Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 takes players into the thick of the Secret War and Civil War arcs which rocked the world of comics a couple of years ago. It is pure unadulterated fan-service and a solid brawler, but character omissions, technical issues and shallower RPG elements will leave fans wanting.

Players assemble a team of four of their favourite heroes to crack villainous skulls with all sorts of fancy super moves and powers. It’s much like Diablo, but replaces relentless clicking and demons with button mashing and thugs. It loosely follows the plot of the comic book arcs, so after a couple of levels you’ll need to decide whether you support or oppose superhero registration. There’s a different set of levels for each side, so you’ll have to play through twice to see it all.

One of MUA2’s big selling points is the addition of Fusion attacks, where heroes combine their powers for a more destructive attack. These screen-filling effects blast and obliterate anything within site, and you’ll use them frequently to get out of a tight spot. The game claims that there are more than 250 different Fusion attacks, but they all come under one of three types; targeted, guided or clearing. They’re mostly quite impressive and certainly effective, but one can’t help but want more variety in attack type rather than mere aesthetic differences.

Many of the RPG elements which defined MUA2’s predecessors have been stripped away or simplified. The overall number of attributes and powers per character has been reduced. Per-hero gear has been replaced with a team-wide medal system, minimising a lot of the customisation. There’s also a glitch that keeps resetting your character customisation preference from manual to auto-assign.

This simplification brings MUA2 more in line with a standard beat ‘em up, and it can be a whole lot of fun when playing together with four people in the same room. Going solo will get you paired up with the rather deficient AI that often contributes nothing to battles and gets stuck on the scenery. Online play is another option, but the net code provided a less than ideal brawling experience during our testing, with regular stuttering.

Twenty four of Marvel’s finest are at your disposal in MUA2, including classic heroes like Spider-Man, the Hulk and Iron Man, fan favourites like Deadpool and a few like Thor that nobody gives a damn about. Sequels are meant to be bigger and better than their predecessors, so it’s surprising to see that the first game actually had more characters – 25 out of the box with an additional eight via DLC.More characters are due to come via a DLC pack, hopefully sooner rather than later.

MUA2 looks doesn’t quite have the super-hero shine that it deserves, no doubt due to the fact it’s running on the same tech that powered X-Men Legends many moons ago. It does what it needs to, but could have benefitted from a face lift. Characters all look the part, but they don’t animate well, most environments are lifeless and the framerate drops like a drunken man’s pants. The script is uneven and done no favours by some voice actors who sound like they’d rather be in bed. Deadpool gets all of the good lines and jokes, as you’d expect.

With better visuals, a larger roster and more depth in its RPG aspects, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 could have been a real classic. The brawling action is solid, and there’s some great supplementary material, but the end result is a game that is inferior to the first in every way.