Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2

Despite the flashier set-dressing, the pace of the game remains the same, as your super squad wades into one scrum after another. Combat is a stable pyramid, with grabs, heavies and light attacks at the bottom, character-specific powers which use up Stamina on top of that and the Fusions at the very peak, ripping up the scenery, but taking a lot of lower-level pummelling to recharge. Objectives come and go a little more swiftly now, perhaps, and there's a lot more chatter in-between lampings. The script is often genuinely funny, actually, although Wolverine was already repeating his witty asides fairly regularly by the end of the first level. Maybe you'll be able to download new dialogue as DLC.

Characters, selectable with the d-pad, can be hot-swapped in and out from a roster of 24 - once you've unlocked them all - with fan favourites like Deadpool enlisting for this outing. Helpfully, any heroes you aren't playing will auto-level anyway, which means if you get a good way through the game using only the Fantastic Four and then develop a sudden yearning for Gambit, he won't be a useless weakling when you bust him out and throw him into the fray. (But he will still have a stupid haircut.)

Auto-levelling's just one of a handful of thoughtful inclusions, some old and some new. Revival Tokens, either found in the levels or earned by handing out a lot of damage during Fusions by the looks of it, now stop you getting kicked back to a distant checkpoint when you finally get flattened, and there are auto-select options which allow you to let the game take control of your power-purchasing choices if you don't want to get sucked too deeply into the micro-management of your roster.

The tiny slice we've seen is all reasonably good-looking too - Latveria's painted in rain-soaked gloom, an American fantasy of Europe filled with those dinky Citroens with the funny suspension, while Washington is cast in the same peachy evening glow you often see in episodes of the West Wing, when the day has drawn to a close and Toby's bollocking Bill Bailey for upsetting the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But the real grunt is saved, sensibly, for crafting the heroes themselves. Chunky and swaggering, Marvel's crown jewels look rather good; their animations tend to get lost a little when the camera pulls back for the big battles, but look closely and you'll still see the odd flash of fun, such as Captain America gently headbutting some random into a wall while Wolverine pops his claws tenderly through someone else's ear.

Inevitably, given the dungeon-crawling nature of the game, it may all become a bit of a slog at times, but there are signs that Vicarious Visions is mixing the combat up with different enemy types and regular boss excursions. Beyond that there's always co-op, and with the Fusions to be taken into account, that may lead to some cheerily acrimonious occasions as players struggle to agree over matching the Hulk with that huge orange thing out of the Fantastic Four.

In the end, Ultimate Alliance is a bit like the old Stan Lee method itself: back in the sixties when the owner of the largest pair of Reactalite glasses in showbusiness was a touch over-worked, the legend is that he got things done by giving an artist the rough idea for a story, commissioning the artwork, and then freestyling the dialogue directly onto the finished panels. He had a bare template for entertainment, in other words, but the real fun came from what happened in the heat of the moment. As a recipe for videogames, you can't help but feel there are definitely worse approaches out there.