Tag Archives: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3

5 Games I Didn’t Finish This Year

Every year I find myself struggling to find the time or energy to power through a particular game for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s because of a glut of releases, other times it’s just the game itself repelling me from it, but more often than not, it’s because something in my life came up. This year I’d like to highlight the games that I just couldn’t bring myself to finish this year for one reason or another.

THE OUTER WILDS

Okay, so I know that The Outer Wilds is probably high up on a lot of Game of the Year lists for a lot of people, but despite the incredible first impression it makes, it never managed to get its hooks in me.

For those who don’t know, The Outer Wilds is kind of a run based adventure game about space exploration. I say “kind of” because there are story justifications for the looping of time that actually build up a pretty intriguing mystery that involves ancient civilizations.

The problems I ran into with the game however, are less the fault of the game itself, and more my own issues with certain styles of game. For instance, while it’s cool, the looping nature of the world didn’t engage me as much as it repelled me. I like to explore things at my own pace, and while I understand that different events happen at different times during the loop, I just never shook this nagging, pressured feeling.

I also felt that controlling the spaceship was way more of an obstacle than it needed to be. It’s just so unwieldy and hard to control with any accuracy. It ends up getting in the way of my desire to actually follow up on the elements of the story purely because of how bad controlling the ship feels.

The other big thing that kept me away from it, was just putting it down for too long. I stepped away from The Outer Wilds for one reason or another when it released back in May, and I haven’t touched it since.

All things considered, The Outer Wilds is the game on this list that I most consider coming back to and might get around to by the time this article gets published.

KNIGHTS AND BIKES

I wrote about Knights and Bikes a while back and how despite being a very charming looking game, the gameplay was lacking. To quickly catch you up: Knights and Bikes is an action adventure game with a focus on cooperative play. It kind of plays a little bit like a top down Zelda game, except it’s nowhere near as fun or interesting.

So why didn’t I stick with Knights and Bikes? Because life is too short to struggle through a game that isn’t doing anything for you. From the combat to the dialogue, nothing really stood out to me about the game. That is of course, with the exception of Captain Honkers, the very good goose in the image above.

MARVEL ULTIMATE ALLIANCE 3: THE BLACK ORDER

Okay, so let’s just rip this band-aid off. A few months back I wrote a pretty positive Early Impressions article about Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order. I stand by that article considering it was about, my early impressions. Unfortunately, what should’ve been a fun beat-em-up with all my favorite superheroes turned into an all out snooze-fest mixed with a healthy dose of grinding.

I really wanted to like Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, but the loop of going to a new level to punch beefier enemies just got really tiresome after a while. The main issue I had with the game that ultimately stopped me from proceeding, was that it never fulfilled the power fantasy of being a superhero. I was always outmatched no matter what combination of heroes I threw at the endless horde of enemies.

And ultimately it just stopped being fun to play. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order felt too long for its own good while never adding enough to shake up the formula to keep things interesting.

REMNANT: FROM THE ASHES

Remnant: From the Ashes is a game that people said was a manageable Dark Souls-esque experience if you were to go at it alone. Those people are clearly better at video games than me and I’m okay with that.

I really liked my short time with Remnant: From the Ashes, but I just never had the desire to come back to it. I have some friends who have the game, but even that wasn’t enough to keep me engaged.

I genuinely don’t know what’s stopping me from jumping back into Remnant: From the Ashes, but I suspect it has a lot to do with my general lack of enthusiasm for the, “hard” game genre where games like Dark Souls, Sekiro and The Surge live.

I would love to come back to it, but let’s be honest here, it isn’t going to happen. It’s just another example of a game that you spend enough time away from, that going back to it seems like an ordeal.

AFTERPARTY

Lastly on the list is the most recent example of a game that I said, “I’ll get back to that one later,” and never did. Afterparty is a game that I was so excited for ever since it was announced, and then when it finally dropped in late October I found myself strapped for time.

By the time my schedule cleared up, 2018’s game of the year, Red Dead Redemption 2 was released on PC and consumed every free moment of gaming time I had left. Do I regret not playing a new release for a game I beat twice already? A little. Do I care? Absolutely not.

Afterparty as a game didn’t do anything to repel me from it, the problem was that it got buried under the weight of the cowboy simulator. It isn’t a very long game from what I’ve heard, so I might try to bang it out over the winter break.

So there they are, 5 games I didn’t finish this year and probably wont ever. Check back in tomorrow at 3pm ET for another Game of the Year article. And to answer your question, yes, this list exists in an effort to explain why certain games aren’t on my Game of the Year list.

Blog: Time to Unwind – 07/24/19

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Since a few days ago when I posted my piece on the first few hours with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, I can’t say that I’ve played much else. That isn’t because I’m so head over heels for the game, rather, I just haven’t played anything that’s really revved my engine as of late.

I feel like I write something like this every few months, where I can’t find something to hook me in and keep me occupied. Ultimate Alliance 3 has been more or less, my go to game as of late, but even with that game I can feel myself losing a little steam with. It isn’t a bad thing though. In fact, it’s given me a lot more time to focus on some of my other hobbies.

I’ve been really diving headfirst into writing, specifically working on making my Dungeons & Dragons campaign I’ve been running for a while, really fleshed out and fully formed. From designing quests, to fully realizing the NPCs and settings, all the way to making maps, I’ve been very creatively fulfilled by this in a way I haven’t been in a long time.

This is basically what I’ve been up to

Outside of that, I’m playing music again. Not in any real serious capacity, but I’ve started composing some tracks and recording them with the little equipment I have. I’ve been listening to some D&D podcasts where they create music to help heighten the tension or portray the right mood, and while I’m not looking to integrate my music into my campaign, I think it’s a fun challenge to give myself a tone and try to make a song that represents that.

But yeah, not really doing much in the way of gaming lately. It feels like I’m in this summer lull where most of the games coming out just aren’t resonating with me in any meaningful way. I’m still working through Ultimate Alliance 3 and occasionally plucking away at Super Mario Maker 2, but that’s about it for the time being.

Early Impressions: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

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In lieu of an introduction that recounts the entirety of the Marvel renaissance over the past decade and how this title properly capitalizes on that zeitgeist, I’m just going to go ahead and say that I’m really enjoying Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order and what it brings to the table. It’s an imperfect game that doesn’t fully deliver on the power fantasy of playing as your favorite superheroes, but it sure is fun.

For those who don’t know, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is a 1 to 4 player cooperative brawler with a lot of RPG elements. You get to slip into the tights of several iconic heroes and take on just about every big time villain you can think of, in an effort to collect all of the Infinity Stones. The story is largely forgettable, mostly serving as very loose connecting threads between the different supervillain themed levels, but it has enough fan service to make the cut-scenes worth watching.

But that’s not why I came to Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order. I wanted to punch, kick, and magic blast my way through every enemy I could see. In this arena, Ultimate Alliance 3 excels. Each hero has their own unique light and heavy attacks along with 4 special abilities that can be upgraded to be more effective. The combat is repetitive yet fun, and adds enough variety by forcing you to block and dodge more than you’d expect from a brawler.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order encourages you to really consider your team build by offering buffs based on who and what kind of characters your active 4 is comprised of. Teams like The Guardians of The Galaxy, the 2012 movie Avengers, 4 of the Spider-Man characters and so on and so forth, get special bonuses when you use them together. But even when you split the team up and get less married to team composition, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order still rewards you with a portion of whatever active bonus you might be building towards.

For instance, having The Hulk and Thor on a team grants you half of the movie Avengers team bonuses, as well as a bonus for putting heavy-hitting characters together. All of the team compositions can be viewed in the menu which is extremely helpful considering you unlock new characters pretty quickly, and there’s something like 30 different team bonuses you can achieve.

The downside to all of this is that Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order only half explains most of its mechanics. Learning about proper team composition is fairly obvious, but finding out what category of moves your characters have access to and how those play together is kind of a mystery at first glance. There are just so many icons that each portray different abilities, or unity bonuses, or stat categories, that it’s genuinely overwhelming at first.

In addition to that, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order kind of forces you to try out your newly recruited superheroes by making them significantly higher level than the heroes you’re currently playing as. Normally I’d say that’s a good thing to encourage people to step out of their comfort zone, but in my experience it’s only led to me ignoring team bonuses in favor of who has the highest level. So now I have the iconic team of Thor, Deadpool, Dr. Strange and Ghost Rider all hovering around level 28, while Captain America, Spider-Gwen and so many others are so under powered that using them would be me handicapping myself.

This wouldn’t be as big of a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that the difficulty spikes are fairly brutal, and require you to have a fairly robust knowledge of these 30+ characters and their strengths in battle. Sometimes you need a lot of area-of-effect and crowd control characters. Sometimes you need a balance of bruisers and ranged characters. The problem is that unless you know how these characters play or figured out the myriad of icons and tokens that denote a specific hero’s style, you’re basically brute forcing your way through situations and experimenting via extensive trial and error..

I don’t want to paint the picture that I don’t like this game, because I genuinely am enjoying it despite the issues I’ve run into. The action is fun and simple without feeling overly repetitive which is a tight rope to walk when making a brawler. There’s a stun meter that acts like enemy armor, that once depleted will stagger an enemy and allow you to attack their health directly. It adds a simple extra layer of depth to the combat that manages to keep things interesting long enough for you to get to a boss battle. And that simple loop is made better by the wide variety of characters and moves you have at your disposal.

I did wish that my attacks felt a little more powerful though. It felt a little weird to watch The Avengers struggle against a bunch of convicts in a prison and then proceed to go fight Ultron or something. But it’s a video game, and you have to be able to deal with weird logic loopholes if you want to have fun sometimes.

Minor grievances aside, the biggest problems with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order are mostly of the technical variety. The camera is hilariously bad at times, getting locked up on some geometry, going in walls, or just zooming in and out in odd intervals in an attempt to be helpful. While the frame-rate has a tough time holding up when the action and particle effects start to kick up. The loading times are abysmally long and managed to actively keep me from completing more challenge missions considering the load to get into them was just about as long as the mission itself.

Even the AI and how the logic of the game treats them is strange. Most of the heroes at your disposal will require you to pick up red and blue orbs that represent health and energy respectively. Reasonably, the game only allows player controlled characters to pick these things up, but even if you’re filled up on health and pick up an orb, it doesn’t heal any of your teammates. It sounds like a silly thing to complain about, but it ultimately led to me favoring one character and praying that my team AI wouldn’t get themselves killed because I didn’t want to micromanage their health pickups.

I know it sounds like I’m really down on Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, but honestly, I’m having a really good time with it. There are plenty of other things I could pick apart, but despite all of them I just want to keep playing it more. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is the perfect example of a game that does one thing so right, that all of the issues surrounding it don’t seem as bad.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is available exclusively on the Nintendo Switch.

Blog: Coming Up Next – 07/17/19

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We’re over halfway through the year and I’ll be honest, there haven’t been any releases this year that have really blown me away. That’s why we’re going to look forward into the infinite void that is the remainder of 2019, and see what games are in store for us.

MARVEL ULTIMATE ALLIANCE 3: THE BLACK ORDER – JULY 19, 2019

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that I’m a big fan of those ladies and gentlemen that parade around in the colorful tights. I believe they’re called superheroes in some circles. I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Ultimate Alliance games, mostly because of the very repetitive, brawler combat it boasted. It’s been a long time since I’ve played an Ultimate Alliance game, so maybe this time around I can find something to really sink my teeth into.

ANCESTORS: THE HUMANKIND ODYSSEY – AUGUST 27, 2019

On top of being one of the only games I can think of that have ever dealt so directly with the concept of evolution, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey just looks so delightfully weird that I can’t help but want to play it. I have no clue if there’s going to be any depth to it, or if it even will be fun, but I need to know how it shakes out. In my mind, there’s a version of this game that is 99% the same, but has the creature creator from Spore so I can make nightmarish visions in a game that isn’t absolute trash.

CONTROL – AUGUST 27, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MitDfKKVGW8

Nothing like a bit of telekinesis, guns, and psychedelic shifting environments to really get the blood pumping. Or at least, that’s what they say. Control looks like a game that could easily become a sleeper hit this year. With people coming away from demos of it celebrating not only the aesthetic and gameplay, but some more surprising aspects regarding the story and the agency you have, my excitement for Control has gone from none to some, fairly quickly.

NBA 2K20 – SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

Look, this isn’t something I expect most of my readers to give a shit about, but I do. The NBA 2K series has proven to not only be the games I play when I don’t want to play anything else, but the spark that got me back into following the league in earnest. There will be nothing monumentally different about this game, but I’ll take a slightly shiner version of the game I already own for sure. Besides, I’ve gotten way more than my moneys worth out of last years entry.

BORDERLANDS 3 – SEPTEMBER 13, 2019

Look, I’ve already said my piece about Borderlands 3 and how Randy Pitchford is doing his best to tank the game before it comes out, but it seems like the best candidate for a game that my friends and I can play together. I am a little disappointed by some of the changes, or more accurately, the lack thereof, but Borderlands games are mindless fun, and if this one can nail that, then we’re golden.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK’S AWAKENING – SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

The Zelda series has always been a weird dark spot in my gaming history. I’ve played the original along with A Link to The Past, but outside of those, I never really gelled with the traditional top-down Zelda games the way I did with the 3D ones. But once again, I’ve been somewhat taken with an adorable graphic style despite my spotty history with these kinds of games. I will buy The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening when it is released, the only question is if I’ll regret it or not.

CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE – OCTOBER 25, 2019

I’m so curious to see what a reboot of Call of Duty 4 looks like. I can’t imagine that they’ll manage to recreate the magic of the initial 2007 release, but I’d love to see them try. I think what I’m most interested in seeing is how this release is received both critically and commercially, and how the next Call of Duty game shapes up because of it. Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare casts such a big shadow over the franchise itself for being such a monumental step forward in terms of online shooters, it’s easy to see why you’d want to go back to this particular well once more. We’ll see how it all goes down when it comes out.

THE OUTER WORLDS – OCTOBER 25, 2019

So let’s get this out in the open: I don’t like Bethesda styled RPGs. There are a myriad of reasons why, but let’s just truncate this thing by saying the word “bugs” and leave it at that. So imagine my confusion when I saw the trailer for The Outer Worlds and was actually into it. Maybe it was the setting that piqued my interest, or the possibility that this game engine might actually be able to sustain the weight of the game, but I can’t be sure. All I know is that I’m cautiously optimistic about The Outer Worlds and hope it isn’t too broken.

LUIGI’S MANSION 3 – OCTOBER 31, 2019

I only really got to play the first Luigi’s Mansion in short bursts thanks to me never actually owning a Gamecube, but it was easily the game I was most curious about playing on that console. Now that I own a Nintendo Switch and the third game in series is finally coming out on it, I can make up for that lost time. I don’t actually know what to expect from Luigi’s Mansion 3 aside from busting some ghosts with what I think is literally a vacuum cleaner, but hell, I’m up for it.

POKEMON: SWORD & SHIELD- NOVEMBER 15, 2019

I remember being a kid and playing Pokemon Red when it came out. After that I got Pokemon Yellow and was just as into it as the first one. Fast forward to 2018 when I played Let’s Go Pikachu, and we’ve just covered my entire history with Pokemon games. My experience and love for the Pokemon games are very low, but after enjoying the Let’s Go games as much as I did, I’m at least curious to see what all the fuss is about. I enjoyed the more streamlined version of Pokemon I played last year, and I know that this isn’t going to follow suit, but I’m still interested enough in it to possibly try it out. But man, when I hear things like “Dynamaxing” and “EV-Training,” my eyes start to glaze over, and my interest suddenly runs dry.

STAR WARS JEDI: FALLEN ORDER – NOVEMBER 15, 2019

It’s a Star Wars game. I like Star Wars. I like lifting fools with my magic powers and slicing my way through everything with my laser sword. I’ve heard that this game will allow me to do both, and then some. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten a real Star Wars game, now only time will tell if this one is good or not. I’m a big fan of everything I’ve seen in the footage they’ve revealed, but I’m curious to see more of the game. This might be one of the few games this year that I’m actually excited about.

UNTITLED GOOSE GAME – 2019

There’s no need for me to explain myself here, just watch the trailer.

We’re only halfway through the year, and this isn’t a comprehensive list of any kind, but I’m still hoping that something between now and the end of the year manages to really blow me away.

E3 2019: Nintendo

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Ah Nintendo, it wasn’t too long ago that everyone made fun of you for making the most backwards decisions possible. While you still make some absolutely bonkers choices, you’ve earned a ton of goodwill since the Switch launched. Personally, I want to know more about Animal Crossing, Super Mario Maker 2, and hopefully some information on the future of Nintendo’s online service, whether that’s new NES games or even SNES or N64 stuff to their offering.

Well, let’s see how wrong I was about all of this, and shine the light on Nintendo, for this, the last of our conference coverage for the week.

SUPER SMASH BROS. ULTIMATE

What better way to kick off E3 than by announcing a new character for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Or maybe 6 characters? They weren’t incredibly clear about how many characters are joining the fight, but my guess is it’s just one character with a couple of different costumes.

Oh, it’s a Dragon Quest character, probably should’ve mentioned that. For those of you still playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, I hope this is what you wanted. Another anime character in Smash. I hear the Smash community loves those.

LUIGI’S MANSION 3

I never had the chance to play the second Luigi’s Mansion on the 3DS, and in the face of this announcement, I now realize how upset I am by that fact. Luigi’s Mansion 3 looks so charming and pleasant, adding in a bunch of new features in terms of ghost hunting and multiplayer modes.

I always appreciated how Nintendo was able to make a lighthearted game in a spooky setting while also constantly just giving Luigi the short end of the stick. I look forward to it releasing later this year.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK’S AWAKENING

Here’s another one I never got to play, back when it made it’s initial debut. The top down, 2D Zelda games never did the trick for me like the 3D ones, but this one looks so darn cute and adorable, that I’m willing to give this game a shot.

Also, they’re putting in a dungeon maker mode? I hope this is the backdoor pilot to Nintendo actually releasing a full Zelda maker in the vein of Mario Maker. It’ll be out on September 20th, 2019, and I will certainly be getting it.

THE WITCHER 3

It’s impressive as hell that they managed to put The Witcher 3 on the Switch and I don’t want to detract from that. But I’ve spoken about The Witcher 3 before, and while I do genuinely like the game, I don’t know that the Switch version is going to be the best way to experience it. That game had trouble playing on modern consoles as is, and I can’t imagine what it will be like on the Switch. Otherwise it’s a fantastic game that I ended up turning on god mode for most of.

Hopefully it works great and people can enjoy that game on the go. It’s due out later this year.

NO MORE HEROES 3

I have a confession, I’ve never played a No More Heroes game, but I’ve always heard good things about the series, but never got a chance to play it. I have no idea what to expect from the third title, but from my understanding, they’re traditionally fun third person action games. I think it also is a game that has attitude, for whatever that’s worth. With a nebulous 2020 release date, we’ll see how it shapes up.

ASTRAL CHAIN

From what I can gather, in this cool looking action game, you capture the enemies you’re fighting to use their abilities in combat. It looks cooler than I’m describing. You’re basically fighting these big monsters, throwing a chain at them, and then taking control of them at utilizing their abilities in combat while you’re chained to them.

It sounds interesting enough. It comes out on August 30th of this year.

MARVEL ULTIMATE ALLIANCE 3

I always had a hard time getting into the Ultimate Alliance games for various reasons, and lower on that list was the camera angle. I know that the point of the game is to see your allies and cooperate with them, but it always left me feeling a little disconnected from the action on screen. This one seems to have a more traditional 3rd person camera angle while continuing to trade in the same basic action loop the past games did.

Otherwise, I’ve always enjoyed the pitch of the Ultimate Alliance games. All of these superheroes team up to fight an even bigger baddie. It’s a simple concept, but one that manages to hook me every time.

It comes out on July 19th, and I will certainly be checking it out.

ANIMAL CROSSING NEW HORIZONS

Welcome to my deserted island that’s overrun by enterprising raccoons. Animal Crossing New Horizons looks incredible, not only visually, but mechanically. It seems like it’s going for a slightly more survival focused gameplay loop. The player crafted a “flimsy axe” which leads me to believe there’s gonna be some sort of item degradation in it. Also there seemed to be an emphasis on changing weather, which I’m into.

This is all just me speculating, but it seems like they’re trying to add more emphasis on moment to moment gameplay, making you think about your items and needs in the short term, as opposed to just thinking about long term goals.

It’s a shame that it isn’t coming this year, but it won’t be too much longer of a wait, considering it releases in March of 2020.

BANJO KAZOOIE!

They’re putting Banjo-Kazooie in Smash. Everyone can finally shut up and be cool for once… right? This is great, everyone has been clamoring for this for a long time, and it was this inevitable thing that just needed to happen already. They’ll be added to the game this fall.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD SEQUEL

In what could be the spookiest announcement of the conference, a sequel to 2017’s monumental Breath of the Wild, was announced to be in development. It’s safe to assume that it’s going to play just like Breath of The Wild, so if you didn’t like that, too bad. That’s really it for info, but it’s exciting nonetheless.

More exciting is the prospect of how Nintendo hopes to recapture what made Breath of The Wild so engaging in the first place. The sense of discovery and exploration was incredible, but if we’re traipsing around the same map, I wonder how that sentiment holds up. I’d like to see maybe a new map, or a map so remixed it’s barely recognizable. Also, I think it’s time to let us play as Zelda.

Without a trace of Bayonetta, Metroid, new hardware or any info on their online service, some could look at this presentation as a whiff. I thought this presentation was great though. Still upset about Animal Crossing and it being delayed, but whatever. Nintendo’s lineup for this year looks great.

And that’s it folks. Thanks for riding with us for these conference overviews. There should be some more E3 coverage this week, but not a ton more. After all, I am in New York and can only do so much, but thank you again for sticking with us. See you around.