The super-hero Iron Man may have the freedom to fly, but this game turns the player into a prisoner. Soaring above sparse, soulless environments, your mission is to perform mindless, repetitive tasks until either all enemies are defeated or you abort from sheer boredom.
Amongst Iron Man’s many flaws, the most confronting is a gameplay mechanic that isn’t any fun to play. Stark’s flying metal war suit doesn’t feel like it has any weight — it’s feather-light and twitchy to control. Likewise, the weapons aren’t any fun to fire and the enemies aren’t any fun to kill.
You can earn upgrades for Iron Man’s assorted battle-suit weapon systems, and unlock some of the classic suit variants from the comics, but the aforementioned problem makes these features redundant.
To be fair, it’s very, very hard to make a free-roaming super-hero aerial combat game that’s even remotely good. At least, that’s what history would suggest; the genre has marched a trail of tears from Superman 64 to Superman Returns. And now this.
One could blame the sloppy gameplay on the requisite open-ended-ness, but lots of games manage to make something of that feature. Like GTA, for instance. So clearly the production team is at fault. The environments of Iron Man are vast, yet they are dead. There are no cars on the roads, or humans on the sidewalks. The rotors of giant wind power stations lay idle – as though the world was frozen in time, or somehow cursed.
There’s the occasional nice lighting or reflection effect, but overall the engine feels like a work in progress. Like they haven’t got around to putting the game in yet.
The plot does a poor job of extrapolating from the film; it feels like fan-fiction. While the original actors have been tapped for voice talent, they’re re-created on screen with crude CGI models. You know the kind — their movements are robotic, and their facial expressions suggest they’ve overdosed on Botox. The defining moment is when the Tony Stark computer Muppet tries to wink, and his lifeless cheek-flesh barely manages a twitch. He supposedly suffered from a heart wound, not a stroke.
Iron Man’s suits have been meticulously re-created from the film, each sporting a shiny, metallic finish. His boot and gauntlet jets give off a plausible haze, and he can spasm awkwardly between a handful of animations designed to evoke his movements on the silver screen. These too feel half-finished, rushed.
The actual gameplay is about as complex as a typical Army Men title. Levels are linear and repetitive, keeping replay value to an absolute minimum. There are plenty of quick-time events, the kind where you have to tap a single button rapidly. Loading times are lengthy, and even the process of saving to the hard drive takes an age. If Iron Man has redeeming features, they are hidden well.
This product is too crude for even the ‘mainstream’ demographic; it can only possibly appeal to the ignorant. Blissfully unaware of the state of the art, there’s a chance that some youngsters who’ve never played a decent game before may enjoy this product. It’s oddly reminiscent of some of the retro games of the 90s, 80s, and even the 70s, which folks enjoyed at the time simply because they didn’t know any better — frustration and repetition were all there was to gaming.
In case you hadn’t noticed, GTA IV is also out this week. Sure, it’s rated MA15+, but even gamers aged 14 or under have an option that beats playing Iron Man. It’s called saving your money.
Fortunately, the actual movie is pretty good.
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Graphics:
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Sparse. Some terrible slow down
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Sound:
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Generic in the extreme
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Control:
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Light, twitchy, fiddly
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Gameplay:
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A tiresome ordeal
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Verdict:
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This tin man has no heart
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Rating:
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1.5/5
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