Marvel Ultimate Alliance is an intriguing series as all three installments so far have been developed by separate studios and have distinguishable identities as a result. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order obviously makes the wildest strides compared to what the original title was like, but even it maintains the core essence of the series buried beneath modern sensibilities such as an overly busy UX, an egregious abandonment of hubs and trivia, and a penchant for MCU inspiration peppered throughout.
Indeed, not much connective tissue remains tethered between them beyond featuring congregations of Marvel characters players can mix and match to their liking, but there is one patternable motif in the series that ought to be ceased if there’s ever a new entry. The next Marvel Ultimate Alliance should resist the urge all three previous installments have given into and not resort to featuring so many Spider-Man villains, especially near the beginning of the game, if it wants other interesting Marvel antagonists to earn the same reverence.
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Spider-Man’s Popularity is Overwhelmingly Dominant in Marvel Ultimate Alliance
No more evidence for Spider-Man’s iconography in no small part carrying the Marvel Ultimate Alliance franchise is that he has been front and center on every key box art thus far. Furthermore, his assortment of random villains has perfumed each game, and the placement of many of them hardly seems coincidental. The first villain players encounter in every single Marvel Ultimate Alliance game, in fact, is a Spider-Man foe: Scorpion, Electro, and Sandman, respectively.
The original Marvel Ultimate Alliance game can be forgiven somewhat for this transgression as it has players travel to so many different locations and therefore blends its Spider-Man villains in quite immersively. Likewise, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2’s hectic Civil War adaptation glosses over Spider-Man villains, especially since some of them actually appear on the playable roster in the sequel. However, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order suffers from featuring so many characters and antagonists who have been prolific in the MCU, such as the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Black Order itself.
Thankfully, the roster and their antagonists naturally balance themselves out in the story and do deviate in order to showcase fascinating locations and characters, such as Shadowland and the Defenders as well as Xavier’s Institute and the X-Men, shortly thereafter.
Unfortunately, the threequel tastelessly frontloads its Spider-Man villains by featuring Sandman, Electro, Venom, Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Kingpin within the second and third settings alone. The Black Order at least keeps its Spider-Man villain saturation to chiefly one location, the Raft, but it too is as self-indulgent as every other Spider-Man villain who randomly finds themselves involved in the overarching and epic narratives in previous Marvel Ultimate Alliance games.
Spider-Man is an Inevitable Fixture of Marvel, and Thus of Marvel Ultimate Alliance
The argument could be made that Spider-Man villains are impossible to avoid in their entirety whenever Marvel Ultimate Alliance’s story beats visit Earth, let alone anywhere in the vicinity of New York City, because of how abundant they are. To disregard Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery in these games would be absurd, and yet the sheer volume of them that make recurring appearances is undoubtedly due to their popularity or familiarity and less because of how relevant they may be to the ongoing story.
The same could also be said of countless other villains who are classic antagonists in another character’s rogues’ gallery, though many of them likely deserve and crave that limelight in a way that Spider-Man villains have basked beneath for ages in Marvel media. Spider-Man will inevitably play a role in Marvel Ultimate Alliance’s future if there is one at all, but a lot of his nemeses will hopefully stay on the bench or at least not be thrown in at the beginning to capitalize on familiarity as transparently.
- 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