Developer - Secret Level (XBOX 360, PS3);
Artificial Mind And Movement (Wii, PS2, PSP, DS, PC)
Publisher - SEGA
Available on - Everything!

Creating an enjoyable Iron Man video game shouldn’t be too difficult. Somehow the concept of a man in a flying metal suit with regenerating projectiles sounds like one that would work for a game. Others may have noticed this, as while Iron Man has this game all to himself he has appeared many times before along other Marvel heroes and in many CAPCOM fighting mash-ups.

So Iron Man should be a great game, after all, it’s Iron Man. Perhaps if a development studio were given a backlog of Marvel comics and told to make it happen, something more substantial could have come into fruition. Unfortunately what has happened, is yet another popular franchise has spawned a hugely successful film resorting in a mass spew of poorly rushed and underdeveloped video games to cash in on the market while it’s there.

First prime example of this is level one, plunging players straight into Tony’s captive-state in Afghanistan. While all characters, locations and voices are modeled after their respective film star/locales, the game makes no attempt of establishing any characters or story before making you shoot some Afghans.

Once the first level is cleared out, some explanatory videos do come in to play, but each are so oddly structured and poorly directed that it gives no sense of the film and would merely depreciate the film’s experience for anyone who had not seen it yet. Pathetic lines of dialogue are used in-game to attempt to establish some character and motivation behind the whole ordeal such as “I didn’t design these weapons for this!” while you wonder exactly why and how you’re in a metal flame throwing suit in Afghanistan.

Make sure you see the film before playing this game. Of course that is if you feel like playing this game once you’re through with this review. Iron Man makes no attempt at recreating the story or charm of the film, feeling more like they’ve taken the lesser route of assuming you’ve seen the movie so you’ll already know what’s going on with who.

Or perhaps there is just no need for story at all, as once you realise there’s little to gain here in terms of progression the gameplay does little to improve the experience. The controls for Iron Man are very basic, focusing on repeated use of Iron Man’s limited weaponry. Progression results in unlockable upgrades, but these serve as nothing but a relative increment in performance for each part while enemies increment in strength so it’s hardly noticeable that anything has changed at all.

Iron Man follows a very linear stage-by-stage story that features each level as as self contained battleground. Mr. Man will have a set list of objectives, an alternate “Hero Objective” (see - achievement points) and a butt-load of ant sized enemies to mow down. I can’t imagine anything more fitting for an Iron Man game, hordes of enemies and explosions seems so appropriate yet ultimately ends so bland. Combat is severely lacking, with 3 alternate weapon capabilities always resulting in the same spam fest of just holding the right trigger down and firing missiles over and over and over until the level is done. At first it is a nice feel to get in the suit, Iron Man handles pretty well and has a lot of speed to him. The suit is also well modeled and overall the game looks nice enough to sit well against other current gen games.

With no skill or versatility in weapons or combat, an over-simplified targeting system leaves players with ultimately no control over the unwarranted chaos that attempts to form a logical video game known as Iron Man. Locking on to enemies involves no effort from a player, merely looking in it’s general direction will form a lock-on target to direct all of Iron Man’s fire. This means that when you have ten enemies grouped together, there’s no way to discern one from another or strategically pick targets, not that there is any need in the first place. It’s just spam, spam, spam, spam.

Not just from Iron Man either. While operating the suit obviously involves closing your eyes and spraying as much flak as you can at anything that moves, attacking the suit requires as much effort from six thousand enemies on the map all firing twenty heat seeking missiles in your direction at once. Perhaps an over-exaggeration, it’s fitting when you find yourself looking at a radar with one center blip, and hundreds of death implying red blips rapidly approaching said centre blip.

With so much unnavigable crossfire going around the place it’s handy to have the ability to dodge (A button) but when your radar is nothing but red and all you’re trying to do is hold down the R trigger to once again kill everything in sight it becomes a skilless and cacophonous flurry of dodge, fire, dodge, fire, dodge, death.

Then there’s game flaws so prominent it truly amazes how such design came to be. I assume the game hit some sort of bug, as including a boss who cannot leave the ground nor fire from it is not exactly a challenge for Iron Man. In fact it involves all of hovering still in the sky firing repeatedly until the boss dies. Fun.

It’s a shame the essential part of Iron Man, the combat, is the worst. Sure there’s a lot of other garbage in there like level design, scripting and narration but there are SOME nice sides to Iron Man. There’s always a good amount of enemies on screen and the volume of things to destroy is quite satisfying. The plot does divert from the film briefly, taking Iron Man up to the high skies to bring down a Maggis floating air base but these seem to pad the game out where the movie was lacking for more game time. It spices things up a bit but really SEGA - stick to either the movie, or the comics, don’t just go jumping all over the place until Iron Man is suddenly fighting Bigfoot.

Iron Man is also satisfyingly fast, and while most settings and levels are bland in locale, they do look good in visual design. Unfortunately praise for Iron Man is fleeting. Anything enjoyable within Iron Man is soon rapidly dissipated through repetitive combat, illogical story coverage and a big hole for content you’d expect filled when buying a new full price game.

Iron Man

63%

The Good -

* Iron Man is fast and well stocked.
* When the dust settles, there are moments of enjoyable action.
* A next-gen texture here and there.

The Bad -

* Far too chaotic and messy.
* Bland and basic controls form very repetitive shooting.
* Horrible story telling.