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Iron Man 2 Review for PlayStation 3 (PS3)

Iron Man 2 Review for PlayStation 3 (PS3)

I Am Iron Man… Please Don’t Tell Anybody

Iron Man 2 (the video game) is the sequel to a game based on a movie based on a comic book character. By all rights any one of those levels of adaptation generally means you’ve got a clunker on your hands. Therefore, I issue the following qualified statement: Iron Man 2 is not terrible. Now before you list the myriad problems with the games presentation, gameplay, etc.-and they are very common-I have to say there are some silver linings to the game’s very tarnished outer shell.

Iron Man 2 screenshot

After a few hours of playing the game, I wonder if SEGA’s newest action game wouldn’t have benefitted from a bit of extra polish. As far as superhero’s comics go, ‘ol Shell Head has managed to make his way into the upper atmosphere of games, but that’s not necessarily a huge achievement.

There are a bunch of problems with this game, but out of respect for Tony Stark’s very solid, initial silver screen performance (and so-so sequel) I’ll start with the good. Despite years warming the Marvel Comics bench, Iron Man made a huge splash with the titular film starring Robert Downey, Jr. in 2008. Fanboys and comic geeks alike were ecstatic to see the star-turn in theatres and responded to director Jon Favreau’s adaptation to the tune of nearly six hundred million dollars worldwide. Unfortunately, a video game adaptation was sure to follow, and gamers were decidedly less enthusiastic when Iron Man the video game hit consoles. Critics, gamers, and Iron Fans held their noses, and the game even managed to garner recognition for its tedious gameplay and illogical control schemes.

Iron Man was a resounding misfire on consoles but SEGA went back to the plant, melted down the scraps from developers Secret Level and Artificial Mind and Movements’ game, and created Iron Man 2. For anyone who played the first game (this will seem a bit ironic) Iron Man 2 is not too far removed in terms of gameplay. You’ll fly around blowing up robots, tanks, and helicopters. You’ll hover around blowing up robots, tanks, and helicopters. And you’ll run around blowing up robots, tanks, and helicopters. It’s just as repetitive as ever, but SEGA Studios manages to infuse just enough entertainment value into these gaming clichés to span the shallow half-life of the game’s story.

Iron Man 2 screenshot

Speaking of which, if you planned to purchase this one rather than rent it-I’d advise making it a Blockbuster night-you’ll get an all-new tale to sink your teeth into penned by comic scribe Matt Fraction. The Eisner Award winning writer of several Marvel properties, Fraction was an advisor on the set of Iron Man 2 according to Wikipedia. The story (featuring some comic villains I won’t name in order to keep the pre-teen boys who’ll convince their parents to buy this happy) is not awful. The dialogue is goofy at points, which makes the exposition seem less crucial and the story seem less serious. I’m not sure exactly which words Fraction penned, but the narrative seems uneven when you hear the bad guys sneering insults like Dustin Hoffman in Hook. In any case, bringing in a comic writer was a good call by SEGA, but without the gameplay to support the story, there seems to be a missing piece. In short, this game would’ve worked a lot better as an episode of a Saturday morning cartoon show.

By the end of your first hour of gameplay, most of your adventures in Tony Stark’s world are pretty familiar. Opening doors, shutting down force fields, and reprogramming weakened foes are all handled with a few taps of a button. Hovering is handled by pressing alternate face-buttons to ascend and to descend; movement is handled through the left thumbstick, while the camera and crosshairs are mapped to the right thumbstick. Double tapping the left shoulder button allows you to dodge or close on an enemy for melee attacks. Combat is pretty fast-paced, but the control scheme handles it fairly well. The right shoulder button is used to lock onto enemies, the left and right triggers fire your primary and secondary weapons, and the remaining face-button handles Iron Man’s remedial melee options. The system isn’t bad; it’s familiar to anyone who has played a third-person action game before. Targets can be locked and cycled through with a flip of the thumbstick. An HUD radar allows you to keep track of your foes (though they always make themselves known). And you can change each of your weapons by using the left and right buttons on the control pad. It’s nothing too enthralling, but it’s not frustrating either.

Iron Man 2 screenshot

The coolest thing about the game is the ability to customize your suit’s weapon configurations. Each of the armors you can earn and play in the game can be outfitted to suit your combat preferences with lasers, rockets, missile launchers, and more. It adds some extra depth to the game’s very basic and rote ‘blow stuff away’ philosophy. It’s an addition that most people will probably ignore once they figure out a way to configure their weapons that they find effective. Why should you change ammo or weapons if you fight the same two or three types of enemies? Like many aspects of gameplay, it’s an okay idea by itself, but the game is just not made to take advantage of it. Take, for instance, the messy matter of taking flight.

Before you take flight, running around or when hovering, the thumbstick configurations are structured the aforementioned way-one stick controls movement, one controls camera. Fire up your afterburners and it’s a whole new ball game. The left thumbstick controls your acceleration and deceleration, while the right thumbstick controls the direction of your flight. It’s tough to make the transition early on, and this will likely lead to a number of hard landings as you’re blindsided by tank shells and homing missiles. The wonky camera doesn’t help either. It’s hard to keep an enemy in front of you as you fly 100 mph through a sky full of explosions; it’s impossible when you can’t control the camera lens.

Iron Man 2 screenshot

In a final puzzling piece of presentation, every melee attack begun with a block will slowdown time. It might’ve been cool, if it wasn’t always the same attack combination and didn’t often lead to a face to face with the concrete. It’s not an altogether impossible system, but there’s a distinct learning curve that’s made all the more difficult to stomach by the fact that it blends so poorly with the rest of the game’s controls. A few basic evasive moves allow you to make adjustments in air, specifically, a barrel roll and an about face turn that sends you in the other direction. These are light touches that will frequently not be enough to change your path so you actually retain very little control. It’s rare that you will be able to eliminate an enemy en route. Overall, flying is an admittedly fun, but unwieldy affair.

The chief problem with this game is that you don’t really feel like an iron-clad stud. I have a theory: the presentation makes or breaks a game these days. Sound is what you’d expect. Explosions and light metal soundtrack over and over. It turns to white noise quickly. Voice acting is a mixed bag. Don Cheadle and Samuel L. Jackson provided their voices, but, Iron Man is not voiced by Robert Downey Jr. It’s actually not as noticeable as the absence of the big screen talent for, say, Pepper Potts, but it is distracting. Graphics are just plain mediocre and, at times, worse. Iron Man generally looks okay, but once the mask comes off, things tend to get ugly. Nick Fury most resembles his on screen avatar, but don’t come to this party looking for the pretty girls.

At this point most gamers have blown up enough silos and downed enough choppers to know what an explosion should look and feel like. Iron Man 2 captures this, and it’s a good thing, because there are so many explosions it almost borders on a Michael Bay film. What Iron Man 2 most certainly does not seem to grasp is the weight of the character or his surroundings. I mean, sure a tank might be able to survive a couple of laser blasts, but why is that darn tree so strong? More than once I came across a metal cargo door that took four or five missiles to crack open, then destroyed a mechanical enemy with a few punches. I’m no physicist, but something about that seems odd. There’s no power to your character. You can fly full speed into a chain link fence and it will slowly tip over like it was hit by a strong gust. People criticize sandbox games where your character feels too powerful; this one has the opposite problem. Apparently, Iron man lives in a in an adamantium world.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 2.0 Graphics
Iron man looks okay, but I can see why he wants to blow up the rest of the world. 3.0 Control
The concepts are not bad, but situations are often ill-suited to maximize the control scheme. 2.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
As much as I like hearing Rhodey and Sam Jack jawin’ with Tony Stark, there’s no excuse for Pepper Potts and the games music is forgettable. 2.0 Play Value
The score is deceptive. There are worse superhero games you could be playing. In the end, though, there aren’t any secrets that don’t apply to gamplay so there’s not much reason to revisit this. 2.0 Overall Rating – Poor
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Customize your battle suits.
  • Play as Iron Man or War Machine.
  • Featuring the voice talents of Don Cheadle and Samuel L. Jackson.

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