Marvel Ultimate Alliance's new home on the Nintendo Switch feels like a comfortable platform for the isometric action-RPG. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is much more advanced and modern than Marvel Ultimate Alliance's previous two installments. But when fans take a look back at where the franchise started, there still remains the influential gameplay loop that influenced a third installment.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance's chiefest pull as a franchise is the freedom with which players are able to combine characters and create their own personalized teams of superheroes. Co-op is therefore where Marvel Ultimate Alliance features the most longevity as players can drop in and out of co-op willingly; otherwise, a four-person team can be comprised of one player and three AI teammates. Recently, a fan's artistic concept shows what a modern remake of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance could look like.
Twitter user and graphic designer Rock Rider recreated the key box art for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, which both featured art of their iconic Marvel characters in different panels. Rock Rider's concept supplants Marvel: Ultimate Alliance's artwork with character models of Marvel characters as they appear in contemporary titles. Spider-Man's character model comes from Insomniac Games' Marvel's Spider-Man, for example, while Gamora's comes from Eidos-Montreal's Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, and Black Panther's comes from Crystal Dynamics' Marvel's Avengers.
Interestingly, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order decided to take a highly stylized and cartoonish approach to its art design. This plays to Nintendo's strengths but also keeps the Marvel Ultimate Alliance series unique with its definitive art, as opposed to how realistic the visuals in modern Marvel titles attempt to be.
If future Marvel Ultimate Alliance games stay exclusive to Nintendo Switch, it is unlikely that their visuals will make such a departure. Either way, Rock Rider's art concept does show what a remake of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance could look like if it was undertaken by a different developer and was perhaps multi-platform. The nature of superhero affiliate groups is that players may find more of an affinity toward particular, individual members rather than an entire team wholesale, which is where Marvel Ultimate Alliance shines.
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is ultimately a single-player game, though players can control certain abilities that the other teammates have in combat. But in games such as Marvel's Avengers, the player's teammates are set. Marvel Ultimate Alliance, however, will always have a dynamic edge in terms of the massive scope of characters players can choose from, and will be popular with fans as long as that stays foundational to the IP.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is available now on Nintendo Switch.
