Activision and Raven team up for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

After two X-Men Legends games focusing on just the mutant superteam's exploits, Activision and Raven Software are expanding their focus. For their next title, due out this fall on multiple platforms, the dynamic publisher-developer duo is tackling the entire Marvel universe. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance will feature more than 20 playable characters, including Wolverine, Spider-Man, Captain America, Blade, and The Thing. Activision is promising that when the game is finished, more than 140 Marvel characters will appear in some form.

Customizability appears to be a theme for the game, as players will be able to create their own team name and vehicle, level up characters individually or as a group, and go into a fight bare-fisted or wielding improvised weapons plucked from the environment. On top of that, Activision is promising player interaction in the story, where each gamer's team has its own reputation, and the missions accepted, the objectives completed, and the player's interactions with characters all have a hand in the story's path and outcome.

Ultimate Alliance will feature online and offline multiplayer cooperative modes, as well as a competitive mode that tracks each player's statistics and distributes experience and equipment points based on those numbers.

And much like Activision enlisted Uncanny X-Men scribe Chris Claremont to help write its upcoming X-Men: The Official Game along with Zak Penn, screenwriter for X2 and this summer's X-Men: The Last Stand, the publisher is again turning to talent from the source material for help. For Ultimate Alliance, Marvel Mangaverse writer C.B. Cebulski will lend his expertise to developer Raven Software.

Activision has announced Ultimate Alliance for the Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox, PlayStation 2, PSP, Game Boy Advance, and PC. The game is set for a fall release.