What Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 does for me, mostly, is make me look forward to a theoretical MUA4. There are parts of the game where you deliberately pick fights with gods, and they aren’t as hard to get through as that stupid sniper’s alley. The campaign also features a lot of weird, out-of-nowhere difficulty spikes, such as an area in the Wakanda level that’s infested with inexplicably lethal enemy snipers. That same half-finished feel can be found in the game’s UI, where it’s a lot harder than it has to be to manage your equipment or character abilities the hardware, which often slows down dangerously when there’s a lot happening on-screen and the camera, which often seems like it’s actively working against you. It does feel like you’re brute-forcing the game rather than playing it, but frankly, Stagger is broken enough that I don’t feel bad about that in the least. Once you’ve got a go-to team, you can figure out ways to get around the Stagger mechanic and start making some real headway. There’s a feature called synergy moves, where two characters standing near each other can cooperate to fire off a more powerful combination attack, and most of the synergy moves have a couple of hits of armor during their animation. The early game is apparently meant to be built around evasion, careful play, and watching for your opportunities.Įventually, you do get to a point where you figure things out, find characters you like, and start exploiting particular abilities to get ahead. In practice, if you’re not careful, most of the enemies in MUA3 can lock you down and beat you up more or less at will. This is even weirder when you’re playing characters such as Thor or the Hulk. Your opening hours with MUA3 are mostly going to be spent watching your characters ragdoll into the air, as normal enemies wade through gunfire and energy beams to punch them in the face. You’ll be minding your own business and suddenly, you’re getting shoulder-checked across the room by some giant goon in a prison jumpsuit. In practice, what Stagger means is that you’re surrounded at all times by at least two enemies who do not care what you do. But it feels like it was made for a slower, less hectic game than this one. I can see the value of it, since it forces you to be careful and precise, instead of simply running in while hammering all your buttons. If you deplete the Stagger, the enemy gets stunned for a few seconds, which means it’s open season on them. Large enemies and bosses have a separate meter that depletes at a higher rate than their health, and while they have any Stagger left, they don’t react to incoming attacks. The biggest issue is with a new mechanic called Stagger. There’s a lot here that feels half-finished, or half-considered, as if the game started as a proof of concept for something more ambitious. What I will criticize, however, is the game’s mechanics. Marvel and Spider-Gwen, and now it’s 3 a.m.
You sat down to see how Iron Man plays at level 40, but you ended up trying to unlock Luke Cage’s bonus costume, which meant you had to level him at the same time, which meant you were playing around with power-leveling strategies involving Ms. This is the sort of game where you can easily get sucked in and lose your entire weekend. It’s more of a warning, so you know what you’re getting yourself into. It’s a naked treadmill, with every run getting you a few more stat points, an extra level or two, or a new piece of equipment.
You’re meant to replay stages and take on multiple side challenges to level all of your characters, in order to make them more powerful, so you can take on higher difficulties and the later missions in the main game. Like most action-RPGs, MUA3 is built to take advantage of that strange part of your brain that enjoys mindless repetition for a tangible result.
The rest of the game comes down to the hypnotic appeal of watching numbers go up. (Everything about the X-Men in this game is calculated for maximum nostalgia value you spend a level fighting classic Sentinels in the X-Mansion’s front yard, and all the X-Men are back in their ‘90s-era suits.) The Fantastic Four are scheduled to rejoin the roster as well, though they’re coming later as downloadable content. MUA3 is one of the first licensed Marvel products in years to feature the X-Men, since Disney now owns the film rights, and it’s fun to see them back in action. The voice acting is top-notch, and every character seems to get at least one or two moments in the spotlight. Like many Marvel games, its plot is a thinly-veiled excuse to send you on a guided tour of the larger Marvel Universe, including Wakanda, Asgard, Avengers Tower, and the Raft, with a murderer’s row of villains to fight. A lot of the draw of MUA3 is in its cast of characters.
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