Iron Man

"Iron Aged Gameplay mechanics but actually worth a look."

Robert Downey Junior played the film role very well. He came across as wise-cracking, slightly smarmy but likeable. In the game he has no redeeming features but you won't play this for the acting. It might even make some people turn it off but don't. Give Iron Man a chance. You see it's the best superhero movie tie-in (cash-in) in while.

It ticks all the right boxes for a recent marvel tie in. Open World environments? Check! Well animated main character? Check! Ludicrous plot that resembles the film but pads it out with lots of daft excuses to extend the plot? Check! An endinng that in no way resembles the ending of the film? Check! All the boxes are ticked.

But then there are also the 'other' boxes. Developer beaten with a stick to bring out the game before it's quite ready? Hackneyed gameplay like beating a boss with multiple health bars? Use of the old 'Your weapons won't damage that *insert generic boss type objective here* but the bad guys uber weapon will,' moments? All present and correct.

It doesn't help that the developers seem to have realised all this because the voice over mission updates in the game tell you. I think they are supposed to sound ironic but it isn't. It doesn't make you laugh but at least it gives you a hint about what to do next.

The main objectives are never hard to suss out. They're all pretty much the same with the odd, overused and blindingly obvious, gamey solutions to the few times when pressing fire a lot doesn't work and initially you'd be forgiven for thinking that this game is too shallow to keep you entertained for much longer.

The thing is, that once you've got to grips with the controls this game is fantastic fun to play. You just have to lower you're expectations. Now that I've lost half the people reading this I'll explain.

Many years ago there was a game called 'Drop Ship' on the PS2. It was a bit like Ace Combat but you could take off and land vertically. It meant a change in the controls in flight that threw a lot of people. That control scheme might have worked well for those with the patience to learn it but most didn't and many gamers missed out on what was actually a great flight game and one of only a few on the PS2.

Iron Man is an arcade game at heart. It needs simple controls but the very fact that Ironman has to fly like a plane and hover means that there is going to be this shift in controls. I read other peoples reviews. They hated the controls and it was a major bug bear for some. I'm not sure if they were all missing a few digits but the controls are easy, just not very precise. You have to lower your expectations.

Want to land on the turret of that tank over there? You can't. But you can barrel into it at full tilt just fine. Better still; fly PAST it at full tilt and press grab and the game shifts to its' 'tank grabbing animation' and a quick button hammering QT later, you win. Tank gun ripped off.

Want to helicopter right between the eyes? No chance. Point vaguely in its' direction though and fire and it'll pop like a bee in microwave. (Don't actually put a bee in a microwave. It is cruel and illegal in the UK at the moment. They're an endangered species did you know?)

It is great fun. Every thing you want to blow up, does. You only really have three weapons. You have his gauntlets, your main weapon and the one you'll be hitting constantly, missiles or grenades which you'll upgrade to heat seekers as soon as you're able in order to make them useful and his chest ray thingy. Useless, except for stuff that doesn't move and if it doesn't move, most of the time you'll have blown it up by accident in the chaos you'll have caused blowing up all the stuff that does move.

Iron Man can upgrade his suit. You get to pick new types of generators, armour, missiles etc, but there isn't enough there to make it worth while. You'll find a set up that works for every eventuality and stick to it. You can also win different suits in a 'One Man Army' mode which revisits the story mode levels and has you kill 80 enemies in ten minutes. This actually winds up being the most fun part of the game. More than ten minutes is too long but for the odd time waster it is akin to the old school scrolling blasters on a 3D battle field. It's about the sheer lunacy of flipping APC's over, throwing AA guns and ripping the tails off helicopters. It is mindless but it's fun.

It looks okay at times. It is never going to be something you show off to your mates. Iron Man looks okay but the tanks and major vehicles don't have the polygon count to look convincing, but most of the time you won't care. They're good enough. People look awful. There are cities that you fight in, but the public vacate the streets before you arrive. They hide in doors, apparently taking their cars and any street furniture and doorways with them but there are soldiers. I had locked onto to dozens of them, blasting them around like bits of paper before I realised what they were. They are out of scale and look terrible. Why they even bothered putting them in I have no idea. Most of the time they get caught in the crossfire and die before you notice them anyway.

The objectives are silly but simple and that is what makes this game great. It occasionally frustrates by giving you a badly thought out time objective or by throwing you into a fire-fight without telling you what to do but it dose the blowing up of stuff brilliantly and the different Ironman suits do change the way the game plays enough for you to revisit the story mode level again, if only to get the gamer points. (This game is a sucker for handing out easy gamer points once you finish it and revisit the levels.)

This is not a game you'll want to pay full whack for, nor is it a good game for the inexperienced gamer. The gamey solutions to some of the bosses involve being able to recognise some very old gameplay when you see it. Gamers that like to use the games logic won't find it consistent enough to make sense and those who use their imagination will think up a much better game than the one the developer made here and remain stuck as the game refuses to be played any other way. the environments are all just big arenas with stuff that makes you stop like ground, bridges and hills, they're just coloured in different but there are enough cues to make them believable while there are hundreds of enemies shooting at you. It works. Just. And that was enough for me.

I'd have liked to have had mid-mission saves, particularly since the game seems to delight in giving you hundreds of enemies at you after about half an hour of slogging before cracking you over the back of the head with "Hey I just gave you another 'complete it or die instantly' objective but I'm not telling you what it is until you cross this invisible line." This is the most unfair thing I've ever some across. Not only is it not telling you what to do whilst you play as the last man standing in AA missile dodge ball but it then gives you an invisible line to cross in an open world! It would be cruel in a corridor blaster but in Iron Man it's pin the tail on the donkey in a mine field.

Get used to the controls, forget finesse and forget the script and this game is great fun. The feeling of tooling around in a flying metal suit is spot on, right down to the way you crash into hills by accident. Let go. Forget sophisticated game play, forget that it looks like a game made nearly a decade ago, this is a mindless but fun shooter in metal pants. Don't pay full price. It isn't that good, but if you have the odd half hour here and there and don't want to tax your brain this is actually more fun than you might think.

Graphics: 6 They do the job.
Sound: 5 Phoned in performances. You can hear them wishing they were somewhere else.
Gameplay: 8 Go on. Give it a 9 if you like Iron Man.
Replay: Now matter how frustrated you were the first time, do the One Man Army Missions and get the suits. That's the where the real game is in this package.

And gamer score whores? This is a gold mine.

Overall. 7/10.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/22/09

Game Release: Iron Man (EU, 05/02/08)