Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order Reviews

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is a solid beat-em-up that tops its predecessors, bringing all the colourful known and unknown facets of the Marvel universe together with gusto. But despite it’s strong art direction, potent replayability and often enjoyable combat, it still comes off as feeling rather basic.

“Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is delicious fan service, but it’s also shallow and repetitive.”

There are loads of Marvel video games and the latest features tons of awesome heroes so let's suit up and get ready to fight.

The Marvel Ultimate Alliance series returns and harkens to superhero action RPG era of years past. Is the third, and most exclusive entry in the series a triumphant revival?

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order lets players hop into a galactic battle against Thanos. For a Marvel fan who enjoys RPG mechanics this is a fun buy, especially with others to play with. Some spotty online moments but well worth the fun.

It’s still hard to believe that after a decade of waiting we finally got another Marvel Ultimate Alliance, funded and published by Nintendo no less. The original Ultimate Alliance and X-Men Legends games were notable for their large playable rosters, frantic co-op action, and some lite Diablo-esque RPG elements sprinkled on top. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order takes this all to the next level with a much bigger roster, faster and more varied action, and even more RPG customizat...

However, strong post-launch support like this only really matters if the game itself is worth playing, and we can't really say that about Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3. At its best, the game is a mediocre brawler, and at its worst, it is an incoherent mess with a nightmare camera, frustrating battles, and ugly graphics. Anyone hoping for a return to form for the franchise will be disappointed, to say the least.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is an adrenaline fueled button masher that calls back to its early-2000’s predecessors with great gameplay and awesome visuals. Barring the occasional frame rate dips, this game is great on the go or on your TV at home.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is the ultimate comic book power fantasy. From its empowering gameplay mechanics which evoke the heroism in the game’s iconic characters to its event comic-styled storyline and presentation, there is a lot for Marvel fans to enjoy here. While the moment to moment gameplay more than justifies the price of admission, when taking a step back, certain facets of the game’s inherent design knock it down a few pegs--but not enough to dissuade me from giving this game a solid recommendation for the comic fans in the room.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is an acceptable, albeit dull game that’s only held together by the diverse Marvel universe. It’s enjoyable when played cooperatively, but that’s an excuse that can be used for any title. The problem lies in the archaic and stale combat scenarios that take us room to room with little variety until you get to the more mechanically-challenging bosses. At least there's a large roster to pick through, each with their own unique and entertaining combat skills that’s an over-the-top romp when mashed together. It’s a shame that the story moves too quickly, trying to hit every single character in such a small time frame, and the dialogue is clumsily put together. In addition, the campaign feels unbalanced, with the front half being too easy and the back half abruptly raising the difficult tenfold. The online component does have it setbacks, namely how it’s handled, but at least it’s there and works fairly reliably, even though we did run into a number of instances where failed attempts at loading into a lobby required a forced game closure. Despite all of this, I consistently felt compelled to keep playing. There’s a certain charm Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 has that will no doubt resonate with fans; it’s just too bad it’s put together in a less-than-optimal package.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is a more-than-solid release that will interest most Switch owners. While some fans of the original games might have gripes, it's still likely to be a solid choice.

If you are feeling cold and alone after Endgame, Ultimate Alliance 3's fun gameplay and huge roster of playable characters might be just what you need to warm up once more.

Super heroes have always had a mixed relationship with gaming; not everything soars as high as PlayStation’s exclusive Spider-Man or the Arkham series. What’s always been even harder is the much loved team ups from the comics. There is something really fun about seeing Doctor Strange join forces with Wolverine to smash two very different heroes into one world. The Marvel Ultimate Alliance series, and the X-Men Legends series before it, certainly achieved this. So when the last entry relea...

Hardcore Marvel fans will find a lot to love in Ultimate Alliance 3, straddling as it does the many eras of Marvel's history so well. For everyone else, Ultimate Alliance 3 is an entertaining and extremely fun game that is best experienced with others.

Considering the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s seemingly unending rule over the box office, it seems strange that – with the exception of last year’s brilliant solo Spider-Man game – you’re scratching your head for a Marvel game worthy of the films.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 for the Nintendo Switch serves up an original story tasking you to create your dream team of superheroes, including new additions The Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch, and more, as they face off against Thanos and The Black Order.

After a decade, a new alliance is here.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is a flawed experience that tried to rejuvenate a fan favorite franchise from yesteryear. However, instead it serves only to tarnish the memory many of us hold so fondly.

A couple of stripped back features aside, Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a great series revival that should keep new and old fans busy for quite a while. With DLC coming later this year, it will only get better.

Shallow, stupid, and very repetitive but as long as you play with friends there’s a goofy charm to what is, for better or worse, the best Marvel team-up game in a long while.

The Marvel Comics universe has always been extremely popular, but the Cinematic Universe made it even more so, to the point that nowadays pretty much everybody can recognize heroes like Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man. Of course, everyone has their own favorite superhero and being able to make them team up to fight against all sorts of villains is a dream that all Marvel comics fans have had for a long time. The Marvel Ultimate Alliance series is the only one that allows this dream to come true, and with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, things are better than ever thanks to a renewed focus on the role-playing game mechanics originally seen in the very first entry in the series and a huge, varied character roster.

In yet another take on the Infinity Stone saga, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is a fun and irreverent comic book story that pulls from an exceptionally wide pool of Marvel material. Its combat systems are fairly simple, but they were still surprisingly engaging as I excitedly experimented with different hero combinations while my roster of A, B, and C-list characters grew. Its vast array of post-game upgrades and other extras has been uninteresting so far, and there are (unsurprisingly) some inherited camera issues in co-op, but this superhero brawler is still a treat to play alone and with friends alike.

When Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 released in 2009 we were just two movies into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with only Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. The status of the superhero genre has transformed radically since then with 21 more Marvel movies, over 10 Marvel TV shows, and an absolutely obscene amount of promotion and products.