Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is a brand-new entry in the beloved Ultimate Alliance series that features a handful of different playable heroes from Marvel Comics, as well as plenty of iconic villains to fight.
In Ultimate Alliance 3, heroes team up to collect the Infinity Stones before Thanos can get to them and unleash chaos throughout the universe.
Every level of the game’s campaign mode can be played in either single-player or co-op, though in either single-player or multiplayer you have a team of four heroes to work with.
For my E3 demo team, I played as Venom and my partner chose Storm, while I chose Miles Morales and Deadpool as our CPU teammates. Players can swap between the four chosen heroes at any time — as long as there are less than four players —— in case they want to experience each character’s playstyle.
Team lineups can also be changed at S.H.E.I.L.D. Points, which appear at several locations in each level
Venom felt like more of a brute character; he didn’t have as much finesse as Spider-Man and featured different abilities except for his web swinging double jump. In many ways, he felt similar to the Hulk.
After Venom-smashing a few of the ninja enemies from The Hand, I switched to Miles as I expected him to be more agile. While Miles was indeed more agile than Venom, the constant chaos of battle made it difficult to know what was going on.
Due to my team combination, differentiating between allies and enemies could get confusing. The ninjas of The Hand had red and black outfits, somewhat reminiscent of Deadpool, so at times, Deadpool would be mistaken for the last enemy we would have to take out before progressing to the next section of the level.
Each playable hero had quick light attacks, which can be chained for combos, and slower but more powerful heavy attacks. Enemies seemed to always have more health than expected, so it always took longer than desirable to take a whole group down, even after characters would level up through battle.
In addition to different basic attacks, each hero had special powers called Abilities that can deal more damage but use up energy points, which refill over time.
When heroes use abilities in unison it creates Synergy, which allows for a variety of more powerful attacks. Unfortunately, even when using Synergy attacks, the enemies still seemed to have more health than necessary.
While Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is far from the worst experience I’ve played on Nintendo Switch, it’s clear that it has a few problems, or at least the demo at E3 did.
It’s also completely possible the full game will be more enjoyable after becoming more accustomed to the gameplay, although it may not be enjoyable for those who have never been fond of the Ultimate Alliance series or the Marvel universe.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order launches for Nintendo Switch on July 19.
