't get me wrong, those games were a lot of fun, but I had a few issues with them, and usually towards the end of each area, I found myself bored (especially in the first game, since there were only a few locations), though the boss battles were usually pretty good. Now, I'm not expecting Ultimate Alliance to be perfect, but I am expecting it to be a lot of fun.

Now, I'm not good at describing play mechanics like Jordan is, but I'm excited about the use of the Wii-mote to fight and use super-powers, but I'm still not sure what to expect exactly from the Wii-mote. The descriptions sort of paint a picture but I'm so use to classic controllers that I can't imagine it as feeling natural. Still, based on how great the DS is I'm optimistic.

I also appreciate that the "costumes" you can get for your characters not only give you different stats but also different characters. For example, if you have Captain America, one of his costumes is the U.S.Agent, Cap's less-than-stable replacement. With Thor, you can get a Beta Ray Bill "costume" so you can fight as Thor's oddly-named, hideous rival/ally. Hopefully they'll be a few more costume choices this time. The last X-Men game was good but I was very disappointed when they didn't include Jim Lee's X-Men costumes (which were popular with fans and appeared in the 90's X-Men cartoon) but they had hideous costumes that look like they belong to action figures that don't exist. Night Attack Wolverine indeed. My only real costume-related beef is that this game is clearly taking place in the classic Marvel universe, yet Thor is wearing his admittedly cool ultimate costume. I have less of an issue with using the Ultimate Nick Fury (which seems very likely) because he's just Samuel L Jackson with an eyepatch and therefore awesome.

Now all twenty playable characters have not been revealed yet, but I already take issue with Blade and Elektra being playable characters. Maybe if they were unlockable, but I'd rather they used Daredevil and Black Widow rather than a couple of untrustworthy murderers who don't really belong on any main stream super-team. Aside from that, however, it sounds like a great line-up. Still, I'm curious about the notable exception of the Hulk from the initial line-up, which makes me suspect the Hulk might be a major plot point within the game (a boss/unlockable character maybe?) or at the very least will play a large role.

Another element I like is that the game features not only a huge cast of characters (about 140 characters in all) but also all kinds of classic Marvel locations such as Hell, Murderworld, Castle Doom, SHIELD Helicarrier and the Skrull Homeworld (to name a few). Now, as I said, in the X-Men games, some of the levels started to look a like, but in this game it's so all over the Marvel map that I can't help getting excited.

Still, while I know perhaps too much about what's happening in this game already, I'm still guessing what characters will show up and what locations will be visited to give me a geekgasm. So I decided to write about some stuff I really want to see in either this game or the eventual sequel.

Heroes:
Union Jack: If the team were to hit Britain, I'd sure like to see them team up with this badass spy. In all honesty, I mostly like him for the costume, but he's a much cooler British hero than Captain Britain.

Runaways (right): This reluctant super-team is composed of teens (and one pre-teen) who discover that their well-to-do parents are actually all murderous super-villains and they team up to stop them. Unfortunately they have few resources, limited powers and gifts they barely understand and live in LA, far away from the super-hero mecca that is New York City. Since the series is heading in a road trip direction they could easily end up anywhere in the Marvel universe.

Marvel's Western Heroes: I wouldn't be surprised if there was time traveling in the next game and a quick stop in the West might be a fun excuse to showcase the Lone Ranger-esque Western super-heroes that were popular in the fifties.

She-Hulk: She's easily one of my favourite Marvel character's right now, mostly because she has the funniest series and is one of the most level-headed characters. Basically, she's the Hulk's cousin who gained his power set after a blood transfusion only Bruce Banner could give. But she doesn't have his terrible mindless rages (well... usually) and uses her hero-ness to be one of the nation's most famous and beloved lawyers. Unfortunately, she became poison to her firm when the opposition was able to point out that saving the world (and thus, her jury) could be a form of jury tampering. She was then hired by the firm that got her fired and must now try cases without her fabulous green bod. Now she works on cases involving super-human law.

Man-Thing (left): Not a hero, really, but neither is it a villain. It was, however, ordered to be the guardian of the nexus of all realities. Pretty big role for a creature that isn't really sentient. The Man-Thing is a big swamp monster who is empathic and who only reflects the emotions of any sentient creature it encounters. So if any creature is aggressive towards it or afraid of it, it attacks and becomes very corrosive. I always kind of liked Man-Thing, but I'm not sure why beyond the interesting character design.


Villains:
Kang the Conqueror (right): He's one of the most dangerous villains in the Marvel universe thanks to his time traveling. He's already conqueror the future, but is now bored and wants to conquer it in the time of heroes, where he faces the most opposition, just to show he can. He actually succeeded in the clever but overly-long Kang Dynasty story-arc but checking out all of the future's possibilities and preparing for every eventuality. He loses only because he is betrayed by his son.

The Kingpin: He looks like a fat-ass, but he's not. What looks like fat is actually almost all muscle, making him a physical match for even some of the super-powered heroes. But his real strength is his Machiavellian machinations and his tenacity. He's the runs all the crime in New York (and beyond) and though he's been taken out many times, he always finds a way to get his position back. He's also known for tricking super-heroes into beating the crap out of his competition. It's incredibly hard to make anything stick to the Kingpin no matter how much the evidence piles up. Plus, he has some quality henchmen (Elektra, Bullseye and Typhoid Mary) as opposed to the usual dumbass henchman most villains seem to have.

Thanos: When you need a villain bigger than Dr. Doom, you turn to Thanos. A mad titan from another world (populated by space gods) who worships death. Basically, his big plot is just to kill lots and lots of people to impress Death (who's a chick) until she reciprocates his love. He also constantly hunts for the Infinity Gems, which make whoever collects them all pretty all powerful. He did it once before and killed half the universe and almost all of the Marvel heroes. The universe got better.

The Taskmaster: Born with photographic reflexes (he can copy pretty much any athletic skill or maneuver he sees, including martial arts) the Taskmaster can beat most super-heroes in physical combat after collecting all kinds of martial arts just by watching. But what he prefers to do is stay out of the way and teach other villains how to fight. Still, he's a guy who only gets tougher to beat the longer you fight him.



Locales:
Wakanda: It's essentially techno-Africa. This African nation was the most technologically advanced long before any other nation, thanks largely to the vibranium mines across the country. And because of that, it's constantly under attack from villains and various greedy interests.

The Negative Zone: A crazy alien dimension that's filled to the brim with evil, violence and floating land masses.

Monster Isle: Really speaks for itself. Basically, before Stan Lee got into super-heroes Marvel was publishing almost nothing but sci-fi/horror stories with monsters in 'em. Most of these stories take place in the current Marvel universe, but to explain where they went, Marvel created a crazy island where most of those Monsters lurk. An entire level of monsters with a 12 for tall minimum? Sounds fun to me.

The Raft/The Vault/Negative Zone Prison: any one of these three jails would be cool to visit. And if it's to stop a jail break, then the creators could have fun sending an army of lame villain cannon fodder (with some really tough villains mixed in) rather than the usual faceless henchman. A fun idea for a very tough level.

Well, that's just my little wish list for the series, but so far, things are shaping up to be pretty good. Too bad for Jordan since that means that I'll be unloading all sorts of pointless comics trivia on him for each new character or area we face.