Marvel Ultimate Alliance E3 Previews

A handful of E3 previews for Activision and Raven Software’s Marvel Ultimate Alliance have surfaced on the ‘net. The first is at GameSpot:

The demo focused on three of the areas you’ll find yourself in over the course of the game. The first, a shield helicarrier, is where the action kicks off at the start of the game and features a team composed of Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, and Wolverine. The quartet responds to a distress call from Nick Fury, who manages to fire off the message as the massive airship comes under attack from the villainous Ultron’s robotic minions. The level begins on the deck of the craft and follows the four heroes as they venture to its interior to deal with the assault. While they’ll face waves of Ultron’s forces, the big challenge is the Scorpion, Spider-Man’s exo-suit-wearing nemesis.

The second is at Games Radar:

At the same time, we saw a level where Galactus – a towering, gigantic supervillain – stomped around in the scenery, smashing the futuristic city that surrounded the fighting area. Later, he chased the team of superheroes through a level, swiping them up and triggering some frenzied button-bashing escapes. It looks great, although Galactus’ wooden movements are hardly terrifying. And he looks a bit stupid too.

The third is at FiringSquad:

During the demo it was explained that Ultimate Alliance would allow for more action than the games in Raven’s previous X-Men Legends series and that players will not only be able to assemble their own super team among the tons of Marvel characters in the game but they will also be able to name them and provide them with a logo design as well. Also, playing through the single player campaign will actually allow the player to trigger a series of end game cut scenes that show how the unique team they created affected the entire Marvel universe. Also mentioned during the demo was competative co-op play which will not only allow four players to play through the single player game together but alos let each player try to one up their teammates for experience by, for instance, taking out more bad guys than the other players.

The fourth is at IGN PC:

Although this is, at its core, X-Men Legends with a larger pool of playable characters, the move to the new generation of consoles allows them to do some things that previous hardware might not have been capable of. The version we saw was running live on a PS3 dev kit, and we were treated to some impressive visuals like underwater effects, partially destructible objects, the enormous Galactus wandering around one of the areas, and generally much more detailed characters and environments. Raven software appears to have dropped cel shading in favor of a more realistic visual style that incorporates bump mapping to give those super hero outfits an extra kick of texture. Speaking of outfits, you’ll have multiple versions per character to choose from, and each suit will give your hero some different attributes. You can also decide how to develop your heroes as they gain levels.

And the fifth is at GameSpy:

The gameplay is very much reminiscent of the sort of action RPG that has generally been the stuff of Dungeons & Dragons-themed fantasy, like the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games and Everquest’s Champions of Norrath. But instead of choosing different character classes and spells, the super heroes have their distinctive powers. Spider-Man, for instance, can encase an enemy in a full-body web cocoon, and suspend that foe from the ceiling, setting up for an easy punching bag type finisher. Captain America’s shield can be employed for dramatic room-clearing effect. Toss the shield towards a foe, and you take full control of the shield’s trajectory, allowing it to bounce off walls, angling from baddie to baddie with player-guided precision.