Released: 19 July 2019
Developer: Team Ninja

The Background:
For decades, few videogame publishers were as synonymous with Marvel Comics as Activision, who produced adaptations Marvel’s most popular properties. While some were better than others, Activision’s efforts were largely praised, especially after they partnered with Raven Software on the X-Men Legends games (2004; 2005). Activision and Raven Software expanded their scope to the rest of the Marvel universe with Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (2006), a largely successful team-based brawer praised for improving upon its predecessors. Though now delisted, it was followed by a sequel three years later, courtesy of Vicarious Visions, which tweaked the gameplay with team-based attacks to encourage experimentation. Though Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 (2009) was praised for its branching storyline, the stripped down roleplaying mechanics were criticised. While it was also delisted in 2020, fans were clamouring for a follow-up and, just ten years later, Team Ninja stepped in to work alongside Marvel in reviving the franchise. Seeking to place additional emphasis on combat, the developers explored the cosmic scope of the Marvel universe by including the Infinity Stones and lesser-known characters and chose to make the title a Nintendo Switch exclusive after developing a close relationship with Nintendo. Although Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order was the sixth best-selling game in its first week and was later bolstered by extensive downloadable content (DLC), it was met with mixed reviews that praised the colourful action but criticised its lack of innovation.

The Plot:
While battling Nebula and Ronan the Accuser, the Guardians of the Galaxy stumble upon a plot by the mad titan, Thanos, to collect the six Infinity Stones. Although they scatter the Stones, Thanos’s acolytes, the Black Order, pursue the gems, prompting an alliance of Earth’s mightiest heroes to retrieve them first.

Gameplay and Power-Ups:
Like its predecessors, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is a team-based action role-playing game in which players assemble a squad of four heroes from across the Marvel universe to battle various nefarious baddies, primarily the titular Black Order, who are hunting the six all-powerful Infinity Stones on behalf of their master, Thanos. The game offers five save slots, two initial difficulty levels, and a base roster of thirty-six playable characters, with many being encountered as you play through the story and joining your alliance either after fighting alongside you or being freed from some kind of mind control. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3 offers three controller configurations, thankfully none of which involve motion controls, and allows you to toggle overlays, notifications, tips, and other onscreen elements from the “Settings” menu. These include altering the camera placement, which enables a lock-on feature by pressing in the right stick, though the camera generally remains more focused on whichever character you’re controlling rather than offering a bird’s eye view as in the last two games. Although you can fight alongside friends either locally or online, you switch between your teammates with the directional pad (D-pad) when playing alone and your computer-controlled partners are very useful in a fight, attacking, enabling team attacks, and reviving defeated characters without any input from you. Pressing A sees you interact with the environment to activate consoles, pick up or move certain objects, and talk to other characters. You jump with B, executing a double jump, swinging from webs, or flying depending on which character you’re playing as, and throw light attacks with X and heavy attacks with Y. These can be strung together to perform basic combos and you can also perform a mid-air attack and throw objects (like bombs and missiles) by pressing Y. You block incoming attacks by holding the Z trigger and tap it to dodge, and collect glowing red orbs from defeated enemies or smashed crates to restore health, blue orbs to refill your Energy Point (EP) gauge, and credits to spend on upgrades.

As in the last two games, each character has specific abilities tied to their superpowers or superhero traits. You activate these by holding the Right trigger and selecting an icon using the D-pad; using Abilities drains your EP, however, and each Ability comes with a different cost. However, these attacks allow you to stun, stagger or deal elemental damage to enemies using Peter Parker/Spider-Man’s webs, Thor Odinson’s lightning, and Doctor Robert Bruce Banner/The Hulk’s incredible strength. Many characters have projectile attacks in their arsenal, such as Wade Wilson/Deadpool firing guns and Scott “Slim” Summers/Cyclops blasting his eye beams, while others cause splash damage or specific buffs, like Piotr Rasputin/Colossus being able to reflect projectiles and Wanda Maximoff/The Scarlet Witch healing her allies. Some, like James “Logan” Howlett/Wolverine, have passive abilities that allow them to automatically regenerate health as they walk around; others, like Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider and Ororo Munroe/Storm, specifically deal in elemental damage. Character’s Abilities can also be mixed and matched by holding ZR and pressing one of the face buttons (or pressing A when prompted); this sees two characters attack in a combo for additional damage. As you dish out and take damage, you’ll also build the Extreme (EX) Gauge). Once full, you can press L and R up to three times to have two to four of your teammates perform a devastating combination attack that’s great against bosses. While the various cannon fodder you fight are easily dispatched, larger commanders and bosses need their “stun” meter drained before you can really put a beating on them and others (and certain treasure chests) require specific combination attacks to breach their shields. Defeating enemies sees your characters gain experience points (XP) to level-up, increasing their statistics (attack, defence, etc), though you can also use the various Orbs you find to manually level-up. Each character’s special Abilities can also be further enhanced using Ability Orbs and credits, reducing the EP cost and increasing their damage, among other benefits. You can also earn “Team Bonuses” depending on your team selection: pick a group of X-Men, for example, and your strength or resistance stat will increase, while picking characters of royalty ups your maximum energy stat.

Although you can’t equip gear to your characters, the boss battle against the Destroyer armour sees you temporarily empowered by Asgardian magic and you can eventually equip your team with “ISO-8” crystals, coloured stones that enhance their attack power, resistance to elements, or critical hit ratio, among others. You can further upgrade these with credits and ISO-8 capsules, though some of the rarer ones will also debuff you (for example, your attack my increase but your defence will decrease accordingly). You’ll also inevitably gain access to the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate (S.H.I.E.L.D.) Lab, which acts as the game’s skill tree. By spending credits and Enhancement Points (EP), you can further increase your team’s overall attack, defence, resistance, vitality, and such and even unlock additional ISO-8 slots (with more being earned by levelling-up). You can also enter the S.H.I.E.L.D. Depot from the main menu to purchase additional costumes and social icons by spending S.H.I.E.L.D. Tokens. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3 is pretty forgiving (on the “Friendly” difficulty, at least), with multiple checkpoints in each area. When you activate a S.H.I.E.L.D. checkpoint, your team is fully healed, and you can swap or enhance them if you wish. If a teammate is defeated, you can hold A to revive them, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you absolutely have to. Not only are revives limited, but downed characters will eventually return to full health even before you reach a checkpoint so it’s not worth risking another character taking damage by healing a partner. Exploration generally leads you to treasure chests or special walls that require a special combination attack to open, or to a “Rift” challenge that takes you away from the main game to tackle a special challenge (usually a boss rematch or enemy gauntlet) for extra rewards. Your path is incredibly linear most of the time, hence why there’s no map, and the game’s primary focus is on chaotic combat and visually manic team-based attacks. Unlike in the last two games, you can no longer grapple or throw enemies (though you can still send them flying off certain platforms) and there are no character-specific team-up moves, meaning the action can quickly get quite tiresome.

Because of its focus on hectic combat, there’s even less room for puzzles than there is for exploration in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3. Puzzles boil down to activating a console to open a door or making a platform move and that’s it. Sometimes, you’ll hold A to move a block and avoid lasers or cannons, but mostly you’ll be timing jumps between said lasers to progress and simply hurling missiles at those cannons. Sometimes, you’ll rotate statues or press switches to progress; others, you’ll be avoiding toxic ooze in Hel or solving door puzzles at the Raft or in Avengers Tower. After hopping across the rooftops of New York City, you’ll infiltrate the heavily fortified fortress of the Hand, dealing with ninjas that drop from the sky and hidden arrow hazards. When in Wakanda, Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) corrupt T’Challa/The Black Panther’s defences, leading to an exasperating section where you must avoid snipers and being roasted by a giant panther statue’s energy blast. When transported to the Dark Dimension, you must use portals to reach new areas and defeat waves of demonic enemies to lower magical barriers and progress. Some attacks also screw up your controls or temporarily freeze you; some enemies are best defeated by tossing explosives at them; and many missions have an additional character fighting alongside you who’s often unlocked afterwards. However, a lot of the additional features of the previous games are missing; you can talk to other characters, but there are no dialogue options or character-specific interactions. There are no trivia quizzes, no optional side missions beyond the Rifts, and no character specific challenges to unlock extra stuff for each character. There aren’t even hub areas, in the traditional sense, with characters just appearing around S.H.I.E.L.D. checkpoints at times, though you can destroy a fair bit of the environment, and some encounters have you fleeing towards the camera as bosses chase you or present you with unwinnable battles.

Presentation:
Whereas the last two games primarily based their aesthetics on the comics books, especially the Ultimate comic line, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3 adheres very closely to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), especially in the visuals of its locations. I was hard pressed, for example, to tell the difference between Asgard here and the Asgard to the MCU, with both the golden city and the rainbow bridge, the Bifrost, appearing almost exactly as they’re depicted in the films. The same is true for Wakanda, the Dark Dimension, and Knowhere, all of which are virtually indistinguishable from how they appear in the MCU. There are some differences, of course: Taneleer Tivan/The Collector’s museum, for example, uses coloured cube cages and Wakanda leans much more into traditional architecture than the pseudo-futuristic science of the films (likely because Black Panther (Coogler, 2018) released a year before this game was made). Xavier’s School for the Gifted is lifted almost exactly from the 20^th Century Fox X-Men movies (Various, 2000 to 2020), however, including a hedge maze, 1:1 Cerebro room, and basketball court that doubles as a landing pad for the Blackbird. While the Dark Dimension and the cosmic mind trip that is Sanctuary also heavily borrow from the bizarre cosmic imagery of the MCU, the Raft and Avengers Tower are much more akin to their comic book counterparts, though they’re comparatively bland locations, lacking fun areas like the Danger Room or Wakanda’s Necropolis (though you do pass through Anthony “Tony” Stark/Iron Man’s Hall of Armours in the tower). Although you only make a brief stop in Attilan to try and get help from the Inhumans, the architecture is far more visually interesting than that awful television show, seemingly being comprised of Celestial technology, and I enjoyed the ominous gothic presentation of Hel, with its restless Viking warriors and damaging sludge. Unfortunately, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3 continues the trend of having disappointingly bland and forgettable music, opting for generic themes for each location, event, and character that are lost amidst the constant fighting.

The game also opts for an almost cel-shaded, action figure-like aesthetic for its colourful cast of characters. While many again both look and sound like their MCU counterparts, there are some exceptions: Peter Quill/Star-Lord, for example, looks nothing like Chris Pratt and the X-Men are far closer to the comic books than Fox’s films. Despite you assembling a custom team of heroes, cutscenes depict either everyone or characters specific to the location you’re in (the corrupted Doctor Stephen Strange in the Dark Dimension, for example) as they’re better suited to advance the plot against the local baddies. With the game shifting to a more third-person perspective, you’re closer than ever to the action and can see more of the environment than in the previous games. However, this comes with some drawbacks: mainly, there are far less opportunities or incentives to explore. Second, environments are painfully linear, with dead ends or locked doors barring your progress. Third, and most frustrating, is the camera, which easily loses track of your opponent/s and often lumbers you with wireframe representations when the foreground blocks the view. Thankfully, you won’t be falling down pits and rarely have to worry about onscreen hazards, but it can be aggravating trying to figure out which platforms and crates can be jumped on and which can’t. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3 offers a diverse cast of characters, each with their own idle poses and quips, though these do inevitably repeat. The game’s also surprisingly light on Easter Eggs: you’ll spot Deadpool singing away as he makes tacos in the X-Mansion, but not much else, and there are no optional missions or choices to encourage replaying missions. It’s a far cry from the first game, where there was always something to collect or an additional character to help out. Instead, it’s basically all combat, all the time in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3. Luckily, the game looks pretty good (everything’s very colourful and true to its inspirations) and performs really well, though there are some long load screens and it is annoying being forced to continue your game every time you challenge a Rift.

Enemies and Bosses:
All the usual suspects appear here as disposable cannon fodder for you to endlessly beat up, with many of the game’s goons sharing traits across the various locations. You’ll encounter Kree, Ultron Drones, agents of A.I.M., and Doombats who all pack various energy blasters. Ultron’s clones are the worst for this, relentlessly firing energy blasts and crashing through windows. The Raft’s unscrupulous prisoners attack in large groups, as do the restless Viking warriors who populate Hel, tossing axes from afar and luring you into toxic goop. Gargoyle-like Fire Demons also dwell here, offering a greater challenge with their swoop attack and fire breath, not unlike the monstrous Outriders and Mindless Ones who make up Thanos and the dread Dormammu’s forces, respectively. Alpha Primitives, Hydra goons, and towering Sentinels also appear, with the latter firing huge energy blasts from the palms and best attacked by throwing their explosive energy cores back at them. No matter where you are and what enemies you fight, more powerful commanders will also appear. Larger, tougher, and sporting a stun meter, these commanders should be your top priority as they’ll charge across the screen, cause shockwaves, and generally offer a far greater challenge even when you’re at a higher level. These minions often fight alongside their masters, generally so you can recover some health and EP to better damage the bosses, and will endlessly spawn in one of the additional modes unless you destroy their teleporters. Some of the game’s challenges or story-based missions charge you with defeating a certain number of enemies to progress. Other times, bosses appear in these waves, and you must occasionally flee or purposely lose some fights. This happens when Cain Marko/The Juggernaut comes tearing through the X-Mansion, for example, and in early encounters with the Black Order, who cannot be beaten or will chase you, raining lightning or other attacks from the sky and across the ground.

There are loads of bosses to fight in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3, with some returning from the previous games, some teaming up, some having a couple of phases, and all boiling down to whittling down their stun bar, unleashing an EX attack and/or your most powerful Abilities, and avoiding damage until you can repeat this. The first ones you’ll face are Nebula and Ronan the Accuser, who often appear as a duo in optional challenges. Nebula is faster and more nimble, wielding blades where Ronan uses a massive warhammer. Both set a standard all bosses follow, which is that they’ll use either a jumping slam or an explosion of energy (or both) to send you flying. While quelling the riot in the Raft, you’ll encounter a version of the Sinister Six, with some unique variations to each battle. Flint Marko/The Sandman, for example, flings waves of sand and erupts his big sand fist from the ground as a large sand creature. You must use A to mount the nearby cannons and unload on him to chip away at his stun meter. Maxwell “Max” Dillon fights alongside Eddie Brock/Venom, raining lighting and electrocuting you with bursts of electricity, before he’s eaten by Venom and starts busting out electrically-enhanced symbiote powers. Venom joins the team after this fight and is tested against Quentin Beck, who first brainwashes Mile Morales/Spider-Man, Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman, and Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel to fight you and then unleashes a poisonous mist, teleports about, and confuses you with duplicates, Doctor Otto Octavious/Dr. Octopus is fought in a two-stage fight where you must first avoid his tentacles and scurry charge and then attack each arm to stun him. Finally, you’ll battle Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin for the Time Stone. The Green Goblin swoops overhead and lingers slightly out of reach, peppering the arena with his pumpkin bombs, charging at you, and freezing time to bombard you. He’s noticeably weak to his pumpkin bombs, however, so try and toss them at him before they explode in your face! After battling into the Hand’s fortress, you must first free Elektra Natchios from the Hand’s influence and then face Lester/Bullseye and Wilson Fisk/The Kingpin in separate fights. You must take out the ninjas feeding Elektra power, avoid Bulleye’s spread of razor sharp and explosive cards, and dodge the furniture and massive energy beam thrown by the Power Stone-enhanced Kingpin. The Kingpin also charges like a rhino, leaps at you to cause shockwaves, and even rips up stone columns to use as melee weapons!

Avengers Tower is then attacked by Ultron and his drones, who assist him in battle. Not that he needs it as the Mind Stone allows Ultron to mess up your controls, to say nothing of his signature face and palm beams. Ultron then grows to gigantic proportions, sweeping the area with his eyebeams before Clint Barton/Hawkeye intervenes and Ultron merges with Ultimo. This is the first giant boss battle in the game and sees you blasting Ultimo with cannons and avoiding his massive swipes. The Infinity Sentinel is comparatively smaller, but no less dangerous thanks to its own face beam and missiles. Though you can damage it with Sentinel cores, it’s finished in a cutscene by Erik “Magnus” Lehnsherr/Magneto, who then tosses debris and throws you off balance with magnetic pulses while Juggernaut pummels you and Raven Darkholme/Mystique tosses daggers. After surviving Mystique’s Danger Room trials, you face Magneto, now even tougher thanks to the Power Stone, before being chased away and banished to the Dark Dimension by the Black Order. There, you battle past Loki Laufeyson (who boasts elemental attacks and duplication tricks) to eventually face the dread Dormammu, who wields the Reality Stone and is the second giant boss. You must subdue his minions and avoid his flame bursts, whittling down his magical barrier either directly or be destroying three nearby orbs, all while dodging his giant fists and ground spikes. The brief fight with Maximus Boltagon is far easier, even though the mad Inhuman carries a massive energy cannon and you must take cover in Thane’s energy bubble to avoid Maximus’s barrage of lasers. Ulysses Klaue/Klaw awaits in Wakanda and his sound-based energy blasts and waves must be overcome to rescue and recruit James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes/The Winter Soldier. You then fight past A.I.M. to confront their master, George Tarleton/Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing (MODOK), who uses the Soul Stone to turn the Dora Milaje against you and attacks with a slew of appendages, from buzzsaw arms, poison gas, failing tentacles, and his signature forehead blast.

Though your goal in Hel is to confront Hela, you’ll actually battle the fire demon, Surtur, in another giant boss battle. This was a bit of a difficulty spike for me as Surtur’s flaming sword has a long reach and he causes the ground to erupt in flames, to say nothing of stun locking you with repeat sword strikes! Best him and Hela sets Johann Schmidt/The Red Skull on you, with the Nazi madman firing a powerful revolver and sapping your health with his “Dust of Death”. Hela gives the Red Skull a boost, protecting him with a shield and allowing him to fire a Bifrost-like laser, before placing his consciousness into the Destroyer armour. Though bolstered by Hydra forces and boasting a sweeping face beam, you can get a power-up from glowing crystals to overcome this destructive force. Finally, you venture to Knowhere and must run the Black Order gauntlet to retrieve the Infinity Stones, with checkpoints between each fight. Ebony Maw is first, firing a spread of projectiles and rocks and using the Soul Stone to create portals to trip you up. Supergiant tosses dark spheres and a golden homing shot that messes up your controls, though you can toss explosive cores from her minions to deal big damage. Cull Obsidian infuses his battleaxe with the Power Stone, sending out waves of purple energy and massive purple shockwaves, though he’s far slower and also susceptible to the nearby bombs. Corvus Glaive is much faster, landing multiple hits with his lance and using the Reality Stone to spring spikes form the ground and conjure duplicates who fill the arena with energy waves that can stun lock you. Finally, Proxima Midnight takes her fellow’s teleportation trick to the next level with the Space Stone and fills the arena with lightning bolts and strikes. All these powers are then recycled when you face Thanos, who gathers the six Infinity Stones into the Infinity Gauntlet to rain meteors, teleport, mess up your controls, freeze time, and fire his signature eyebeams. Thanos then joins you to battle Thane, who usurps him and boasts similar powers, though also upgraded by the Infinity Armour. Thane exhibits superhuman speed, traps you in a cube, fills the arena with portals and flames, and explodes in fury, though both battles were fun challenges rather than impossible tasks.

Additional Features:
Unlike in the previous two games, you won’t be finding data logs, action figures, or meeting certain requirements to unlock new attacks or costumes. You just fight over and over, earning whatever you need to unlock, buy, or upgrade whatever you wish and finding some concept art in treasure chests. A far harder (but more rewarding) “Superior” difficulty unlocks upon clearing the game alongside an additional “Nightmare” mode, accessible via the “Curse of the Vampire” campaign. You also unlock Thanos and can freely replay any mission on any difficulty (though you must start a new save to play on “Superior”) to grind and enhance your characters and ISO-8. Dimensional Rifts transport you to special challenges (not unlike the S.H.I.E.L.D. Simulator discs from the first game) that are often rematches with bosses or gauntlet challenges, though far tougher and gifting better rewards if you succeed. There are also three additional modes; however, though you can play a taster of each, you must purchase the expansion pass to fully unlock them. “Curse of the Vampire” adds vampiric enemies to the main story in “Nightmare” mode and offers a “Gauntlet” mode where you battle waves of enemies and bosses against both a time limit and a range of debuffs (including limited health restoration and draining EP). You can also tackle an “Endless” mode that’s pretty self-explanatory, and unlock additional characters like Frank Castle/The Punisher and Eric Brooks/Blade…if you buy the DLC. “Rise of the Phoenix” sees you form a four-person team and go head-to-head with a friend or the computer in three-round Danger Room scenarios. These see you tackling bosses again or wiping out hordes of enemies, awarding additional buffs and effects if you meet certain criteria (such as using any Ability or Synergy attack four times). You can only tackle the first challenge without the DLC, so I didn’t get very far, but this could be a fun distraction for those looking to test their skills against a friend. “Shadow of Doom” adds an epilogue story campaign that sees you return to Wakanda to oppose Doctor Victor Von Doom’s invasion. Dr. Doom’s Doombots endlessly spawn unless you destroy their teleporters, and you even battle the arrogant dictator in the recycled Necropolis, with him teleporting, firing lasers form his palms, and having his health restored by his Doombots. You’ll add Marvel’s First Family to your roster (alongside an alternative Thanos and other characters) by buying the expansion pass and battle Annihilus, a gigantic Celestial, and even “God Emperor” Doom!

The Summary:
I quite enjoyed the first two Ultimate Alliance games. They were mindless and largely repetitive, but I liked the large cast of characters and all the different references and locations from the comic books. Still, I put off Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order for some time, mainly because I was annoyed by it being a Nintendo Switch exclusive; however it turned out to be a decent enough brawler. Despite the different development team, a few tweaks, and an apparent disconnection from the previous games, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3 offers a lot of the same gameplay and enjoyment as its predecessors, which is great for long-time fans of the franchise. Unfortunately, it doesn’t improve on these elements in a meaningful way and actually removes some content that I found enjoyable from the last two. There are no optional missions, for example, no alternative endings, no choices, and no character-specific challenges beyond fighting and levelling-up. I found this made the tedious combat even more aggravating after a while as I wasn’t being rewarded with gear or costumes or anything other than stat boosts. Even the skill tree was limited since you must grind to acquire enough credits and expendables to enhance your team, and I found the ISO-8 mode to be more confusing than engaging. The game also does little to improve the boss battles. Very few were very innovative or required more of you than to strike fast, avoid shockwaves and projectiles, and unleash your Extreme attack. The giant bosses were more of a challenge and I liked the final fight against Thanos and Thane, but I was hoping for a bit more complexity, especially given the possibilities offered by the Infinity Stones. There is a fun selection of characters, but they don’t offer much more than what we saw in the last two games and actually offer less as there are no character-specific team-up moves. While I enjoyed the visual influence from the MCU and the variety, I feel like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3 played things a little too safe by relying so heavily on combat and not mixing up the gameplay with a few other puzzles and challenges. Overall, it’s a good enough game and a worthy entry in the series, but it’s a shame that the developers didn’t try to be a bit more innovative and offer some more incentive to keep slogging away in endless fights.

My Rating:

Pretty Good

Did you enjoy Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order? How do you think it holds up against the previous two games? Which characters did you choose for your team? Were you disappointed that the combat was so similar to the last two games and the bosses so repetitive? Did you ever conquer all the Rift challenges? What did you think to the MCU influences and the final battle with Thanos and Thane? Did you ever play through the DLC? Would you like to see another Ultimate Alliance game? Whatever your thoughts, leave a comment below, support me on Ko-Fi, and go check out my other superhero content across the site.