Tired of flinging birds and slicing fruit? These word games can be a breath of fresh air.
Blindly searching for word games in the App Store or Google Play will turn up a bunch of junk results. You’ll see a bunch of scammy apps or those geared toward an audience that sees a low-stakes word search as some challenge.
And weirdly enough, if you Google the generic phrase, “best word games” hangman comes up as an actual option…
Not kidding
In any case, we’ve compiled a list of favorites challenging enough for word nerds, but entry-level enough for those newer to the game.
Best online word games
Words with Friends 2 – iOS, Android
We know, the Words with Friends heyday has come and gone. However, several years after the Scrabble-inspired fad flamed out, Zynga put out a “sequel.”
Rather than update the original game, the company opted to start from scratch, so those players who wanted to keep playing the old version could do so without interruption.
And we have to say, there have been some significant improvements. Words with Friends 2 boasts several different modes. You can play on a team or challenge a bot, and now, access 50,000 new words.
The original one-on-one mode still exists, allowing you to challenge a friend, or honestly, some stranger that has a cat as their profile pic. However, now you can play Lightning Rounds, so you don’t have to commit to something you don’t have time for.
The New York Times Crossword Puzzle boasts an impressive 4.9-star score with more than 47.8k reviewers who love the game as much as we do.
The app is free, and you’ll get a few puzzle collections, plus the daily mini puzzle to get you started. That said, it’s worth subscribing if you’re an avid puzzler. For $6.99 a month, you’ll gain access to 20 years worth of iconic puzzles to your smartphone. You’ll even get a new puzzle coming out each day.
What’s great about the app is that you can start by working your way through Monday puzzles and leveling up until you can get through a Sunday without cheating.
What’s more, you don’t have to wait until the answers are released the next day. The app will track your time and let you know when you’ve successfully completed each square.
Letterpress is another Scrabble-style word game, but it’s perfect for people who can’t deal with the chaotic interface of the Words with Friends world — especially with ads enabled.
Like WWF, Letterpress players go head-to-head, taking turns spelling words on a point-based system, but your goal here is a little bit different. Players take turns spelling words to capture the board; plus you can pull up a dictionary as you play.
Wordscapes is an addictive word game featuring more than 6,000 puzzles that follow this sort of crossword puzzle/jumble mashup. What’s great about this game is that the levels get progressively more challenging, as you go. However, it’s still mindless enough that you can listen to a podcast and try to solve yourself to sleep.
Spellspire reminds us of learning games from the past like Math Blaster, where you’ll need to solve problems to combat the enemy quickly. With Spellspire, your ability to form words fast is the key to your power — the longer the word, the bigger the blast.
Part RPG, part word game, Spellspire is a run romp through a cartoon fantasy world. As you spell your way to the top, you’ll collect gold you can exchange for magical items and new gear.
This is the game for you if you’re looking for something word-centric, but want something a bit different than the average Scrabble-inspired game. Blackbar ventures outside of the grid and into a story about censorship.
It’s something of a puzzle. Words are blacked out, and you’ll need to use your common sense and linguistic know-how to solve it.
What’s more, Blackbar is more than a game. You’re reading a story that takes place between two young women corresponding to one another. However, parts of their letters have been blacked out by The Department, a fictional authoritarian regime that censors its people.
We like Typeshift. It has got an attractive minimalist interface, and it’s all about rearranging words. How it works is, you’ll get about three to five columns stacked one on top of the other. Your goal is to move those columns around spelling words in the middle column until every letter turns green.
The game is free to download, but eventually, you’ll need to pay to unlock more puzzle packs.
We all like to play the lone wolf, running into an enemy outpost like Rambo and swinging a chain gun around while yelling “Leroy Jenkins!” It’s the way shooter games may play in our head, but unfortunately it’s not going to net you many wins (and if it does, thank your teammates). The best shooter games take inspiration from actual squad-based combat, and even if at the end of the day you’re still just playing Fortnite or Battlefield, some strategies and maneuvers still bleed into the experience. Here’s our selection of squad-based military tactics that will give you an edge over players, even when the odds are stacked against you.
If you’re a fan of shotguns in video games, you’ll need to stay out of wide, open fields. Likewise, you’ll want to keep far away from close quarters if you’re playing a sharpshooter. Where the fight happens is up to you; avoid running into a place where you’re outnumbered, outmaneuvered, or have poor mobility. Before Napoleon Bonaparte sent off his invading armies, he hired cartographers to sketch maps of enemy settlements and terrain.
Studying this heat map of Outpost from Modern Warfare 3 can shed light on areas to avoid.
Instead, keep to familiar territory where you have a clear advantage. If you’re not sure where that is, look up the map online. Check your loadout. Plan where you want to make your stand. This tactic also works great in games that offer gadgets like thermal vision, smoke grenades, or trip mines. Keep your entrances covered, and outlast your opponents.
2. Use team chat
You know how people like to scream and hurl insults about your mother over game chat? While this is charming you can also use this tool to coordinate a team (provided you can establish the ethos for them to take you seriously). Don’t just use it to call out enemy locations either. In an actual military situation you’d be doing a lot more communicating than shooting, and it’s this way for a reason – knowing is half the battle. Which of your teammates can offer cover fire with a sniper rifle? Does anyone have eyes on the objective? How many enemies are converged over x position? If you know what you’re up against you won’t be understaffed.
“Who needed a carbine? There’s one by me.”
If you’re on a team with some outlandishly good players, but you find you’re still having trouble capturing a territory or completing an objective, it’s probably because your team’s talents aren’t being put in the right places. Stop banging your head against the wall and coordinate an effective push. Take a second to rethink your strategy. There could be a weakness you were too frustrated to see. Re-evaluate and exploit it, this time with numbers behind you!
3. Move in formation
The military deploys its units in small squad formations, and it’s not just because it looks cool. The way your team is positioned can make all the difference once a firefight erupts. Where are you positioned? Where are your teammates positioned? Can you effectively move, react, and shoot as one cohesive unit, or could one well-placed grenade take you all out at once? Know the best time to employ the best shape.
One of the most effective formations in a game like PUBG or Battlefield is the Fire Team Column which positions your squad mates in a parallelogram (the bottom formation pictured below). This is a great shape for controlled mobility in any direction, and also allow for an immediate, reactive counter in case you get ambushed. If you move together and keep moderately spread out you’re forcing your enemies to pick a single target. Once they do, communicate and retaliate as one cohesive unit. It’s also great because you can easily and intuitively switch formations from the Fire Team Column:
4. RTR
RTR stands for React, Take Cover, Return Fire. If you find yourself separated from your team for whatever reason, this is an effective defensive strategy should the enemy gets the drop on you. In a more realistic shooter experience you’re not going to have health bars a mile long, or shields made out of magic. Your best defense is to threaten with your own firepower, and retreat to a more advantageous position. That’s what RTR is all about:
No one likes getting shot at. Go prone and return fire. See how they like it.
When you get shot at, your first reaction may be to run or hide, but it’s actually better to shoot back at the enemy – even if you know you can’t kill them; that’s not what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get them to stop shooting at you. If you lay down suppressive fire (React) you can buy yourself enough time to do step two (Take Cover). If there isn’t a decent cover to duck behind, crouch down, drop to the ground, or at least zig-zag back and forth. It’s better than standing there doing nothing, and jumping around isn’t as helpful as you’d think. Once you’re in a better spot for avoiding enemy shots, you can take proper aim (Return Fire) from a safer position.
5. Flank
This is a classic ‘hammer and anvil’ tactic employed by the Alexander the Great and the Macedonians. The idea is to keep your opponent preoccupied with an unbreakable force in front, while you’re circling around to hit them with a hard-hitting elite force from behind. It looked something like this:
Flanking is such an overused, obvious tactic that it’s often discarded as a something overly predictable. The whole point of a good flank is that it is unpredictable. If you’re just attacking from two directions at once, you are technically flanking an enemy, but there are ways to do so more effectively: Surrounding and pincering, misdirecting, or attacking from a wholly unexpected angle.
You may have noticed that most of these strategies involve working with a team. Yes, that’s the point. Even if you’ve spent the entire match bad-mouthing your teammates for a having bad K/D, at the end of the day even bad players can group up and at least hold the advantage of numbers – they just need to be properly coordinated. Hop on team chat and start playing the macro game! If they won’t listen and just keep shouting insults about your mother … at least you tried.
Since Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 hit the shelves last month, we’ve barely seen the sun. It’s been a decade since Ultimate Alliance 2, so we were understandably thrilled when we heard the title was making a comeback, and that Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja was at the helm, and the game was being published by Nintendo.
This time the story kicks off with the Guardians of the Galaxy!
While the game is fairly intuitive (especially if you played the earlier games in the series) there are still a number of things we wished we’d known going in, like the best way to prioritize leveling up characters, manage the complex ISO-8 system, or minimize grinding before tackling the game’s tougher encounters. There are definitely a couple of spikes in difficulty, so we put together a list of 10 tips to help get you started off on the right foot. If you don’t own the game yet, you can buy it here.
1. Adjust the camera and controls
First things first, the game’s an isometric top-down hack n’ slash. You’re going to spend a lot of time trying to keep track of the character you’re currently playing amidst a screen full of enemies, colorful explosions, and walls and objects that the camera likes to get stuck behind. Needless to say, navigation is difficult. Angry Joe explains it best in the vid below (and he explains angrily, so NSFW warning):
If you’re playing couch co-op with your friends you’re going to be fighting over control of the camera often; it’s inevitable (cue Thanos’ “I am inevitable”).
There are two things that can help: If you’re playing the game by yourself you can switch over to “heroic camera,” which keeps closer to the character you’re playing instead of hovering in top-down. The second thing you can do is play the game online, since that allows you and the other players to move further apart before the camera gets confused.
Wait, where’d my character go?
If you’re new to the Nintendo Switch, there might also be a learning curve for using the controls. The Options menu has three different configurations you can cycle between, though, so at the start of the game find the one that feels most intuitive.
2. Use multiple save slots
This is a really general video game tip, but it’s one that bears repeating here: There are five save slots available in Ultimate Alliance 3, and you should be cycling between at least two of them.
“But the game auto-saves, like, all the time,” you might say. This is true, but it might also auto-save after you’ve made a really, really bad decision. Trust us, you don’t want to be stuck with a save where you accidentally deconstructed the wrong ISO-8 crystals or spent your limited resources on the wrong upgrades or characters.
Additional save slots provide you with the opportunity to experiment. Is it worth enhancing this ISO-8 crystal? Will giving Wolverine ALL of our XP cubes really get us through this harder fight? If it wasn’t worth it, this way you’re not 100% committed to risky decisions.
You’ll thank us later.
3. Use synergies. Like, a lot.
Right after the prologue mission, the game teaches you about using synergies, Ultimate Alliance 3’s take on the fusion system introduced in Ultimate Alliance 2. Essentially this involves two characters using their abilities in tandem to enhance the damage, increase the effective radius, and/or reduce the cost of their abilities.
As you unlock more abilities, you character can perform more synergies off of more teammates.
You can activate these abilities in two ways. You either initiate (by performing an ability with ZR instead of R) and the AI joins you, or you can respond to a synergy request by pressing B when the option arises (it’ll cue you in with a flashing button, visual, and a sound effect). Synergies fill up the extreme meter quicker, deal more damage, and stagger larger targets more effectively, so don’t be shy to use them often. Characters can also use synergies to open certain blocked paths or secret doors, so keep your eyes peeled.
Like synergies? Play the game that introduced them!
4. Beating the stagger meter
One of the new features implemented in the series is the stagger meter – that purple bar under a boss or mini-boss’s health meter. You can do damage to the boss even if they aren’t staggered, but you’ll do way more if they are. Take down that purple bar and then hit ’em with the best stuff you’ve got to drop them more efficiently.
You can still hurt bosses even if their stagger meter is full; it’ll just damage them less.
While the most intuitive tactic is to use your synergies or extreme attacks when the meter is down, you might actually be better off using them just before the stagger bar depletes. Some bosses regen their stagger meter really quickly, so in order to maximize damage and hit them before they can escape, trigger these moves just a hair early. Later on in the game, you might also find ISO-8 that does extra damage to this meter, so outfit your team with that in mind.
Guide to Marvel Phase 4: Everything you need to know
While we’re on the topic of beating the stagger meter, nothing does the job quite like a forklift thrown at the bad guy’s head. For whatever reason, thrown objects dish out a ton of damage to enemies, especially to their stagger gauge. If you spot an object you can throw, it’s there for a reason.
6. Time your extreme attacks
Extreme attacks are the strongest move in your character’s bag of tricks, and they can only be done once your attack momentum reaches a peak threshold. It may be tempting to use it right away, but the smart move might be to save it for when you really need it (like that boss fight around the corner).
Ultimate alliance extremes are the most powerful tools in your arsenal
Extreme attacks (even when just one character does it) are usually enough to topple the stagger meters of a crowd of mini-bosses, so don’t spend all four needlessly (unless you’re trying to maximize your damage for a rift challenge or something). Maybe try one or two at a time and see how much damage you can dish out. The only time you’ll really need all four is when you’re up against a tough boss. Then every bit of damage counts.
Lastly, boss fights are often split into multiple stages. If you look carefully at an enemy’s health bar you can see where the partition hits. Don’t perform your extreme attacks if they’re about to bump to the next stage of the fight; all that damage will be wasted.
See the partition in Ronan’s health bar? Wait until phase 2 before you hit him with the best stuff!
7. Manage your team bonuses
Earlier games in the series would put in fun names for specific teams of four (‘bruiser brigade,’ ‘energy corps,’ ‘femmes fatales,’ or ‘classic avengers.’). Ultimate Alliance 3 altered the formula a bit and made it both more flexible and more approachable.
First off, now it only takes two characters with matching affiliations to provide a bonus for your team, and the specific percentage increase it rewards is displayed at the top of the screen.
Second, you can press L to see the affiliations every character has on the hero selection screen. That way you can stack your bonuses more efficiently.
See which heroes are in which teams. Stack your bonuses accordingly.
This opens up two avenues of play: You can either put together a team that’s weak in one area, but stack them with team bonuses to make up the difference; or you can stack one specific bonus really high, providing a really noticeable change to, say, your energy output or your durability. Don’t forget ISO-8 bonuses stack on top of that!
8. Use the Lab
A lot of your team’s success will take place behind the scenes. The Alliance Enhancement network and ISO-8 management are key components towards buffing your characters, negating weaknesses, and even unlocking entirely new facets to your game, like extra revives, faster XP gain, or health regen.
ISO-8 can add wholly new effects to your character
If you’re finding a particular juncture of the story is suddenly way harder than expected, it’s probably time to check out the lab (accessible from a SHIELD point once the feature is unlocked) and pick some upgrades. Once you’ve stretched the first portion of the Alliance Enhancement network out to the edges of the shape, it’ll unlock entire new sections to explore, each one with a focus towards one attribute (strength, mastery, durability, energy, health, and resilience). Max out a section and you’ll unlock a powerful unique bonus.
Every section caps out with a special shared bonus. Decide which ones to prioritize.
9. Manage your ISO-8
ISO-8 is probably the most complex part of this game, so we’ll spare you the nitty gritty details. If that’s what you’re after, check out this in-depth video.
Fundamentally, these are crystals of varying rank and color, and they can be slotted into your characters on the Team menu (accessible via SHIELD access point or even just the base game menu). As you level up you’ll unlock more ISO-8 slots per character, and the fourth slot is unlocked by filling out all of the 100,000-cost ticks in the Alliance Enhancement menu, which will probably take a few playthroughs.
D level ISO-8 is probably better off deconstructed than equipped.
What’s important to know right up front is that you can swap ISO-8 between team members any time you like, so we recommend giving your team a once-over every time you bring out new characters. This also means you can keep swapping them between characters whenever you switch up your squad.
When it comes to deciding which ISO-8 to give to which team member, check out specific strengths and weaknesses on their character screen. Does this character use mostly strength-based attacks? Then give them a purple strength ISO-8 to boost their damage. Does this character have health regen? Then give them a red ISO-8 to synergize with that trait so they passively heal even faster.
Look carefully at a characters’s stats before you decide which ISO-8 is best for them.
Lastly, we recommend deconstructing any ISO-8 below C grade. It takes a LOT of ISO-8 to build a crystal towards any noticeable bonuses, so these weaker crystals are better ground up and fused with crystals that are already powerful.
Keeping your characters at a comfortable level is one of the most challenging aspects of the game, and it can be discouraging when the game hands you a new level 30 character that blows your current team of level 14 characters out the window. There are a few things you can do to keep your team strong enough to tackle the game’s increasingly difficult scenarios.
Infinity Rifts are challenging, but optional
Rifts can be grindy, but there’s no better place to level up your characters, especially in Wave modes. The caveat is that you have to beat the challenge for the rewarded levels to stick, so be sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew. Rifts are also great places to find the second best way to level up quickly – XP cubes.
Complete Infinity Rifts to level up, earn XP cubes, costumes, and even new characters.
XP cubes can be found in scattered boxes throughout the game (usually hidden behind breakable synergy walls or secret panels), but they’re more frequently obtained through rift challenges – especially the harder ones. One trick we found was to take a powerful team (comprised of the higher-level characters the game rewards you with around mid-game) and sending them to complete the harder challenges in the first rift. Then we went back and distributed all the XP cubes to our weaker characters to balance out our team.
We hope these tips help you get a strong start in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3. Let us know if there are any other strategies you’ve found, and stick with Softonic for the latest in tactics, guides, and upcoming DLC for the game!
Marvel Munchkin is the card game every superhero fan needs
Secret Hitler is the best hidden role game, and nobody can convince us otherwise. Bang, Ultimate Werewolf, Avalon, and Mafia are great options, but the political machinations and end-game trust freakout make SH our top title in a highly competitive board game genre. We’ve played this game time and time again, and it never gets old!
Know what’s even better? It’s FREE.
Official game sets can be purchased, but Secret Hitler also has a Print-and-Play option on their website. In this article, we’re going to show you where to find it, how to make your set, and a few options for improving your self-made boards! By the time you’re done, you’ll have a quality game board for one of the best hidden role games ever made.
Please enjoy our friendly guide on…
How to create your own Secret Hitler game set
Step 1: Printing
Head over the Secret Hitler website if you haven’t already. Here, you can find more information about the game, including the print links for the Game Set and Rule Book.
Once you’ve downloaded the PDF’s, just print ’em. That’s all there is to it!
Step 2: Cut it Out!
Get ye some scissors and cut them out! Be careful to follow the lines, make sure everything’s nice and neat.
Now comes a decision: how nice of a game set do you want? If you’re playing this once with family members at Christmas, you can simply play as is. If you want your game to look pretty, head to the next step on card stock. If you want your game to last, go on to Step 3, lamination. If you just want somewhere to store it, voyage to the final instructions on making a box!
Step 3: Card stock
Why use card stock on a Secret Hitler set? First, it’s a great way to make everything sturdier. Two, it’s a decently effective way to tie the game board pieces together, since they print in two parts. Finally, for the paranoid players, card stock ensures light won’t shine through your cards and allow others to see them.
They’re cheaters, the lot of ’em!
Head to your nearest Staples, Walmart, or scrapbooking store. Pick up your favorite color of card stock (we suggest 10 9 x 12-inch pieces at least) and a good number of glue sticks. Or, if you’re a madman, grab a glue bottle.
At this point, glue your Secret Hitler pieces to the card stock. If you’re using 9×10 papers they can be divided thusly:
Voting cards, discard piles, and role cards: divide the paper into 8ths.
Liberal and Fascist policy cards: divide the paper into 16ths.
Game boards: divide the paper once, lay it down long-ways to form a backboard. Place the game pieces on top, closer to one end of the backboard so the breaks in card stock and board pieces aren’t on top of each other.
Step 3: Laminate
To make your cards water resistant, tear resistant, and glue-getting-old resistant, you should laminate them. A well-laminated deck looks professional and stays around much longer!
Personal suggestion from us to you: if you don’t own a laminator yourself, ask friends and family first, then buy your own lamination pouches if they have one. It’ll make life easier.
Once you have the materials, using the laminator shouldn’t be too difficult: the real trick is fitting as many game cards inside one lamination pouch at a time. It all depends on how much material you want on the sides, and how uniform they’ll look afterward.
As usual, the game boards will be an issue, since they’re so long. We put two lamination pouches over them, on opposite sides, with overlap in the middle. Before you run this beast through the laminator, make sure to wait a while for it the machine to get hot. It may struggle to heat up the center.
When that’s all finished, pull a Step 2 and cut the lamination off!
“Final” step: The extras
To play Secret Hitler, there are just a few more housecleaning items:
Get envelopes to hold the secret role cards. You’ll hand these out at the start of the game to let everyone know their identity for the round. Manila envelopes, plain white, whatever works for you.
Staple the rule book if you haven’t already.
Get a container. There are a lot of moving pieces. We recommend grabbing a canvas bag at the very least, somewhere to store the game. If you’re going all-out, you can even make your own box…
Bonus round: Making a box!
We made this box ourselves, which turned out looking pretty great!
You may be wondering: why put in the effort? Aside from looking fly, Secret Hitler game sets are so long and thin that no box on earth seems to fit them perfectly. However, with a little wood, spray paint, and a few key items, you can have a comfy box too!
You can do it. Seriously. We aren’t carpentry professionals by any stretch.
Let’s run through the steps quickly!
Measure your game boards to determine size. Plan to have a little extra space at the edges: our box ended up measuring in at around 15 x 6 x 3 inches.
Buy your materials: mosey on over to Lowe’s or Home Depot and pick up a large board of thin wood, preferably under 1/2 an inch of thickness.
Using your measurements, draw out all pieces on the board. When it comes to piece organization, we made two panels for the top and bottom, then made top and bottom slices for the “wall” to create a lip for the cap. This makes attaching hinges and a latch much easier.
Cut it. We recommend a radial saw for straight cuts like this. Be warned: the saw takes about 1/8 of an inch from the material. Keep that in mind when drawing out the cuts! And, of course, be careful: stay safe, ask a professional for help if you’re not experienced with power tools.
Sand it. Just use a light sanding, you don’t want to accidentally form pieces and make them harder to fit together when you:
Attach your pieces. If your board was too thin for nails or screws, no problem: grab wood glue. Trust us, it’s strong enough by far! Don’t worry if there’s an overhang, that will be dealt with after you:
Sand that thing to perfection! Even out edges, make it as smooth as you like. Be careful if you bevel, you don’t want to remove too much of the glue.
Pick up hinges, a latch, maybe even a handle! We found great things at Hobby Lobby, although you may find great options in the craft section of superstores like Walmart. Check it out!
First finish: We didn’t have time to do lacquer, but we certainly wanted to; make your wood look even nicer if you have the chance! Instead of that, we used a clear spray enamel to protect the box.
Make the logo. We printed a Secret Hitler logo to the size we wanted on the box, then made a masking tape paint mask by cutting out the letters with an X-Acto knife, using the printout as a guide. From there, we put the paint mask on the top and used black spray paint (three coats).
Final finish: we recommend one more coat of clear enamel to protect the logo. After that, you’re finished!
Enjoy the box! At the very least, we hope it carries your game set well. At best, we hope you’re proud of your work and can show it off at game nights.
Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoy creating your Secret Hitler game set! After just a few hours of work, you and your friends can enjoy many more hours of fun, learning tells and forming trust issues.
Marvel Munchkin is the card game every superhero fan needs
If you want to get your Poké-fix before Sword and Shield, check out these sites!
With Pokémon Sword and Shield only a few months away, we’re all looking for a way to satisfy our Pokémon craving. Luckily, there are free options online to scratch our Pokémon itch!
If you are into competitive battling, you’ve probably heard about Smogon. If you don’t, Smogon is the online tier list for ranking Pokémon in terms of battle capability. Although this tier list is not official with the Pokémon Company, it is the go-to standard for battling within the Pokémon community.
Showdown is a battling simulator run through Smogon. Through it, you can make teams and battle against other players across the globe. To make things even better, you can play in whatever tier you want. What truly makes the simulator great is that you don’t need to catch and train the Pokémon yourself!
Instead, you can add whatever Pokémon you want and add whatever items and moves you want to try! Want to make your Pokémon shiny? That’s just a button click away!
There is no shortage of Pokémon fan games. However, there are only so many good ones. For every decent fan game you find, there are about 50 awful ones that aren’t worth your time. In the sea of bad fan games lies Pokémon Insurgence, the best fan-man Pokémon game ever created.
In order to play it, you’ll need to download something like Wineskin:
Pokémon Insurgence has all the same great mechanics of the best Pokémon games. It also has some unique features that are both fan-servicey and fun! For example, the creators gave certain mons new forms called Delta forms. Delta forms give Pokémon a new look, new typings, and new abilities. It’s essentially Alolan forms before Alolan forms existed.
Universal Pokémon Randomizer
Nothing beats the classic Pokémon games. However, we sometimes wish we could include some of the more modern features. Enter the Universal Pokémon Randomizer: the website that can give you the most unique Pokémon experience possible.
Do you want a completely random set of starters? Done. Do you want to bring new mons to old games? Simple. Do you want to find random items including Master Balls throughout the overworld? Absolutely!
It’s been a long 10 years since Marvel and Activision released Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, the semi-official fourth game in the series that began with X-Men Legends way back in 2004. If you’re a nostalgic fan of the series, it’s a lot of fun to look back through the journey that spans from Alison Crestmere’s first tentative days exploring the X-Mansion, to allying with the Brotherhood to take down Apocalypse (in the sequel), to banding all the Marvel characters together to defeat Dr. Doom’s Masters of Evil, to finally fighting the fearsome Fold in the frenetic Ultimate Alliance 2.
It’s been so long since that final encounter in the game’s final act in Wakanda that many fans of Ultimate Alliance have long since abandoned the hope of ever getting another game. Our surprise at the announcement of a Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 were matched only by our enthusiasm, and with the game coming out next month we were immediately curious to see how (and if) they were changing the formula so that it matches the expectations of a 2019 crowd.
Ultimate Alliance is finally making its triumphant return!
We’re happy to see that Ultimate Alliance 3 will be adding in some exciting new characters and features while still respecting and maintaining the elements we love from the older games. Here’s a rundown of both the old and the new of Ultimate Alliance 3 (did we mention we’re super excited to play this game?):
The familiar
Teams of four
First things first, Ultimate Alliance 3’s gameplay will feature player-made teams of four Marvel characters, a staple number that’s been in place since the beginning of the franchise. As we hoped, this also means up to four players can play cooperatively – both online and local! In today’s online-obsessed gaming world, it’s a rare treat to get to play with our friends in a real local game. We expect the easy, pick-up-and-play style of the game to make this a hugely popular game at parties. Just be sure to have an extra controller lying around!
Suit up as the Guardians of the Galaxy as they take the fight to the Black Order
Xtraction points
Like in the preceding titles, you’ll come across glowing blue icons on the ground that serve as the game’s checkpoints. These are points where you’re permitted to save, load, change teams, upgrade characters, change costumes, or fast-travel to prior locations. It’s an especially useful feature if you’re a completionist who finds they missed something important back during the first act. It’s also handy if you pick up new gear or characters that you want to switch between as the story progresses.
Remember these?
Lockjaw offers teleporting
Once you’re on a mission you’re committed. Whatever team you assembled will have to do until you reach an extraction (“Xtraction” in the earlier games) point. The exception (“Xception?”) to the rule was that you were allowed a portal every five minutes courtesy of Blink. In Ultimate Alliance 3 you’ll get the same function, this time with the help of the lumbering and adorable Lockjaw.
This woofer earns his treatos
While this wasn’t implemented in Ultimate Alliance 2, we think a return of this feature is a good thing; being able to quickly switch in a character at any time took weight away from our team-building decisions prior to a mission, and led to some cheesing of the system with characters like Iron Fist (the game’s only healer).
Four abilities per character (MUA2)
While X-Men Legends 2 (and even Ultimate Alliance) had around 10 upgradeable moves per character, it looks like Ultimate Alliance 3 will be maintaining the trend of its prequel. Characters in the upcoming game will cap at four abilities, with each mapped to a designated button on the controller. While this at first sounds disappointing, remember that there’s a large roster of characters (over two dozen!), and that this way there are fewer instances of moves being copy/pasted between the cast, allowing for each hero to feel more distinct. Scarlet Witch, for example, can buff her teammates with a radial healing effect, while Daredevil uniquely uses radar sense to identify enemy weaknesses.
Fighting sentinels on the X-Mansion lawn. Another nostalgic callback.
Team bonuses
Remember when you could put Scarlet Witch, Magneto, Juggernaut, and Toad on the same team to receive the “Brotherhood of Evil” bonus back in X-Men Legends 2? Or put Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, and Captain America together in Ultimate Alliance to form the “Classic Avengers?” Ultimate Alliance 3 incorporates and improves this feature, allowing you to once again benefit from assembling a particular team of heroes. Some will deal bonus damage, others receive additional XP, and some even regenerate health passively when grouped up.
Once again you’ll receive bonuses for putting certain characters together
There is, however, one hugely significant change to this function in Ultimate Alliance 3: Multiple team bonuses can stack. Put together a team like Black Widow, Spider-Gwen (she’s in this game!), and Scarlet Witch and you’ll trigger a “Women of Marvel” bonus. Add Miles Morales (yep, he’s here too!) and his inclusion with Spider-Gwen will add the “Web Warriors” bonus on top of that. Keep track of which pairings provide which bonuses and you can start putting together more cohesive teams.
Extreme and Synergy
The first three games in the series featured “Xtreme attacks” which worked like ultimate abilities for each character. These ranged from the big crowd-clearers (like Storm’s ‘Raging Tempest’) to the more creative tricks (like Gambit’s ‘Prince of Thieves’ that provided a brief but substantial increase to loot found). These ultimate attacks were removed in Ultimate Alliance 2 in favor of fusion abilities, which came in three varieties: Targeted (for massively damaging single targets), Clearing (AoE), and Guided (which bulldozed the competition in a direction the players set).
Fire tornado ca. Ultimate Alliance 2
Ultimate Alliance 3 is bringing together the best of both worlds, giving each character both an Extreme Attack and Synergy Attacks. Fill up the EX gauge and you’ll build up power to unleash your individual Extreme Attack, or combine unique character abilities together (like Iron Man shooting his uni-beam at Captain America’s shield) to make more devastating attacks. splitting the laser to hit multiple targets, Storm and Thor create a cyclone with electricity, etc. If all four characters unleash their Extreme Attacks at once it’s considered an Ultimate Extreme and generates a ton of additional damage.
Laser tornado ca. Ultimate Alliance 3
The new
Switch only
If you’re a Nintendo Switch owner, this is your time to shine; it’s the only platform that will be able to play this game, at least for now. Interestingly enough, this Marvel made this decision after Nintendo first visited them – before the Switch was even publicly revealed. They showed them the hardware and discussed their plans to move forward with its launch, and the presentation was solid enough to convince Marvel to work exclusively with Nintendo on the game.
Team Ninja
While Marvel Games is providing the character selections and writing talent, the game’s actually developed by Team Ninja. Marvel Games were huge fans of Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo for years, and always wanted to work with them. Both teams wanted to see the series return, and when Nintendo eventually jumped on as their publisher, they started cooking with gas.
Meet the cast
While the first two X-Men Legends games focused on keeping the characters in the X-Men (and Brotherhood) family, Ultimate Alliance brought the story to the full Marvel universe. This meant the inclusion of characters like Daredevil, Dr. Strange, the Fantastic Four, and Venom. Ultimate Alliance 3 is bringing in a huge assortment of characters, some of whom are making their debut, such as Crystal, the Guardians of the Galaxy (finally!), Miles Morales, and Spider-Gwen.
Check out this pic of the the full roster so far:
Check out the full cast!
Story
Marc Sumerak is recognized as one of the best writers for Marvel content, and his talents are coming to the franchise once again. He wrote the plot for Ultimate Alliance 3 with the intent being to weave together aspects of both the comics and the films. As such, characters like Captain America will draw from both: He’s got the looks of Cap from the MCU, and has an appropriately cool shield kick animation, but some of his other moves (like his more cartoonish block) are more in the style of the comics. Similarly, his attitude and dialogue will be a little more on the corny side. As for what this plot is, we don’t know the full details yet, but here’s what we do know:
This weird-looking block can reflect projectiles!
The story starts with the Guardians of the Galaxy entering a derelict Kree warship. Here they confront Nebula, Ronan the Accuser, and eventually Proxima Midnight, the first encounter with Thanos’ Black Order. The infamous Infinity Stones are gathered aboard this ship, and the ensuing battle scatters them across the universe. The subsequent chapters take take place at locations like the Raft (at which point you’ll be introduced to most of the other cast), the Shadowland, New York, Avengers Tower, the X-Mansion and more. We also know that certain baddies (like the Green Goblin) will be in possession of various Infinity Stones.
These guys always spell trouble
Emotes
Since the game can be played either locally or online, every character also gets a variety of emotes (to help communicate without a headset). Iron Man will have numerous quips he can say at any moment, and Hulk is verified to shout “Hulk approves!” which we’re certain that players won’t spam.
Alliance Enhancement System and ISO-8
If you’re still disappointed that each character only gets four moves, you’ll be happy to hear about these two big gamechangers: ISO-8 and the Alliance Enhancement System. The latter is a series of upgrades that applies to the whole team. The dev team has cited it as being similar to the Sphere Grid in Final Fantasy X, with nodes unlocked through both credits and enhancement points. Characters will level up individually as they always have, and Ability Points (another takeaway from earlier titles) can also be used to improve your character’s primary abilities.
Use red Iso-8 to boost a character’s HP recovery rate
ISO-8, on the other hand, is an element that you can equip on your hero. This lets you tweak their abilities in a fight to dramatic, direct effect. These are dropped during particularly tough encounters and provide creative new elements to your combat: Decreasing damage when health is low, increasing the chances of health orbs dropping, largely improving your chance to stun, and more. You can also break down individual ISO-8 pieces to upgrade other pieces to bolster their effect.
Stagger gauge
Speaking of tough fights, we also know there’ll be a new “stagger gauge” mechanic. This is a feature implemented during fights with heavies, mini-bosses and boss characters, and will be displayed via a purple stagger gauge. This gauge will have to be depleted before you’re able to do any lasting damage to the target, and the enemy is stunned and open to attack. The only way to reliably deplete the stagger gauge is to deliver continuous damage. Considering that you’ll have to balance this with managing your own power cooldowns, this will undoubtedly lead to some pretty cool changes to the usual strategy.
Infinity Trials
Lastly, we know that Ultimate Alliance 3 will include Infinity Trials, which work similarly to the Rod of Trials from Ninja Gaiden 2. These Infinity Trials are optional battles that appear as rifts during your first playthrough. Players will be transported to a new location, in which a tough challenge mode will trigger, featuring twists and variations on previous encounters. Undergoing these trials are always heavily rewarded, and are most certainly worth your while if you’re trying to maximize your characters before the start of each new act.
Stay tuned with Softonic for more news and details about Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 as they’re made available. We can’t wait to get our hand on a copy on July 19 – less than a month!!
Sources say that the game probably won’t be coming out this year. The mobile version also won’t be a port of the main game, but a different game altogether. However, the game still has a feel similar to the original.
The game will have different weapons, runes, and fewer characters.
The move to mobile appears to be an attempt to make more money from the Chinese audience, where the game is quite popular. According to the article, mobile games account for more than half of China’s video game revenue.
We’re excited to see the game come to mobile, we’re just hoping it has the same look and feel of the original game.
Details are very minimal as of now, but we will be sure to keep you updated as they come pouring in!
Head over the 
Get ye some scissors and cut them out! Be careful to follow the lines, make sure everything’s nice and neat.
