Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2/Characters

As you play, you begin to notice how similar the characters are to each other. Many characters have some type of "gun" for their first Power and a radial blast for their second Power. All the tanks have some type of charge and a ground-pounding Power. And, when you start looking through the Abilities, you see lots of repetition with most characters having one Attribute-boosting Ability and a couple of damage-boosting Abilities. It appears the developer was going for "balance" by simply making all the characters little clones of each other. Thor's Lightning Rod = Songbird's Shatter Scream = Torch's Flamethrower. Still, there are characters that are obviously more powerful than others. Or, you could say there are characters that are obviously weaker than the others.

A lot of your like or dislike of a character is going to be tied into how you play the game. Do you like to spam Powers? Do you prefer using melee attacks? What's your favorite team? Are you more defensive – using block a lot and staying back so mobs come to you – or more offensive – running into the middle of mobs and letting loose? Do you take your time so you don't trigger lots of mobs at once, or rush through, triggering all the enemies in a room? Early in the game is a good time to experiment with heroes and get a feel for their powers and how they work with your playing style.

Playable characters
You begin the game with four characters: Iron Man, Captain America, Spider Man and Wolverine. After defeating your second set of mini-bosses (Scorcher and Wizard), you have the opportunity to change your team. Only a few characters will be available to you at this first team-change situation. From that point on, you can change your team at any time.

There are a couple of rules for changing team members. You cannot change out a fallen teammate. Any new teammate brought on board will have the same amount of health as the teammate being replaced. This prevents you from using the change team ability as a cheap health restorative.

All characters have four active powers, six passive abilities and eight attributes. For most characters, only four of the passive abilities are available, two will be locked out based on your choice of Pro or Anti-Registration. Powers are listed in control order:. Since you don't have control over character attributes and you get most characters after they have leveled up a bit, all attributes are listed in the order in which the game assigns points; e.g., Strike, Body, Focus, Teamwork would indicate a character oriented toward melee.

Flying characters are noted as "Yes, continuous" for characters that remain flying until grounded by an attack or by the player or as "Yes, press-and-hold" for characters that remain in the air only so long as you hold the Jump button.