Even though comic books haven’t been much of an interest for game developers, Freedom Force, X-Men Legends and its sequel, The Rise of Apocalypse, proved that good games can come out of this universe. With the support of Marvel and previous game success to lean on, Raven Software brings us in 2006 a new title from the world of comic-books heroes - Marvel: Ultimate Alliance – which is a step forward in many ways for this genre of games.

        The story of the game is solid and well put together, in a familiar stile to the readers of comic-books, even though the premise is very simple. Dr. Doom wants to gain the power to control the world and the super heroes must find a way to stop him, while at the same time bypassing all the obstacles that Doom and his villains put in their way. But, as it always happens in such stories, there will be some twists and turns to keep you interested until the end of the game.

        The gameplay is simple yet addictive, in the purest style of an action-RPG. It all comes down to killing endless waves of enemies and collecting the coins they drop until you reach the level boss. The game flow is increased by the removal of health packs - life and energy are dropped from enemies like coins. To prevent boredom from settling in, the producers have also introduced some puzzles. Unfortunately, besides the fact that they are very simple, the game gives us way too much information. Honestly, it’s unnecessary to tell us two times what we have to do and then show us a picture with the details, like we are complete morons.

        The boss fights have an interesting concept. They cannot be harmed with normal attacks, so the level and power of the heroes that you play is irrelevant. To beat them you’ll just have to activate a mini-game and bring them down by matching a series of moderately-paced cues. As a result, so the boss fights are fun and easy, although they get a little repetitive to the end. A different boss fight, that I liked very much, was the confrontation with M.O.D.O.K. which is actually a trivia game, with every correct answer bringing the heroes closer to him.