Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

Genre: Action

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local, Local Wireless, Online)

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Review:

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is an Action game in a series that last saw an original release in 2009, making the series’ third game quite a long-awaited return to the series a decade later in 2019, and many were surprised to find that the game would be released as a Nintendo Switch exclusive. As those familiar with the comics would surmise from the title, The Black Order refers to the central villains of this game’s story, everyone’s favorite snap-happy alien Thanos and his fanatical subordinates.

The presentation here is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the characters themselves are lovingly detailed in a manner close to their comic book counterparts, albeit with some flourishes inspired by popular films of the last few decades. They’re generally well-animated and all bear unique signature attacks, though for some characters like Guardians of the Galaxy’s Drax and Gamora, this is often a somewhat uninspired bit of acrobatics or frenetic slashing effect that could be anyone’s move rather than something unique to the character. However, for the most part the characters here (heroes and villains alike) are lovingly depicted in a way that does justice to the source material.

Unfortunately, many of the environments they’ll be trudging through are generic, repetitive and uninteresting. However, even worse than this, the effects of various characters’ attacks often call up so much in the way of speed lines and air whooshes that it can be hard to see exactly what’s going on. And overall there’s rarely anything here that even comes close to approaching visually impressive.

The other elements of the presentation are also a mixed bag. The soundtrack is appropriately heroic but completely forgettable, the voice acting ranges from excellent (Rocket Raccoon is particularly well-acted) to mediocre, with most being mediocre. And the story… ugh… when people talk about a story as being “like a comic book” in a derogative tone, this is the sort of story they’re talking about. Shallow, lacking any real weight, and largely just an excuse to toss a huge assortment of already-established characters into a fight they’d otherwise have no business participating in together.

But you’re not here for story, right? You’re here to play as your favorite superhero and kick butt! So how does the game play?

It’s… okay. Look, I have nothing wrong with smashing hordes of enemies with fun powers and stuff, and it doesn’t need to be super-deep to still be enjoyable, but the act of fighting as some of the greatest heroes ever created and using a huge array of cool superpowers should at least feel… well, fun, shouldn’t it? Instead of tedious and repetitive?

And again, I don’t have a problem with repetition as long as what you’re doing is inherently enjoyable – I just gave A grades to both Hades and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity when the combat of both basically boils down to using just a few buttons repeatedly against an army of foes… but in each of those games, attacks felt visceral, chained together creatively, and truly made you feel powerful. Not so here. In Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, you’ll likely be using the same combo attack repeatedly against enemies that are barely fazed by it, until you recharge your special attack which, again, often won’t faze your enemy, at least if your enemy is anything but the most low-level thug. Oh, and those low-level thugs will still be sponges for damage, too.

The lackluster combat isn’t the end of this game’s problems. The character upgrade system here is both uninspired and somehow also confusing. Want to know the difference between durability and resilience? Look it up online, the game doesn’t seem to want to tell you. Want to see which characters work well with which others? You need to go multiple menus deep before you can see these stat bonuses highlighted. Individual characters can gradually earn experience to upgrade their four special attacks, and your entire roster can gradually have their stats upgraded across the board, but beyond that there doesn’t seem like much customization here… I can’t remember the last time I played a game where so little in the way of player choice was made so needlessly confusing.

And then there’s the damn camera. I tried this game out in local multiplayer (something that’s always been a strength of the series) and had to dig around in menus to find the way to even enable camera control (by default, it’s disabled in couch co-op). However, even when I could control the camera, it was often unhelpful, choosing odd angles or needing to be babysat so I didn’t keep getting sucker-punched from behind by an enemy just offscreen.

As someone who has become a fan of Marvel’s wonderful roster of heroes, I appreciate the attempt here to bring them together in a game that celebrates this wonderful and diverse multitude of characters. However, I walked away from Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 disappointed by stale, repetitive combat, shallow story, boring and repetitive locales, and terrible camera. Even those looking for a simple beat-em-up will find this game to be lacking.

tl;dr – Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is an Action game that has you fighting as one of the countless Marvel comic book heroes against the threat of Thanos and his minions. While there’s a wide array of lovingly-detailed characters, the combat here is shallow, repetitive, and tedious, the camera is terrible, and there are a slew of other issues that sap the fun out of this game. As a result, only the biggest Marvel die-hards should bother with this one.

Grade: C-

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