For instance, there was, not too long ago, a pretty amazing Marvel universe Civil War storyline. In it, Tony Stark headed up the controversial Superhuman Registration Act, in which all the heroes had to choose whether to go along with the establishment's tyrannical new laws in the name of peace, or rebel and risk disorder or even death at the hands of former friends. Just imagine a game where you play as Tony Stark trying to protect the world through an oppressive Superhuman Registration Act, and you end up fighting Wolverine who is in open rebellion, and Captain America is switching sides left and right, and even the Hulk shows up in there somewhere - now that would be a game much more memorable than "villain XYZ is attacking us, but we've tracked him down, so let's go beat the crap out of him and then call it a day."

The graphics are... adequate. All of the suits look very cool and distinct from one another, but the 3D worlds are all very plain. They don't look bad, or even drab, but they certainly aren't very engaging. They don't capture the imagination the way a world inhabited by superheroes should.

The music is, by far, the best part of Iron Man 2. The thing is, none of the songs are particularly memorable, or even "good" in the sense that you should own the soundtrack. But the developers knocked the soundtrack out of the park by actually using... heavy metal music. And it's great, because if you're making a game about violent combat between powerful beings wearing suits of armor, what could be better than a metal soundtrack? Keep in mind, none of the songs are very complex, they run on pretty tight loops, but the riffs going on in each of those short loops is great for a combat-heavy action game.

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Heavy metal is played in video games far too infrequently, and I'm sure the truth of why a heavy metal sound was used in Iron Man 2 has more to do with the fact that Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" song was used at the end of the first movie, plus the Iron Man suit is made out of metal, thus heavy metal may have been chosen as a sort of audio pun rather than the fact that, for an action game, nothing in this world could sound more appropriate than metal. I've been gaming for over two decades now, and I'm still waiting for the action game that perfectly fuses brutal gameplay with a heavy metal soundtrack. There have been a few close calls, but that game still has not been made...

So I guess, in the meantime, we're stuck with Iron Man 2.

By Kyle B. Stiff
CCC Freelance Writer