I've been a Marvel fan for as long as I care to remember. It started out as a casual interest when I was a kid, but I'm now almost twenty-two and that casual interest has grown and manifested into full-blown obsession. My bedroom is utterly littered with copious comics, movies, TV series, mugs, posters, action figures, games, numerous items of clothing and even the Marvel Heroes chess set, Spider-Man Monopoly and a life-size wearable replica of Magneto's helmet. So when a game such as Marvel: Ultimate Alliance comes along, it's safe to say that I'll dive on top of it and not let go until I've had my fill. Luckily, unlike many videogames based on characters from the House of Ideas, Ultimate Alliance is a superb game - maybe even one of the best games on the Xbox 360 thus far.

Developed by Raven Software, Ultimate Alliance vastly expands upon what the company did with the excellent X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, taking the roster to a whole new level and improving upon many aspects of the gameplay. The reason for the enormous gathering of superheroes is as good as any - an enormous gathering of supervillains! Evil dictator of Latveria, Doctor Doom, brings together the largest group of evil-doers ever assembled, under the Masters of Evil moniker, and begins orchestrating a diabolical plan. His first move is an attack on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier. Nick Fury sends out a distress call to all metahumans and subsequently Captain America, Thor, Wolverine and Spider-Man show up to give whoever's attacking the helicarrier a good kick up the arse. From then on the story takes our heroes to all corners of the Marvel universe in their quest to prevent Doctor Doom from doing whatever it is that he's doing (I won't spoil it for you). You'll be fighting the forces of evil in the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, S.H.I.E.L.D. Omega base, Atlantis, Mandarin's palace, Murderworld, Mephisto's realm, the Skrull homeworld, Asgard and finally Castle Doom, along with a myriad of other locations.

Only the aforementioned heroes are playable from the beginning of the game, but once players have eliminated Doom's forces and saved the helicarrier, a huge roster becomes available - Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, The Thing, Wolverine, Colossus, Iceman, Storm, Elektra, Luke Cage, Deadpool, Spider-Woman, Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel are all present and accounted for, with additional characters Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider, Blade, Daredevil, Silver Surfer, Black Panther and Nick Fury becoming available as you progress through the story. It's certainly an all-star roster and a few of them were surprises (albeit welcome ones); I never imagined Spider-Woman, Ms. Marvel, Deadpool or Moon Knight would have been included. That's not to say that they're all welcome additions; I could have done without Blade and Ghost Rider for a start. Plus, I really do wish that Raven had done away with the concept of having characters exclusive to different versions of the game. For example, while the Xbox 360 version got Colossus and Moon Knight, the PSP version got Black Widow, Hawkeye, Captain Marvel and Ronin. Who wins there I wonder? Next time, Raven, include all the characters in all versions of the game. I'm a Marvel geek, but probably not geek enough to buy two versions of the game just so I can experience playing as every character (note: I'll probably end up getting the PSP version even after saying this). [That's a win to the marketing guys at Raven then lol. Ed].

Like its predecessors, Ultimate Alliance is an action RPG, so while you spend the bulk of their time running through location after location beating the crap out of bad guys, you also need to manage various statistics. Each character has a handful of standard melee attacks - some of which can be charged by holding down the corresponding button - which are handy for finishing opponents off, but when playing as superheroes the real fun comes from utilising their super powers, and Ultimate Alliance is no exception, offering super powers in spades. As characters earn experience from battling the hordes of robots, aliens and suchlike, they learn new powers that are levelled up - and therefore increase in power, longevity and other areas - by spending the S.H.I.E.L.D. tokens found throughout each mission. The special powers are deliciously varied and a joy to use. A prime example is Captain America's shield throwing move; press and hold the button to throw the shield and you can use the analogue stick to control the shield's trajectory for a limited time - which increases as the move levels up - and take out multiple enemies at once. The shield also ricochets off any wall it hits, so let loose with it in an enclosed space and you can deal out some proper damage as the shield bounces rapidly between opposite walls taking out anything unfortunate enough to get in the way. Moves are assigned to the face buttons and accessed by holding down the R trigger and pressing - or holding in many cases - the corresponding button. Handily, you also have fairly quick access to moves you haven't even assigned to buttons, as holding down the trigger and tapping the d-pad brings up powers you haven't manually assigned, so provided you know which icons represent which powers, you can go without assigning powers to buttons without too much hassle.

The aforementioned S.H.I.E.L.D. tokens are found by killing enemies and destroying crates, jars, barrels and other inanimate objects throughout each mission. A quick tap of the back button brings up the hero menu, where you can spend your tokens on levelling up new moves or specific character attributes. However, doing so is by no means cheap and the cost of levelling up a move or attribute increase climbs incredibly steeply, so taking the time to scour the environments for every available token is a must. Defeating opponents also bestows the player with red and blue orbs, red being health and blue being energy for using characters' special attacks. Rather than having to access the menu whenever you wish to heal characters, Ultimate Alliance streamlines the superhero experience by having the orbs simply gravitate towards the characters most in need of replenishing, handily eliminating the need to manage each character's health and energy levels manually, which would only have gotten in the way of the action.

Battling through the multitude of grunts and supervillains not only earns characters experience and new moves, but also alternate costumes. Once again Raven delved deep into Marvel's sixty-odd year history and included both classic and some really obscure costumes. Additionally, some costumes could just as easily be considered as extra playable characters. For example, Captain America can wear the costume of U.S. Agent, Spider-Man the costume of Scarlet Spider, Spider-Woman the costumes of Arachne and Spider-Girl, Iron Man the costume of War Machine and Thor the costume and appearance of Beta Ray Bill. Some costumes even have specific attributes that can be levelled up independently of a character's other costumes, so having Spider-Man sport his Iron Spider costume (from Civil War - read it, that's an order!) for instance can be far more than a cosmetic choice. On top of the combat, Ultimate Alliance throws various puzzles at you along the way. Unfortunately, they're never difficult to overcome, consisting mainly of finding keys (in various forms) that open doors, switching off force fields and pulling or rotating certain objects - and all significant objects, doors, terminals, etc are conspicuously marked on your map. On the plus side, easy puzzles mean the action for the most part remains interrupted.

Of course, you won't just be going toe to toe with nameless cronies. Ultimate Alliance packs more super-powered villains than any game before it. Boss battles come in three sorts, the first of which consists of the normal button mashing in order to pound the hell out of the villain, be it Scorpion, Winter Soldier, Radioactive Man, Shocker, Bullseye, Grey Gargoyle, Mysterio, Dragon Man, Crimson Dynamo, Ultimo, Tiger Shark, M.O.D.O.K or almost countless others. Then, there are battles where you must use a combination of tactics, fisticuffs and solving simple puzzles in order to win. For example, when facing Mandarin you start off by attacking but must later solve a puzzle regarding teleporters blocked from the other side, while in the battle against Fin Fang Foom you must take control of an anti-aircraft gun between beatings. Finally, there are boss battles where you must participate in a minigame where you need to perform carefully timed button presses in order to initiate an event or attack. For instance, when facing the Kraken you need to wipe out the Atlantian guards before dodging the huge sea monster's attacks with quick button presses and tricking it into knocking down pillars onto its own head, and when facing Galactus you must take control of Silver Surfer and time your presses just right in order to fire energy bolts at the devourer of worlds. The three kinds of boss battles keep the combat varied and present you with opportunities to think while you topple the copious amount of evildoers you encounter throughout the game.

As was the case with the X-Men Legends games before it, Ultimate Alliance - whether you're actually playing on your own or not - is essentially a four player game. Each character is assigned to a direction on the controller's d-pad, so you can switch between any of the four characters at any time (essential for solving some of the puzzles) and if you are playing on your lonesome, the game's AI takes control of the three characters you're not controlling at any given time. Holding down the L trigger and subsequently giving the d-pad a quick tap allows you to determine how the AI acts; you can order them to be aggressive, defensive, assist you in taking down specific enemies or simply follow you. Other human players can hop in or out of the game at any time too, eliminating the need to stop and restart if friends want to play. Having friends to play alongside you is beneficial, as while the AI is generally very good and holds its own even in the more intense battles, it can get a little bit stupid when it comes to avoiding obstacles - the first time I got into Doom's castle I was confronted by doors that open and close repeatedly and while I had no trouble getting through them, the AI was too dense to time its movement and I ended up having two characters low on health and one character laying comatose on Doom's floor. Presumably when playing with friends you won't encounter this problem (although that depends entirely on whether or not any of your friends are Jade Goody).

Furthermore, Ultimate Alliance also sports a competitive mode of sorts. Called Arcade, this mode still has two to four players battling their way through the campaign mode, but points are awarded for kills and items claimed and the player with the highest score at the end of each mission is naturally the winner. It's a fun addition, but it can't compete with actually playing through the game co-operatively, performing joint attacks and helping each other out in the more intense fights. What's more, Ultimate Alliance also supports Xbox Live play (co-op or Arcade mode) for up to four players. Once again, the AI takes control of characters if there are players absent and the same problems with it do tend to crop up online too. In every other area though, Ultimate Alliance's online multiplayer performs incredibly well; there's rarely any lag and teaming up with friends or even people you've just met is a lot of fun. Impressively, the host player can choose to either start a new game altogether or load any saved progress from their console, so even if you have no available friends and there's a certain mission or supervillain that's giving you grief, you can get online and team up with other players to get some serious vanquishing done.

On the technical side of things, Ultimate Alliance is impressive yet not groundbreaking. While the music and sound effects are both fairly standard and the voice acting ranges from the great to the hackneyed (usually at the exact same places that the script is hackneyed - go figure), the environments all look gorgeous (just wait until you first venture into Atlantis) plus there are some spectacular effects being thrown around. Human Torch and Ghost Rider's fire looks positively stunning, Iceman's snow and ice gives off a beautiful and realistic blue glowing effect and Captain America's shield leaves behind a blurry trail as it ricochets and bounces around the environment. One downside to the levels and effects being so striking is that it shows up the character models themselves. Some of them aren't that bad, but the majority of them when viewed up close can look like plastic versions of themselves, rather than giving off an organic vibe. This is certainly not the case, however, in the frankly awesome cinematics spaced periodically throughout the game. From the moment you see the opening movie sequence of Captain America, Wolverine, Thor and Spider-Man defending the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier from Doom's robotic army, you know that Ultimate Alliance is definitely going to be something special. The framerate is for the most part rock solid; it does fritter a bit online, but it's rarely noticeable and will never get in the way of your enjoyment of the game.

If you haven't realised by now, either from reading the review itself or peaking at the score hanging like bait at the top of this page, then I'll come right out and say that Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a fantastic game. It's got everything - easy, varied and interesting combat, a huge roster of superheroes and supervillains, gorgeous visual effects, plus it's easily the most entertaining game I've played online in a long, long time. And I haven't even mentioned the special unlockable comic book missions - each one revisiting a key moment in a character's past and offering different rewards upon completion - or the way that the game records side objectives that you did or didn't complete and uses that information to construct completely different scenarios once you've fought your way through the lengthy campaign. There's just so much crammed in that it's impossible to not recommend. It would have been brilliant even if it had been developed using original characters and locations, but the fact that it's a veritable Marvel geek-out seals the deal. If you're at all into Marvel comics or action RPGs then get Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. As Stan Lee would say, "Nuff said!"

Reviewed by Mark Reece for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).