From the Brow of Zeus

I'm really bothered by the washed out colors in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. The first game had characters as bright and vibrant as their comic counterparts, but the sequel's faded art design is downright ugly.

If you want to make a game look serious, simply washing out the colors isn't going to do the job. It's just as hard to take a six foot muscle bound "hero" dressed head to toe in ass-hugging red spandex seriously regardless of whether he's vibrant Daredevil or washed out Daredevil.

The faded costumes come off as self-conscious and rather desperate. Especially when you take a look at the latest Daredevil comic, which manages to dress Daredevil in blood-red attire AND look like it was written for mature audiences.



Plus, there's bound to be serious issues with the gameplay. Like Dungeon & Dragon: Heroes taught us, when you make your characters the same colors as the background (in D&D's case, brown), it starts to look like a game starring brightly colored Froot Loops.

Colored rings highlighting player characters may be handy for multiplayer games, but when all you can see is the rings, because the characters themselves blend in with the washed out techno-hallways they're fighting in, there's a serious problem with the art design.

Labels: videogames