Category: Marvel Games

So this past Wednesday, I drove straight to Best Buy right after work and made it there just in time to get my hands on Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order!

I pulled up at about 7:30 pm, and the demo went to 8:00, so lucky me. When I walk in I’m greeted by a very friendly woman who tells me that they’re demoing UA3. I gleefully tell her that’s why I’m there, and she directs me to the back, where after two people finished up their turn, me and Jake (the guy I was playing with, who introduced himself at the end) got to play!

So this was my first time playing a Switch, and I kind of got the controls mixed up. The Nintendo Rep told us to go to a S.H.I.E.L.D. command point, very reminiscent if not the exact same thing as the first Ultimate Alliance game. He said to press A to access it, so I looked down at my controller and I pressed A. Then he said to go to the character select and press A. And I, used to PlayStation controls where X is your select button, hit B and backed out. After that I went back in, and wouldn’t you believe it, I pressed B again. I told them I was used to PlayStation controls, but I finally did press A and we got to pick our characters!

Now they stressed that the game has over 30, but this demo only had 13. I grabbed my boys Spidey and Miles of course. Jake got Deadpool, and Star-Lord was… just there. I didn’t swap him because I figured, well hey, I’ll pick 2, and Jake picks 2, but he just seemed interested in Deadpool. So after that, we were off!

We met with Jessica Jones (Season 3 was great btw) and she was saying something about Kingpin having an Infinity Stone (bad news!). Jake and I decided to skip the dialogue because they were getting ready to close up shop and there were some little kids behind us that wanted to play. And I’d feel terrible if some little kids couldn’t play because of me, a 26-year-old man. So we began traveling through a Chinese-looking landscape, and were ambushed by scores upon scores of Hand ninjas. They were coming from left, right, all around, and chaos ensued.

Now, maybe the only complaint I have is that when the action was happening, it got really hard to keep track of my character. I know that single-player has that over the shoulder mode, which I absolutely plan on using. But co-op forces you to use the top-down view, and there were so many ninjas, not to mention that Spider-Man and Deadpool both wear red, like the Hand. The demo TV was also pretty small. Regardless, that was really the only issue I had.

But it played great. The web-slinging was awesome, even though I was restricted when Jake fell too far behind, but that’s just co-op for you. The swinging was tied to my ability meter, however, which sucked because then when a group of Hand showed up, I was out of abilities! Spider-Man and Miles both have web-balls, but Miles get some venom-blast action (his heavy attack is a venom-blast). Spider-Man also has a web wrecking ball that he slams into the ground, which unlocked when Jake and I leveled up. It seemed like everyone in the party leveled up, I’m interested to explore that more.

There were some destructible boxes and flaming barrels you could throw. Some gave items, such as ISO-8. I don’t know what ISO-8 is doing in this game, up to this point it’s been relegated to mobile games, and not even recently anymore, but we’ll see. We ran into Jessica again, and she knocked down a bridge, and got into a flirty conversation with Luke Cage over comms, a nice touch. We fought and fought until we got stuck at a big, giant door. The Nintendo Rep then pointed out an objective box in the corner of the screen (that I had failed to noticed before exactly that moment) stating that we had beaten 29/30 Hand ninjas. We found the last one and pummeled him, resulting in a cut scene where Iron Fist proves why he’s the freaking Iron Fist.

So he then joined our party as an NPC and we fought more Hand. Then Nintendo Rep pointed us to a special meter that was filling up rapidly in this particular room. Jake and I pressed the Switch equivalent of L1 and R1 together (I’m a PlayStation guy! Give me a break!) and all of the heroes unleashed a super whammy! Spider-Man did the yo-yo and started shooting web-balls everywhere! Miles did his ultimate venom-blast! (He got dizzy after it though, poor Miles!) And Deadpool and Star-Lord did… something, I was watching Spider-Man and Miles.

So that was the end, and the Rep gave us some swag, pens, notepads, Nintendo themed microfiber cloths, and an awesome Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 key chain (seen above)! I had a great time, and I definitely need to buy a Switch. Ultimate Alliance 3 is a game 10 years overdue, and I can’t wait to play it again! Anyways, Face Front True Believers, and I’ll see you in the Multiverse!

Below you’ll find a gallery of photos I’ve put together from my time on Marvel’s Spider-Man! Enjoy!

Well it appears as though I’ve made it to stage 2 of the application process in my quest to work for Marvel Games! They’re ‘reviewing my skills and experience’ to see if I’m a match! I wonder if knowing more about Marvel than Marvel does qualifies as a skill… Either way, wish me luck True Believers!