Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

Like the X-Men Legends series, Ultimate Alliance is an action role-playing game and retains much of the same gameplay and combat. However, some of the role-playing elements have been simplified. Character powers can still be upgraded as the characters gain experience points, but there are fewer powers compared to X-Men Legends II, and the game now defaults to automatically upgrading them. Character stats are only upgraded automatically.

All of the main versions of the game allow the players to select a team of four characters from a roster of at least 23 playable characters. Some characters from the base roster are not initially available and need to be unlocked, and certain consoles feature additional exclusive characters. Players can create their own superhero teams or recreate famous teams from the comics. Bonuses are also available if forming certain groups (e.g. the Avengers, Defenders, Fantastic Four, Marvel Knights, or X-Men).

After Doctor Doom and the Masters of Evil attack the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, Nick Fury sends a distress call to all available superheroes for assistance. Captain America, Spider-Man, Thor, and Wolverine respond to the call and save the Helicarrier from Ultron sentries led by Fin Fang Foom. Fury is given permission to start a task force to confront the Masters of Evil and Iron Man allows them to use Stark Tower as their headquarters.

Fury asks the heroes to investigate a message received from Dum Dum Dugan on the Omega Base, a S.H.I.E.L.D. mobile research facility. The team defeats supervillains MODOK, Crimson Dynamo, and Mysterio as well as A.I.M. agents and failed Super Soldier experiments to prevent the Omega Base from crashing into a dam and launching several gamma bombs.

Most versions of Ultimate Alliance were developed using Vicarious Visions' Alchemy engine, which was purchased from the now-defunct Intrinsic Graphics in May 2003. Raven Software developed the primary version of the game on the PS2, PS3, Xbox and Xbox 360. Vicarious Visions simultaneously ported the game to the PSP, and later to the Wii to coincide with its launch, and Beenox ported the game to Windows. During early development, Ultimate Alliance used cel-shading technology, similar to Raven's previous Marvel Comics games, X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse; however, this was dropped at some point during development.

Barking Lizards Technologies used their Whiptail engine to develop the GBA version independently. The game was originally known as Marvel Legends, and had an internal working title of Marvel Comics RPG. At one point, Link from The Legend of Zelda series and Samus Aran from the Metroid series were planned to be playable characters for the Wii version; however, both characters were removed prior to release. These also led a GameCube port to be cancelled, due to the developers using a modified build running on PlayStation 2 hardware to showcase the characters.

Reviews for Raven and Vicarious Visions' version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance received generally favorable reviews from critics. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions received 78% and 82% at GameRankings, and 78/100 and 82/100 at Metacritic, respectively. The Windows version received an 83% at GameRankings and 82/100 at Metacritic. GameRankings' scores for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii and Xbox versions were 82%, 82%, 74%, and 83%, while Metacritic scored those same consoles 81/100, 81/100, 73/100 and 83/100, respectively.

Several reviewers praised the character cast, with 1UP.com's Scott Sharkey stating "even if your favorite character isn't playable, there's a good chance they'll show up at some point through the course of the story as an NPC". GameSpot's Ryan Davis applauded the Xbox 360's graphics, saying that it "features a lot of great lighting, particle, and bump-mapping effects absent from the other versions". He went on to comment: "Even without those advanced graphical effects, the PC and Xbox versions still look pretty sharp". Game Informer thought the game improved upon the "excellent X-Men Legends games from which it was born", giving the game a 9.25/10.