Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is the spirtual successor to the critically acclaimed X-Men Legends series. While X-Men Legends 1 and 2 (and now Ultimate Alliance) aren't great games, they are definitely well made and are incredibly fun action RPG games - even if you're not a diehard Marvel fan (though it definitely doesn't hurt).
Baby Steps
The developers seem to have taken an "if it ain't broke" approach to Ultimate Alliance. UA is still mostly an action game with a few RPG elements thrown in for good measure. You'll create team of four super heroes and fight through various missions using your super powers to beat up bad guys and demolish the environment. The RPG aspect comes in the form of leveling via experience points and spending skill points on new powers or improving existing ones. The heart of the game remains a super-heroified hack'n'slash, which, in this case, is definitely a good thing.
Most of the changes made from the X-Men Legends games are good ones, such as giving the players the ability to form their own super hero team (complete with it's own experience points and bonuses), the elimination of all but one of the equipment slots (thus minimizing the need to constantly swap items in and out), and obviously, the expanded selection of playable characters. While it's great to see the inclusion of non X-Men favorites like the Fantastic Four, Captain America, and Spider-Man, there's definitely some duds that only comic fans will recognize like Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman, and Luke Cage. Unfortunately, certain playable characters from the Legends games don't return as playable characters (Night Crawler, Cyclops, Magneto, and Gambit to name a few).
Story With Potential
Along with the playable characters being expanded, the game's story, villains, mission, and environments have also been expanded to other Marvel properties. You'll be up against Doom, Loki, Galactus, Mephisto (just to name a few) as you travel to various locals throughout the greater Marvel universe. While the idea of super heroes banding together from all over the world to battle a group of super villains sounds incredibly, the exectution will likely leave you dissappointed. To fully follow the story and all the subtle innuendos, you'll have to talk to every NPC multiple times, reading text bubble after text bubble. Some nice cutscenes intersperse the action, but the story never seems to develop enough for the player to enjoy the possibilities. Perhaps the incorporation of so many different worlds and villains strains the cohesiveness of the overarching plot, not allowing the player to really dive into the story. Unless you're a diehard Marvel fan, you'll likely not be able to fully appreciate the missions, dialogue, environments, or even the characters themselves.
New Moves
Luckily action RPG's don't live and die by their story, but rather by the gameplay. With the X-Men games already being well accepted, the biggest gameplay change made to UA comes in the form of it's control. Instead of button presses, players use gestures with the Wii remote to call upon mutant powers. Unfortunately, every character has the same exact gestures, regardless of the powers the mutant may possess. This means controls are hit or miss depending on the character you choose and which powers you favor. Certain powers are mapped beautifully to Wii remote gestures (like swinging the remote to the side for Captain America's shield toss), while others are not only confusing, but difficult to perform due to the game's misinterpretation of the gesture (forward thrusts seemed to be the worst culpret). Overall, the immersiveness the controls lend themselves to far outweigh any hangups, as it's really just that much more fun swinging the remote around performing super powers than it would be with simple button presses.
Sidekicks Wanted
While Ultimate Alliance can definitely be enjoyed solo, you'll get a lot more out of it with a few friends. Being able to battle evil alongside super friends allows many more opportunities for team strategy and coordination. And of course, it's a blast trash talking with your friends as you're all getting beaten down by the latest boss because you didn't coordinate properly beforehand. The game even offers some simulator missions where one player plays as a super hero while the others take controls of the enemies in the mission, allowing some simple-but-fun competitive play.
For Fans. For Friends. For Everybody.
In the end, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance improves upon the previously proven X-Men Legends formula. If you're looking for a fun action RPG on the Wii, Ultimate Alliance won't let you down, especially if you have a friend or two to battle evil with.