It's not easy being a comic book fan and a game lover. The two have a tumultuous relationship at best. Put simply, the vast majoroity of games based on comic properties are crap. In fact bar Spiderman 2 (which was technically based on a movie) and The Darkness they have all been crap.

But as Bob Dylan said, the times they are a chay-ay-ay-ay-gin. Or so we hope.

Evidence number one: X-men Origins Wolverine looks like it might actually be really good. Evidence number two: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 pictured above and below also looks like it might actually be vey good. Or at least so far it looks good, the characters looked detailed and you might actually get a good look at them rather than be staring at the top of their heroic heads for the whole game.

The only fun thing about the original Marvel Ultimate Alliance was using interesting combinations of characters for interesting combination attacks. In the sequel they will be called Fusions and as you can see above look pretty nice. This batch of screenshots is to promote the new addition to the roster, a character named Songbird. She's the one in the tights who looks like a negative version of the Phoenix (the alternate powerful form of Jean Grey). Reformed super baddie who has some kind of sonic power that lets her fly and blast things.

Bit odd really that they felt the need to introduce a new and not very well known character to the game. You'd have thought Marvel would have dozens of name characters they could easily field, instead of coming up with a new and embarrassingly lame sounding super hero girl whose powers are basically a rip off from the X-men characters Banshee and Siryn. Oh well, maybe I'll be pleasently suprised (although I'm betting I won't).

Super hero's shouldn't be hard to do right. Just make them the incredible building crushing, world saving, heroes from the comics. How hard is that. Instead we have to deal with dozens of games that amount to Streets of Rage 9 featuring these random heroes. It's sad that characters like Kratos form God of War can easily convey awesome god like powers, but Thor can't knock over a door.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 will be available Q3 2009.