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Interview indulges Marvel: Ultimate Hype
We're regular readers of Superhero Hype!, a fact rendered unsurprising given our unhealthy obsession with gravity-defying men and women in brightly colored garb. The site recently posted a drab interview with Matthew Paul, producer of the upcoming altruistic all-stars adventure, Marvel: Ulltimate Alliance. Little did we know that the article would contain such a high volume of fluff, reading it would be akin to getting smothered by a pillow in your sleep. Locking an Activision PR person in a room and having them read a press release aloud would likely have resulted in a more intriguing investigation into the game's features. Features like unbelievable, hyper-real graphics!When queried about the game's graphics on next-generation systems, Mr. Paul points out the "life-like" textures on Captain America and The Thing, commenting that there are times when "you feel more like you're watching a blockbuster Super Hero movie as opposed to a video game because it looks so real." Right. Ignoring the fact that the official PS3 screenshot above flamboyantly contradicts such a claim (and such acclaim), it's unbelievable that the interview doesn't change course when it suddenly finds itself covering the "real" nature of comic book characters and movies. It looks so real it's like watching a movie? That must be the one directed by Hyper Boll -- we've seen it far too many times already.
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance to feature unexciting controls
Though the many Marvel characters duking it out in Ultimate Alliance frequently find themselves doing somersaults, hurling punches and generally super-spazzing out, it's not an accurate expectation for the players of the game to perform similar feats. Speaking at the recently concluded Comic-Con, Activision's Chris Palmisano commented that the Wii version of the game would not have major changes implemented to its control system."The basic game controls like the camera and the movement and stuff like that -- you can do that on the Wii with left side in most cases. Then there are standard combo moves, which you can also do with the Wii controller." After this rather vague statement (do combo moves with the controller, you say?!), Palmisano goes on to curtail the level of input you might have expected from a Wii game. "I don't know how many games you're going to see where people are jumping around -- our game is an RPG so it's really hard to require that much physical energy to play a game for 30 hours." Though we have yet to think of any Wii game that actively requires you to jump around, we suspect the lack of physical energy required to play Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is tied into a lack of mental energy when attempting to explain why your game will have a bog-standard control scheme. This is an issue that will come up again and again: a multi-platform game that fails to take advantage of the Wii's controller risks not only being surpassed by graphically superior versions (why buy the Wii version?), but the rest of the games in the Wii lineup (why buy this game that doesn't use my system fully?). Of course, shoehorning a game into an inappropriate controller scheme is just as undesirable, as is certainly the case with an action RPG largely built upon repetition. We'd rather just press the A-button, thanks.