Iron Man review

Iron Man is the latest Marvel superhero to become a big budget movie and also, inevitably, a videogame to coincide with the film’s release. This is the first time Marvel have had total control over one of their games and unfortunately, the result is rather average.

I haven’t seen the film but judging by the cut scenes and story, the game takes you through some scenes from the movie and some brand new scenarios just for the game. If you haven’t seen the film you get a gist of what’s going on but the game doesn’t explain why Stark becomes Iron Man in the first place.

The first level see you running and gunning through a desert valley as your weapons come online. You can use melee attacks or shoot from distance. Basically you have a time limit and a number of enemies to kill. If you do this successfully during a mission you get extras to help you upgrade your suit on the next mission.

Mission two onwards lets you fly about in your proper all-blasting all-flying suit and the game then becomes like a sub-standard Ace Combat with some fighting on the ground thrown in for good measure.

When flying, Iron Man doesn’t look too bad, but when running along the ground you might as well be playing Chuckie Egg. That or he runs like he’s got an Ostrich egg stuck up his bottom. The animation is dreadful and it’s just not that much fun shooting at all the tanks and planes again and again. You can fight things hand-to-hand if you want to but there’s no real reason to.

To break things up there’s the odd easy end of level boss to fight and some cut-scenes which look pretty good. Stark’s wise-cracks during the missions also help to liven things up a bit.

With just the single player campaign to play through, this game doesn’t really cut it. If you want to blow lots of stuff up as a Marvel character and have more fun doing it, get your hand on Hulk: Ultimate Destruction instead of the Ironman superhero.