The original Marvel Ultimate Alliance title is the quintessential Marvel ensemble game. Many Marvel games have featured huge rosters of playable characters whether they were multiplayer or not, but there’s a potent nostalgia and yearning for classic comic book Marvel in Marvel Ultimate Alliance, specifically Raven’s debut entry, that marks it as a wholesome and lovable cornerstone. Marvel Ultimate Alliance was conceived right before the Marvel Cinematic Universe began to subsume all other Marvel media, and as such it holds a special place in superhero video game history with depictions inspired largely by comic book source material.
As such, it’s captivating to see what settings Marvel Ultimate Alliance explores and how they’re represented. This is aided in no small part by trivia consoles that players can use as a whetstone to sharpen their lore knowledge against in each act, and each hub world behaves like a wonderful intermission where players can converse with various NPCs representing Marvel’s wide pantheon. Each hub is terrific in its own regard, and yet a future Marvel Ultimate Alliance game—if there’s ever to be another—would be foolish to revisit Asgard after the first game’s adaptation of the Norse mythology realm was adapted so spectacularly.
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Marvel Ultimate Alliance’s Asgard Hub is a World of Its Own
With infinite depictions of the nine Norse realms and a fairly large prominence in Marvel lore, Marvel Ultimate Alliance’s Asgard is certainly not novel. However, once players reach Asgard it becomes abundantly clear how much care and attention was put into its hub world. This Asgard is portrayed as a mystical plane with trees rooted on a rock drifting in a sea of stars. Here, players can explore and see neat points of interest such as the Well of Helvelgamar, talk to Sif, and even witness Hermod speedily racing about.
It makes sense that Asgard would have a role as a dedicated hub in Marvel Ultimate Alliance since Loki is one of the game’s primary antagonists, and the build-up to his boss fight is terrific with so much immersion absorbing players into the setting. One incredible moment in Asgard sees players able to enter the Hall of the Honored Fallen and enjoy a feast with Asgardians as well as various Marvel characters such as Thing, who can be talked to while he eats a leg of mutton.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance’s Asgard Levels Brim with Creative Interactivity
The rarity of Marvel Ultimate Alliance’s Asgard then extends to its level design. Many levels revolve around Marvel Ultimate Alliance’s generic combat to advance, and yet there are areas in the original where players engage with the level in genuinely creative and thoughtful ways, which include:
- Players can discover Valkyrie’s sword, Dragonfang, in a side quest.
- A Thor statue is interacted with by using Thor’s lightning ability near it.
- Fenris’ mouth is pried open to allow progress across a giant blade platform once players have found the Hand of Tyr.
- A lava pit must be cooled to successfully free Tyr from imprisonment above.
- Players forge Asgard Armor at the Great Anvil step by step.
- Players can discover and return Heimdall’s horn after freeing him from a block of ice in a side quest.
- In Niffleheim, players can discover Volla’s ring in a side quest that influences the end of the level—before battling Loki, players must choose the right spear from an arbitrary selection and Volla’s ring points out the correct one.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance’s two sequels demonstrate how one-dimensional the franchise’s brand of action-RPG can be when there isn’t much interactivity besides ordinary squishy combat with abilities being spammed repeatedly. Meanwhile, the original game peppered fun interactivity into nearly every sequence and Asgard in Act 3 is an extraordinary example of that.
The series has lost the plot in numerous ways and it’s once again unclear if Marvel Ultimate Alliance will ever be exhumed. If it is, the franchise should avoid Asgard like the plague unless it can somehow miraculously right the wrongs of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order and eclipse the original game’s Asgard, though that would be an unenviable and nearly impossible challenge due to how superb it is in every regard.
- Franchise
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Marvel
- Released
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October 24, 2006
- Multiplayer
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Local Multiplayer
- Engine
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Vicarious Visions Alchemy
- ESRB
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T For Teen due to Mild Language, Violence