Review #451: Marvel Ultimate Alliance(PSP)

 What is this, a game for Ant-man?

 Seeing how this is pretty much the same exact game as the PS2 version, I will simply go over what was added to this version.

 First and foremost, four new characters: Hawkeye, which looks cool, has cool looking moves but is kinda weak. Captain Marvel, who isn't very appealing to look at but has powerful moves, Black Widow, whom I didn't care about, but has a few strong moves an Ronin, which looks badass and has some of the best moves in the game. Is it worth it purchasing the game just for the new characters? Well, Ronin is pretty good and I'd put her on my team... but nope, they're all that worth it, you can do just fine with the other versions of the game. There're also 5 new sub-missions, if you're into that, one of them housing a new boss. Once again, not worth it. Oh, and unlocking Hawkeye is incredibly stupid, forcing you to register online, so just pop the character unlock code and have fun.

 Beating the game unlocks 3 bonus modes: Hardcore, in which once a character dies he is gone for good, Hardcore Squad, in which you're limited to only four characters and once any of them dies they are gone for good and UberHero, in which you can only play as a single character, but a overpowered one. The Hardcore modes might be appealing, but once again, not worth a separate purchase if you already own another version.

 As for the overall game, it's a pretty neat little conversion. The controls have been tweaked and are a bit awkward at first, due to having less buttons than a joystick, but once you get the hang of it you'll be just fine. They did the best they could with the reduced button amount. For instance, since there's no analog stick, moving the camera around consists of holding the L button and pressing Square or Circle, and swapping characters consists of holding L and pressing a direction on the directional pad, while holding R and L lets you block. It's cumbersome in comparison to the home console setup, but it's understandable.

 The game runs pretty well on the PSP, while the overall polygon count is lower, I think the lighting effects are better than on the PS2. The Framerate at its best is smoother than on the PS2, but at its worst it gets a bit choppier. There were a few kinks related to movement, sometimes upon landing from a jump a character would get stuck on the jumping position for a few seconds, this happened every time I had to climb down a rock wall as well. Annoying, yes, but it's not a dealbreaker.

 While I wouldn't suggest getting this version over the others, in spite of the added content, it's a fantastic port of the game that performs almost as well. And truth be told, if you don't mind having to go through hoops for local multiplayer or deal with less optimal controls... it just might be your version of choice!
 7.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Marvel Ultimate Alliance(PSP)

 Yeah... this might've been a mistake.

 I was so enamored by my Marvel Ultimate Alliance memories that I thought I would love the game all over again, so it mad sense to get the handheld version as well. I mean, a Diablo-clone with Marvel characters and even MORE characters? Count me in. I remembered it like a 8-9/10 game, not a 7.

 Oh well, I just inputted the codes and got meself all four bonus characters, the costumes and the abilities, which I'll be taking all the way through to the end of the game.

 Hawkeye: All his cotumes are decent, but I specially liked the 'Street Clothes', the one I'm using. His skills are fun to use.

 Ronin: All her costumes are fantastic, but I'm going with the second one since I loved the abilities, and her skills are top-notch, they look devastating and feel fun to use.

 Captain Marvel: I didn't care for his appearance, any of them, so I went with the default look. His abilities are alright but nothing caught my eye.

 Black Widow: I actually thought her default appearance was the Winter Soldier('What? A fifth bonus character?! Oh, it's Black Widow....'). Can't say I care about the character either, but I went with the Yelena costumes since it struck my fancy the most. Her skillset is alright, but I'm particularly fond of her first skill, since it feels powerful.

 All in all, as much as I'm liking Roning... the rest of the cast are alright, but nothing to write home about. Even if you love the game you can do without these extra characters. Or you could download the PC mods and add Ronin to your roster.

Review #450: Mortal Kombat Trilogy

 Now I remember why I didn't like classic Mortal Kombat.

 While Mortal Kombat was free of Street Fighter II-style upgrades, it all changed with Mortal Kombat 3. And then Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. And finally, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, a 'dream' game of sorts, compiling every single character from previous games, for a total of 32(Plus 4 bonus 'retro' characters) playable characters. And it sounds like a dream come true.... for Mortal Kombat fans exclusively.

 You boot up the game and... there're only three modes: Arcade Ladder, 2 on 2 and 8 man battle. Don't be tempted to go into anything but Arcade Ladder unless you've got another joystick, else you'll be stuck in the character select screen for all eternity, or until you reset the console, since those two other modes require another player, no ifs or buts. It's a pretty silly design flaw, if you ask me. Even for a fighting game of its time, the mode selection is pretty lacking. The Arcade Mode is an absolute nightmare, since the game becomes unbearably hard pretty early on, with the CPU reading your inputs and reacting with uncanny reflexes to your moves. Which kinda sucks, since unless you've got another joystick lying around, there's no way for you to try to figure out your character since the CPU will pound on you over and over and over and over and over and over again. And there's no moveset anywhere, not even on the instruction booklet, so you're on your own.

 ....but let's assume that you persevered, thanks to unlimited continues, so that not even the cheap Endurance round(2-round battles in which you have to defeat two opponents on a single life bar) could stop you, and you defeat Shao Kahn and... the game freezes. Unless you're playing on an original Playstation 1, this game will have issues. On the PS2 the game will freeze after beating the final boss, it will freeze if you let the timer run out on the Continue screen and the music will stop if you pause the game. It kinda sucks. While the PS1 version has more character than the N64, you also get loading times, which are mercifully short, unless you battle as or against Shang Tsung, but the game lets you pre-pick a couple of transformations, if you so wish, so as not to have the game load mid-match. As for the exclusive retro characters... they suck. They have a few new moves, but performed with pre-existing frames, so they look awful, and their Run animation is just a sped up walk. Lame.

 As for how the game plays, it's your classic Mortal Kombat, two punches and two kicks as well as a block button. Mortal Kombat 3 introduced the run button and dial-up combos. Every character has a few special moves as well as a few unique dial-up combos, which are pre-scripted combos performed by tapping a specific string of buttons. Most MK fans hated those, I'm alright with them, since they help add variety to the characters beside their special moves. The problem with Dial-up combos is that they are way more convenient than most combos a player could come up to, so the name of the game is to learn a couple of those and perform them ad-nauseam. Trilogy introduced a new 'Aggressor' meter, which increases as you deal damage, fill it and you'll temporarily deal extra damage.

 What I will grant the game is that, as much as I hated and still hate, to this very day, digitalized graphics, Trilogy looks pretty baddass. I mean, Liu Kang, Shang Tsung and Johnny Cage actually look cool in the game, everything looks serious, dark, slim and trimmed. Mortal Kombat had never looked this cool, and while the new post-apocalyptic setting might not be to everyone's liking, the stages had never been this intricate or appealing before. I also love having like 7 palette-swapped Ninjas, and them too are the coolest and badassest they've ever been.

 Mortal Kombat Trilogy reminded me of why I didn't like classic Mortal Kombat. Say what you will, but if you remove the violence factor, the game becomes a subpar fighting game. I've no doubt that the game could potentially be fun against another player, but if you're on your own there's no way for you to enjoy the game. The CPU will kick your butt, and will do so so quickly that you won't have time to learn how to play your character or how to experiment with his moveset, and there's no training mode to facilitate that either. Still, for Mortal Kombat fans, this game will re-ignite nostalgia, and the large character roster, encompassing the entire series up to that point, is a huge selling point.
 4.5 out of 10

Review #449: War Gods

 A game that raises a lot of questions. Not good questions, but questions non the less.

 What is an intro? What is a Mode? What is an ending? What is a combo? What is a movelist? Such are the questions that this game raises and doesn't answer. Welcome to War Gods, a fighting game released to test the waters before fully committing to bringing Mortal Kombat into the third dimension. It has blood, it has fatalities and it has terrible pseudo-realistic character designs but it's no Mortal Kombat.

 The game has a set-up involving 10 pieces of an orb that turned 10 humans into gods and blah blah blah, it's not interesting nor does it concern us, for even your reward upon finishing the game is a measly 3-paragraph long ending text. Lame. There're 10 terrible looking characters as well as 2 even worse-looking bosses(Which you can play as by inputting a code) that are the cheapest you'll ever play against. You thought Goro, Shao Kang or even Rugal were bad? You ain't seen nothing yet. The game has a grand total of 1 mode, an Arcade Ladder, or 2 if you count pressing the Start button on a second controller to battle against another player, as well as an options screen. Lamer.

 The game's crowning achievement is looking worse than it plays. Character models look terrible, warp and twist weirdly when doing victory poses and having some of the stiffest animations ever. Each character has a decent, albeit a bit small, assortment of special moves as well as a single 10-hit combo. Producing combos in this game is devoid of any freedom of creativity, so don't expect much out of the engine. And if you want to see a movelist, tough luck, even the game's instruction manual refuses to aid you, so it's gonna take a trip to GameFaqs. Lameeeeeeeeeeeeee.

 As for the game's key mechanics, there's a 3D button that let's you move around freely, which is a bit wonky, Left and Right rolls, which come out a bit too slow, as well as a shove move, by double tapping the block button, that breaks guards... but why would you if grabs deal more damage and come out quicker? There's also a single fatality for each combatant, but they are relatively good looking, surprisingly, most fit the character's respective deity theme pretty well.

 War Gods is pretty bad. Like really, really bad. I don't think I've a single positive thing to say about it... except maybe that it's not broken. Everything works as intended, collision detection is fine and... well, it's not broken. But it's devoid of good, fun mechanics, the overall aesthetics are lame, it lacks fluff to make it worth playing the game after you finished the arcade ladder one.... it doesn't have anything that other games don't do better. I still have a rather soft spot for War Gods in my heart due to nostalgia, but if you take the rose-tinted glasses off there's nothing worth looking at in there.
 3.0 out of 10

Now Playing: War Gods

 Not related to God of War, thank god.

 War Gods is a game I've a bit of Nostalgia for. I remember renting it one day, for the N64, and... liking it. Well, I've always enjoyed fighting games and it's not like the N64 had a lot to choose from! This translates into me having undeserved fuzzy feelings for the game, even though it's pretty much terrible!

 You pop in the disc on the tray, go through the mandatory publisher and developer slides an then... you either Start the game or go to options, because a fighting game doesn't need any other modes. Right? Right?.... Anybody? And, you do start the game, and you quickly learn that everything looks as stilted as it feels. The movement is so unnaturally stiff that it makes for an odd looking game. As a whole, everything feels wonky. It's incredible to think that this served as a proving grounds for Mortal Kombat 4, because it feels nothing like it.... which probably makes sense considering how bad War Gods is.

 Oh well, only 9 characters to go....

Review #448: Marvel Ultimate Alliance(PS2)

 Not the marvel I remembered.

 Raven Software had a pretty neat thing going with their Marvel-infused Diablo-clone X-Men Legends franchise, and Legends II took a lot of steps in the right direction, so one would expect that they'd follow the same trend with their next enterprise, the much more ambitious Marvel Ultimate Alliance, right? Well, they took some steps in the right direction alright, but they also took a few backwards.

 Dr. Doom, Loki, the Enchantress, Ultron and Baron Mordo have teamed up, probably due to their affinity with the color green, as the Masters of Evil, and their first order of business was taking down SHIELD. Nick Fury issues a call to arms, and over 20 heroes of the Marvel Universe heed the call, teaming up on a 5-act romp to stop the evil doers. The story is pretty tame and bland, but it's alright as an excuse to gather all these villains and heroes from the Marvel universe. The game has more sidequests than before, but the game, as a whole, is about as long as Legends 2(13-15 hours). And if you intend to play it, the sixth generation home consolse and PC versions are the worst, since they have the least amount of characters. PS3 gets Colossus and Moon Knight, X360 has those two as well as other six(Including Dr. Doom and Hulk), PSP gets Ronin, Hawkeye, Captain Marvel and Black Widow, while the newest PS4/XOne ports get all 8 X360 characters

 Plenty has changed since Legends II, I assume in an attempt to streamline the game, but not everything worked as intended. You still take control of a 4-man unit, going from 'dungeon' to 'dungeon', beating enemies, leveling up, learning new abilities and getting loot, and the controls are more or less the same, but a few key elements have been tweaked or removed entirely. Shops are a thing of the past, what little equipment there is you'll find on chests or dropped from bosses, and you can sell them on the spot while on the equip menu. The equipment variety is very small, I'd say even smaller than Legends I's paltry selection, and now characters can only equip a single item, for whatever reason.

 For whatever reason, Auto-leveling and Auto-equipping is set On by default, so unless you turn it off one by one on every single character the moment you start the game, you'll have to deal with

the CPU distributing all skill points when you switch to a new character, which sucks. A lot. Skill points are gone, kinda, stats still increase upon leveling up, but you no longer get bonus points to spend on each. Probably for the best, since let's be real for a minute, in both Legends 1 and 2, 'Body' and 'Focus' were the only stats worth a damn. Still, I would've liked for them to make melee worth it rather than can the stat distribution entirely. Passive Abilities are now tied to costumes, every character gets 4 different costume and each costume has 3 different passive abilities each, these abilities are upgraded with.... money. And if you want to level up a special move but lack the points(you get one on each level up), fret not, you can spend in-game money to level it up, which is kinda odd.

 I'm not done. Health and Mana Potions have been given the axe, instead, now enemies may drop health and mana orbs upon defeat, which can be picked up to restore either. Melee combo strings have been reduced to strictly 3-hit minicombos which is baffling. You can block attacks now though, for whatever that's worth. Reviving characters no longer costs money, but rather.... Time? What the hell? You have to wait four minutes before you can revive a character, which is a very dumbfounding. Since when is wasting a player's time a good idea? But the cherry on top? QTEs made it into the game, because why not?

 Not everything's gone down the crapper though, the core of the game remains the same, so it's still a fun game, just not as fun as it could be nor as fun as Legends II could get. There were a few improvements too, abilities such as Flight and Might no longer cost precious ability points and come by default on characters, and the obstacles requiring specific powers are almost entirely gone, save for a very few optional roads. Xtreme Moves(I guess they are 'Extreme' now since it's no longer an X-Men game?) no longer share an energy pool, which makes it so that you'll want all your characters to learn theirs'.

 I know I've been very critical of the game, but I can't stress this enough: The game is fun to play. It is, there's no denying that. But a lot of the streamlining really hurt the game. Customization is too shallow for my taste, it's a shame they gave up on stat distribution rather than making other stats useful, and making equipment so banal was a bad choice. QTEs were a terrible idea, but they are not too pervasive, luckily, but why they reduced melee combo strings is beyond me.

 Marvel Ultimate Alliance could've been a great thing. The concept is pure genius, and the fact that the game is still fun despite how many steps back it took from X-Men Legends II speaks leagues for the potential behind it and how well they executed the core mechanics.

 7.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Marvel Ultimate Alliance(PS2)

 Some memories are better off left untouched.

 I Loved this game, with capital L. So much so that after I found out it was actually the third game in the franchise I had to delve into the previous games, well, the one with a PC port anyways. And I still liked this one the best, heck, I've been comparing Legends I and II to what I remembered about this game. And I've been reading through forums and was surprised at how much people preferred Legends II to this one. After giving it a try, I can't blame them.

 Let's start with the good, skills such as Flight and Might now come by default and you no longer need to waste ability points in them. The character roster is pretty good, with four costumes for everyone(except the Silver Surfer).

 Then the mixed, there're no more stat points, stats increase automatically when you level up. I kinda dislike having lost the customization, but let's be real here, there pretty much was a 'correct' way to build characters, Strike was almost useless, Speed didn't matter all that much, so you had to decide how much points to invest in Body and Focus. Potions are a thing of the past, enemies drop health orbs an mana orbs when they die.

 As for the bad... holy framerates. At least it got better once I entered the ship, but what a poor first impression. The combo repertoire has been reduced to 3-hit mini-combos exclusively. Passive abilities have been scrapped, but now every costume has an exclusive 3-passive abilities each. Why the **** is everything set on 'auto' by default? I will equip the equipment and I will distribute ability-points.

 Bottom-line is.... The game is not as good as I remembered it to be, and maybe, just maybe... I might like X-Men Legends 2 a bit better than this one.