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This is the best Nintendo Switch game you're not playing

This is the all-time Nintendo Switch game you're not playing

Nintendo Switch OLED held between two hands with one of the JoyCons being slid off
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Recently I've been spending most of my spare fourth dimension with Marvel Ultimate Alliance three, a rather Nintendo Switch title from dorsum in 2019.

Back and so I gave the game a polite review, citing its solid activeness/RPG gameplay, its big cast of Curiosity characters and its practiced-enough-for-a-comic-volume-crossover story. I also didn't think I'd particularly want to revisit the game, due to its uneven difficulty curve and frequent, frustrating boss fights.

Only over the by few weeks, I've institute that if you tin can look by the first playthrough, Marvel Ultimate Brotherhood three is a soothing, relaxing, almost Zen experience, which is rewarding in short bursts and much more varied than it initially appears. Information technology never aspires to be the next great masterwork of gaming — and, ironically, feels more than absorbing than a lot of "meliorate" games as a consequence.

Vampires, mutants and cosmic rays

marvel ultimate alliance 3

(Image credit: Team Ninja)

Like many games, a DLC pack convinced me to pick up Marvel Ultimate Brotherhood 3 again after essentially ignoring it for two years. Over the Christmas break, I wanted to play something low-cal and fluffy, which wouldn't exist difficult to put downward if I needed to do something more than pressing, such as, well, almost anything. I settled on replaying the Ultimate Alliance serial, since without the MCU, I haven't really been getting my Marvel set up lately.

The kickoff two games hold upwards pretty well, especially if yous caught their short-lived PS4/Xbox One remasters a few years back. Simply it wasn't until I hitting Ultimate Alliance iii that I found something a little more than substantial. That's considering Ultimate Alliance 3 had three DLC packs that I hadn't touched yet. Each one adds a handful of new playable characters, also as a series of "Gauntlet" challenges and/or a new story segment. It's non a bad deal for $20 altogether, particularly since you get some fan-favorite characters, such every bit Blade, Jean Gray and the Fantastic Iv. (I don't know who was clamoring to play every bit Spider-Human C-lister Michael Morbius, but whoever they are, I'm happy for them.)

Right from the beginning, I had a problem. Unlike many other games with DLC characters, Ultimate Alliance iii doesn't simply unlock them automatically. Instead, yous have to earn them by completing a series of challenges. And these challenges require levels well in excess of what y'all would earn by completing the game a single time on the default difficulty. If I wanted to access the DLC I'd paid for, I would have to play through the whole story over again, and undertake optional standalone challenges, and compete in the Gauntlets, and buy gear from the in-game shop, and hunt downward powerful subconscious items, and, and, and.

I'd paid for my characters fair and square, and I intended to grit my teeth and go through with this process. But a few hours into all the busywork, I had a startling realization: I was having fun. Much like the comic books that inspired information technology, Marvel Ultimate Alliance iii is superb "look at all the pretty colors and don't think almost it too hard" entertainment. Should I be seeking out deeper, more meaningful media in my free fourth dimension? Possibly. Merely if your goal is to zone out — or to catch up on some podcasts, YouTube series or even Goggle box shows that don't crave your full attention — Ultimate Alliance three can and volition get the job washed.

A virtuous cycle

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3

(Prototype credit: Nintendo)

If you've never played an Ultimate Alliance game before, the appeal is extremely easy to explicate. The series comprises 3 hack-and-slash action/RPGs, in which y'all construct a iv-person party of your favorite Curiosity superheroes.

Ultimate Alliance 3 has an enormous roster of playable characters: 52, to be precise. Unless characters are in your active party, they won't proceeds whatsoever experience. Equally such, if you want to employ more than four characters to consummate the game'south myriad objectives, yous're going to have to switch things up and grind. However, the game encourages you to do this in multiple ways. Equally you level up characters, you earn currency to unlock skills that empower your whole team. You can observe equipment that give huge XP boosts. Even if you lot just want to unlock optional costumes and voice lines, y'all'll have to work your manner through a good chunk of the playable cast to do so.

Later on a while, the game builds up a predictable, and predictably rewarding, loop:

  • Pick a team
  • Play through the chief story mode or a claiming mode with that team
  • Use your leveled-up squad to grind for XP-boosting gear
  • Equip XP-boosting gear on a new squad
  • Play through the story or claiming mode at a college difficulty
  • Repeat

After a while, you tin can bring a whole crew of characters from Level 1 to Level 100 in almost an hour or so, and you tin and then run that squad through a whole new set of challenges, which earns you more costumes and upgrade points, which lets you tinker with a whole new squad. And you lot can exercise this with approximately half of your attention elsewhere.

A rabbit pigsty worth visiting

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3

(Image credit: Amazon)

A while back, I had a conversation with a friend of mine about what we were playing. At the time, I was in the middle of Dragon Brawl Xenoverse: a fun title, just inappreciably one of the dandy games of the past decade. He replied that Xenoverse was a "skilful-enough game," and that sometimes, those were more than fun than "good" games.

I agree with his assessment wholeheartedly. Whenever y'all sit downward to play a God of War, or a Cherry-red Expressionless Redemption, or a Halo, you lot know that on some level, you lot're playing an "important" game. Even if the game itself feels fun and informal, it's a huge part of the gaming culture, and it demands your full attending. Whether you current of air up loving or hating the game, you take to have something coherent to say near it, because sooner or later, someone is going to ask, and perhaps even ask you lot to defend your stance.

Conversely, no i is going to care what you, or I, or anyone thinks of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3. Its entire raison d'ĂȘtre is to let you live out a superhero squad-upward fantasy. Information technology has nothing to say about the civilisation surrounding gaming, or pop culture in general. Information technology doesn't need deep thought or dissection. It doesn't fifty-fifty demand your total focus. Information technology'due south junk food, merely nosotros all crave junk food at present and and then. And giving into that craving once in a while is probably healthier than ignoring information technology entirely.

The odd affair well-nigh Marvel Ultimate Brotherhood 3 is that a unmarried playthrough doesn't convey merely how deep the rabbit hole tin go. If yous played through the game one time, with one party, I'd highly encourage y'all to download the DLC and give it a second try. Maybe y'all won't exist in information technology for the long haul, like me — but if you are, the online co-op scene is nevertheless alive and well.

Marshall Honorof is a senior editor for Tom's Guide, overseeing the site's coverage of gaming hardware and software. He comes from a science writing background, having studied paleomammalogy, biological anthropology, and the history of science and engineering science. After hours, you can find him practicing taekwondo or doing deep dives on archetype sci-fi.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/play-marvel-ultimate-alliance-3-switch

Posted by: mcbeewhoduch.blogspot.com

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