With the upcoming release of Captain America Civil War, it’s time to look at 2009’s Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 which also drew its inspiration and story from Marvel’s Civil War. The game has been around for years and while both it and Captain America Civil War draw from the same story, the two are not connected in terms of story or acting.

Following from its source material, the story follows the Avengers in a conflict in which they are required to register their alliance to the government with Iron Man leading a team of heroes who are pro-registration and Captain America leading a team of heroes who are anti-registration. And this factor plays into the player’s choice as at one point in the game players are given the choice of being pro or anti registration and the story as well as the heroes they can play as differ depending on which side they chose. If the player chooses Iron Man’s side, they lose access to several heroes but also gain access to other ones and play the story from the side of fighting against the anti-registration side. But if they player chooses Captain America’s side, they are allowed to play as the heroes they previously couldn’t and take the role of fighting against the pro-registration side.

The gameplay is similar to the first Ultimate Alliance game in which players chose a team of 4 of Marvel’s well known heroes each of which provides different abilities and powers to the game. As far as the roster of the game, it is smaller than the first Ultimate Alliance game but provides many different heroes than the first one did straying away from the first game’s roster of almost exclusively X-Men and Avengers members. While the first game used almost exclusively big named heroes this one has b-list heroes such as Penance and Songbird being playable as well as many non-playable characters that many Marvel fans would recognize such as Hank Pym and She-Hulk.

One part of the game that carried over from the first one was having collectables which include information about the Marvel universe, alternative costumes, and character profiles that give detailed information and trivia on several characters in the Marvel universe. While this does provide some replay value for players, there are less collectables in this game than in the previous game and unlike the last game, there is only one unlockable costume per character as opposed to the previous game having 3 unlockable costumes per character and less powers to unlock than in the previous game putting less of an incentive to replay the game with the same save.

And due to part of the game being a decision on which team to pick, the player needs to play through the game twice in order to see everything the game has to offer. And while they do allow players to replay missions, you cannot change your side on the same save meaning to play the other side, you have to create another save and play the first part of the game again. And with the player having to choose a side, this means there are certain costumes that cannot be unlocked, certain characters that remain unplayable for part of the game, and it also means that there are certain collectables on the side that are unable to be collected.

As far as an overall game, the game has some things that work such as characters, gameplay, and a familiar story. But at the same time, the choice factor is something that may turn off gamers who don’t consider themselves to be completionists. Though it is a game that Marvel fans can find enjoyable due to incorporation of many Marvel characters.