Marvel and Activision come together again, bringing your favorite comic characters to life. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 lets you take control of your favorite comic characters and experience firsthand one of the biggest comic events to date – Civil War.

Civil War begins with the introduction of the Superhero Registration Act. It requires that all heroes must register their real names and all known powers with the government or give up their masks. However, unlike reading the comics, you don’t have to sit on the sidelines.

It’s your job to pick a side, pro-registration led by Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic, or anti-registration, led by Captain America and Luke Cage. With over twenty characters to choose from, including both heroes and villains, the fate of the Marvel Universe is in your hands.

The game gets its basic structure from the original Ultimate Alliance and the X-Men Legends games. You have a team of four characters, each with special powers specific to their individual abilities, as well as a default attack set. Your attacks consist of a generic combo system or using any of your superpowers by holding down the right trigger and selecting the corresponding face buttons.

There’s also a grab attack for throwing enemies or objects and a jump button that, when pushed twice, will result in a double jump, web swing, teleport, or flight, depending on your character. In addition to the familiar elements of the game’s predecessors, expect to see some new features and minor tweaks that give it a refreshing experience.

The coolest addition to the game is the new fusion attacks. As you kill enemies and destroy objects you’ll gain momentum. Once you’ve filled the fusion meter with momentum you can trigger a fusion attack between any combination of two characters, each combining their unique powers for an ultimate attack. Not only do the fusions do incredible damage, but they just look cool. With a variety of fusion types and over 250 different combinations, they never get repetitive.

In terms of the minor changes, there are quite a few. Most just make the game better but I also think they help to give the game a new feel. For starters, with Ultimate Alliance 2 you are able to change your team at any point as opposed to specific save spots. As long as a hero is not knocked out, they can be swapped at any time for another character.

If a member of your team does fall, you simply use the new revive token, earned by defeating foes, to bring them back from bitter defeat. Furthermore, the revival token also serves as a reserve health pack, so if you pay attention to your team’s health bars, no one has to die. It’s such a great relief not having to find specific points to manage your team.

Activision also tweaked the power system. This time around each character has only four specials, period. In the previous games you would have a customizable selection of powers and buffs interchangeable between the face buttons.

The buffs are still in the game but you don’t have to activate them as you did in the previous games. Instead they are always active and can be upgraded using the money you earn throughout the game. This game gives you complete control of each character and let’s you sculpt them according to your own unique fighting style.

To further help customize your play style Activision has also added a boost system. The boost system basically replaces the “My Team” feature from the previous game.

Instead of upgrading a team of particular characters, you have boosts which are active amongst any team you play with. You are given three boost slots, of which you equip different medals to give your any team an extra advantage. With hundreds of medals to choose from, you can completely control the strengths and weaknesses of your team.

The most disappointing change in this game is definitely the number of alternate costumes per character. In the previous games each character had up to four alternate costumes. However, in Ultimate Alliance 2 each character has only two costumes. Though the ones offered are really cool, they should have added more.

Though they tweaked the main storyline a little for the game, I still think it works. They added a huge plot twist not in the comic series. However, not only does it make the game longer, it also reunites the heroes, thus allowing you to once again choose from any of the characters. However until that point you can only use those that coordinate to the side you choose. Still, this is kind of cool because it gives the game two different ways to play, each with specific missions and boss fights.

If you are a comic fan this game is not to be missed. Combing comic book icons with RPG style gameplay, Activision once again raises the bar. With plenty of replay value and hundreds of character combinations, this game will definitely give you your money’s worth.