The re-release of Marvel Ultimate Alliance and PC debut of its sequel should be a happy occasion, but wonky controller mapping, horrible sound issues and other problems have folks calling it the worst PC port of the year.
I was so happy about the surprise(ish) announcement made this week about the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance returning to PC, upscaled and tweaked, and its sequel arriving on the platform for the first time. As soon as they were available I downloaded them on Steam, plugged in my controller and tried to play.
Pressing A does not work. I tried other buttons. OK, X was A. Menu and View are the shoulder buttons. The entire controller layout is screwed, and there is no way to remap it. Looking through the Steam forums I saw a ton of other people having the same issue. Others say the controller is working fine.
A helpful Steam user named SageX85 offers an explanation of what is happening with controllers.
Since the first release, the way the xinput api was implemented was broken. Only the WIRED 360 controller worked as it should. Third party controllers like the logitech ones and the wireless 360 controller with adaptor suffered wrong button mapping.
Apparently the game read something else beside the api, something like the name of the device or the hardware id. If it is not correctly recognised as an XInput controller, it falls back to DirectInput, and here is where the problem shows. For the DirectInput, the layout the developers used is different than the common DirectInput layout of Xinput controllers.
Long story short, I can’t play this with the controller situated the way it is, and I’ve no way of making it work. I’ve tried an Xbox One controller wired to the PC and two different third-party controllers. I can use keyboard and mouse well enough, though it’s not ideal.
Fine, I’ll wait for a fix or something. Let’s try Ultimate Alliance 2. Same controller issue, which is bad, but the audio is even worse. Constant crackling makes the game pretty much unplayable with the sound on. Give it a listen:
Fuck that.
I don’t know what happened here. It feels as if these two games were tossed up on Steam at a premium price with little or no testing. Adding insult to injury, the downloadable characters included in the Xbox 360 editions of the game aren’t included in the release, making it far less than the definitive version Marvel announced over the weekend.
I’ve reached out to publisher Activision to see if fixes are in the works, but had not received a reply at time of writing. All I can say for now is it’s a good day to have a refund option.
Comments
7 responses to “The Marvel Ultimate Alliance PC Ports Are A Disaster”
The price. Why? I already own both games on Wii and 360. I’d pick them up again for sure if they were a bargain bundle and I’d put up with mediocre ports if they were bargain price too. But they want to charge the cost of a new game for this?
And without any of the DLC.
& lack of PSP exclusives (unused on Wii, which were originally meant to be playable there). Starting from August 30 adds 360 DLC through current patch now. Only left now is the remaining issues (such as 3rd-party gamepad mapping fix (like from Logitech) & other missing files besides PSP exclusives (including Blade’s correct Daywalker Hud & Wolverine’s Jacket loading screen from both PSP/Wii), which should in the next patch
So disappointing, these are some of my favourite co-op games.
This shit is really getting out of hand. Has every major studio shut down their QA department? There needs to be some real legal accountability when you release stuff like this.
I’d buy it with that price tag if it were X-Men Legends tho..
so a year and a half later.. is the PC version worth buying or better to get the PS4 version?