Hopes were mixed for this game. On the plus side, it had SEGA behind it, who have had some noticeable recent releases, particularly Condemned 2. On the other hand, this is a film based game, and any avid gamer should know that most of these turn out to be far from perfect. In hindsight though, giving this game the benefit of the doubt was regrettable. There are some positive aspects to Iron Man, and certainly some fun to be had, mainly for avid fans of the iron clad superhero. However this game does little to dispel the film to video game stereotype, with ultimately Iron Man becoming a quickly forgettable title.
Starting off with the positives are primarily the games controls. After a little practice these actually work very well and flying Iron Man around is easy and fun. You always feel like you have full control, something which is missing from many games. The combat isn’t exclusively in the air; your Iron Man can fight on the ground, with the first level starting you off with only the ground controls. Don’t worry as it isn’t long before you take to the air, the second level in fact, which features a perfectly adequate tutorial introducing you to all of Iron Mans abilities. This is a bit of a shame though as essentially there are no new abilities to learn or experience after the second level. Using the various L and R buttons, Iron Man can take off, fly, hover and move up and down while on the spot.
Iron Man has three main attacks, which can be advanced and tweaked with progression. These all work; however throughout you will find the main attack is used much more often than any of the others. The combat is rather simplistic; most missions can be completed quite easily by simply flying along and holding down the fire button. Additionally the combat system harbours one of the biggest problems of the game, the fact that in playing Iron Man, you don’t actually feel much like a hero. Iron Man features a rechargeable health system, and you are rewarded for firing, then hiding behind a building or a mountain, while health regenerates, then popping back out to fire again. Hardly action befitting of a superhero, going off to hide whenever the action gets tough.
The levels designs are generally good, allowing plenty of space for Iron Man to fly around and show off his stuff. Including lots of obstacles to hide behind when it all gets too much. The issues start with the way they are actually played out, apart from the occasional mission, namely they are very repetitive, tedious and frustrating. For most missions all there is to do is fly round and shoot at anything that appears orange on the radar. That really is it. The levels may change, some are even quite imaginative, but alas, the core gameplay remains the same. There are optional secondary objectives, which actually result in different comments or even end of level cut-scenes depending on if they are achieved or failed. This is a nice touch, but only offers a limited value; the urge to go back and experience the alternative ending is not that great.
The enemies Iron Man faces are nicely varied, their AI is dreadful and they get repetitive towards the end, but nicely varied to start with. Danger comes from the land and air, even from the sea in one level. Anti-Air guns, helicopters, fighter jets, tanks as well as the lonely grunt, Iron Man faces them all. This does offer a tactical prospective, do you go forward low or even on foot, to counter the AA, or go in high, out of range of some units. Whatever you chose, just make sure there is that mountain or equivalent to hide behind to recharge your health. A big issue develops in this area, which ultimately becomes one of the most frustrating aspects of the whole game. In most levels you are constantly hassled by a couple of air units, in itself it’s fair enough and something which might be expected. However they constantly re-spawn, no matter how many you manage to kill they will always be there. These air units might not do much damage, but they are a constant nuisance, there is never a break.
Each level earns extra ready money to be spent upgrading Iron Mans abilities. There are many which can be upgraded, including the different weapons, speed, manoeuvrability, shielding etc. Initially this proves a good way to customise said Iron Man. But yet again these prove limited and there is often a set path of upgrades you will find yourself following. Extra cash is available by completing those secondary objectives, this will allow quicker upgrades. However by the end of the game all the possible upgrades should be in your budget with extra to spare. Obviously negating one of the possible reasons to increase that all important replay value.
The levels look bland and are obviously nothing demanding on the hardware. It’s almost as if the developers decided to go with the bare minimum. Levels which occur within a ‘city’ have no civilians, the occasional car parked on the side of the road and no destructible buildings or anything. Aside from trees, there are few extras in the other levels, nothing to bring them to life. In game Iron Man does look good, there are a few frame-rate hiccups, but nothing that distracts from the attention. The cut scenes for some reason suffers as well; there is some of the worst lip-syncing I’ve ever seen, but they aim to distract you from this by showing a good deal of cleavage.
There are no online and no multiplayer options offered on Iron Man, so one would expect it to contain a long and fleshed out single player experience. You would be disappointed if you expected this. The single player game is just over five hours long, doesn’t offer particularly much and has almost no replay value.
It’s just a shame that they managed to apply such fun and intuitive flying mechanics, variety of enemies and very large levels with many negatives which outweigh what Iron Man offers. Dull visuals, empty levels, constant harassment by air units and above all extremely repetitive gameplay all ruin the experience. It is for that reason that fans of Iron Man can definitely achieve some fun out of this, however those looking for a decent game will be surly disappointed.
