Let me start off this review with a confession - I've never read a single superhero comic book. I am aware that this is unforgivable, and I am very sorry. However, having seen a number of television series, watched several film adaptations and generally been thoroughly intrigued by the franchise, I sprang for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance like a starved man for juicy steak. For those of you who don't know, Activision, in collaboration with Vicarious Visions, released this game for just about every console last year, and it sold admirably well. It includes just about every superhero in Marvel's heavily populated universe, creating a game that lives up to its name in every way. Following the strategy of porting all games to all consoles, Activision recently ported the game to Nintendo's new wonder machine, the Wii.

The wicked Dr. Doom has rallied together all the villains of Earth and we all know what that means - another plot to destroy either humanity, the known world or the entire universe altogether is in the making. Fortunately for us poor civilians, Nick Fury has gathered just about every superhero there is to fight back and destroy the culprits before they can destroy us. The fight takes us to several exotic locations in the Marvel universe before the end, and is, just as any superhero story ought to be, completely littered with clichés, egos and absurdly immature one-liners.

Ever since the Wii was announced and the first details started spreading across the Internet, Nintendo have maintained that the console would prioritise stimulating gameplay higher than it would mind-blowing visuals, going completely against the trend of the time. And they managed to pull it off. Their own Zelda: Twilight Princess featured amazing gameplay clad in graphics far from the standards we've become accustomed to ever since the Xbox 360 hit the market. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, on the other hand, features quite trivial gameplay, stuffed tight with brainless enemies for you to exercise your superpowers on. Because most of the fights are controlled exclusively with the Wii-mote, I can't declare it button-mashing - but it amounts to the same thing. Most of the fights are boring and uninspired, seeing you slashing your way through hordes of enemies without any real purpose. After a while you learn to select a character that can fly and just flutter across the landscape, ignoring the war cries of undignified henchmen. The fights turn right around, however, when you start on the boss battles. Most of these feature gigantic super villains must be defeated by solving cleverly designed puzzles while at the same time frantically struggling to keep your team standing. These can be highly stressing but entertaining at the same time.

When you're out in the open, fighting your way through the levels of the game, there are various bonuses for you to uncover. Some unlock new artwork for you to admire, some are new characters for you to control and others still unlock small missions for you to complete with your heroes. Each of these take about twenty minutes to complete, and are all worthwhile distractions from the main storyline. The fact that they are hidden in all levels of the game also gives completists another reason to keep on playing. There are save points at regular intervals where you can save or revive your team if they have been cut down, as well as change the members in it. However, the entire idea of save points is idiotic, and I had thought the industry to be past it. If you're in a hurry to quit the game, it is extremely frustrating not to be able to save for another fifteen minutes until you reach one.

The only point where this version of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance really differs itself from the many other versions are the controls - naturally. In fact, just about all different attacks are pulled off with the Wii-mote, either lifting it up, moving it to the side, shaking it or another motion that you do with it. However, I found this to be an extremely difficult way of controlling my character in combat, as the Wii didn't respond to half of my mad swinging, and performed the wrong attacks with the other half. It is also possible to use various stylish superpowers with the characters, but which one you use is again largely decided by fate. It's actually quite fun to note that while pretty much all action in the game is controlled by moving the Wii-mote, you navigate the menus using the analog stick, not a marker controlled by the remote, as you'd expect in a Wii title.

Since the entire game has been built up as a multiplayer experience, it feels almost heinous to play through the storyline alone, but I must say, it does manage quite well. The simplified AI that the evil lackeys boast works a lot better with the fellow heroes in your team, even though they have a tendency to get stuck at the other end of the level from time to time. And jump to their deaths when faced with one of the many bottomless pits in the game. Don't worry though, it's really not as bad as it sounds, and in fighting situations, quickly changing character becomes as a blessing. Since each character has unique abilities, there is enough of an incentive to keep changing your team until you've tried them all, and replacing the members in your team is very easy.

As I mentioned before, Nintendo have stated several times that the Wii's graphical powers would be far below those of the Xbox 360 and PS3. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance proves this. I wouldn't exactly call the game ugly, but it's no beauty either, despite some handsomely decorated levels. Graphical flourishes and neat visual effects are scattered across the game, but there are also several regularly occurring glitches. The loading screens are, ironically, the only few times the game is really looking good, as they all feature impressive artwork.

The reason why you would want to play this game in surround sound becomes apparent already in the intro - great, bombastic music and effects come bursting out of the speakers at all times, creating a great soundtrack for the entire game. It is also admirable that almost all dialogue is spoken, and that the voice acting fits the mood and the characters as well as it does. The audio sets the mood where the visuals don't, and they thoroughly boost the superhero feeling of the title. The few minuses are the silences during loading and the usual boring battle chatter; hearing Spider-man repeat the same lame joke every time he kills an enemy becomes really strained after a while.

I'll give the developers at Vicarious Visions credit for bringing the Marvel Universe, with all its facets and intriguing characters to life, if not for the quality of some of the aspects in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. I can just imagine Marvel publishing the story in the game as a 128-page special, and if they did, I'd pick it up. A typical superhero story forms the basis for a great action RPG, complete with a fantastic audio side, a geeky atmosphere and a 20+ hour storyline. The fact that the many hidden extras and bonus missions greatly add to the lifespan only makes it better. Even though it is considerably harmed by the inane support of the Wii-mote to the point of the extreme, and the slightly boring battle system, the dull visuals and quite a lot of glitches, the game manages to sneak by as one of last year's best games in the genre. If you're a fan of superheroes, I strongly suggest you try out the game, as it is so stuffed full of information on the universe that it'd make any fan drool. And, if nothing else, it has made me want to read Marvel's comic books.

Reviewed by Niels Jakob Kyhl Jørgensen for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).