What do you call a gathering of 20 super heroes from all different dimensions and comic universes? No, not nerd birthday party, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance for the PSP. Much like its console “brothers” MUA offers deep character customization and a fun experience. Taking a next-gen top down action game and shrinking it on the PSP is no easy feat. A game like MUA is expansive and there is more to cram into a UMD than clowns in a UW Beetle. Good thing the end result of MUA is better than what happens to the clowns.


Features

All your favorite Marvel Characters

Online tracking of stats

Play with friend online

Lots to unlock throughout the game

Gameplay
While these sort of top down action games have a pretty standard fighting mechanic, the way MUA differentiates it self from all the other games of this genre is the deep character customization never before seen in portable form. Before getting to the customization, there is the core gameplay to talk about first. You assemble a team of 4 legendary super heroes from Spiderman to Ms. Marvel. When you choose your combatants against the forces of evil, Nick Fury sends you out on official S.H.I.E.L.D. missions to uncover what the nefarious Dr. Doom is up to. Apparently Dr. Doom is up to devastating things because he as assembled the largest group of villains ever. It is up to you, the heroes, to defend the world from these bad guys. You fight using all of your heroes’ signature moves and weapons. The face buttons are easy to figure out and you can pull off combos if you time the punches just right. Using the super powers are easy as well, just hold down the R button and a menu pops up and you select what preset move you want. You can change what moves are in the preset but you can never use more than three at a time, presumably due to button limitations although it does add some strategy elements to gameplay.

You can also change what hero you are on the fly. Just hold the L button then a direction on the d-pad you are instantly in control of the hero you select. This keeps you directly in the action in case the hero you were using gets held in place by some ice or stone, you can always be pounding away at the super villain. If you use only one hero,the AI is smart enough to help you in battle and generally not get in the way of an old fashioned Captain America beat down. There are times where the AI just won’t move some other characters and that gets annoying when you are getting in the thick of battle and one hero is standing in place.