For this game, two GamerNode reviewers will issue their opinions. Both Billy Wang and Kyle Stallock certainly enjoyed the film, so how does the game hold-up? Billy played the game for PC while Kyle played the game for Xbox 360.
Billy’s take:
I’m going to say it now, I fully enjoyed Iron Man the movie. So to see Iron Man the game magically appear in my Steam account (with Valve finally acknowledging its existence two weeks later) was a pleasant surprise. Coming in at a mere 2 gigs, the game was a quick download and booted up painlessly.
The fun seemed to end here though when trying to adjust the game’s controls; it only referred to a controller on the options menu. By default, all the keyboard controlling for the game is extremely awkward so I highly suggest to change the controls to suit your needs. Thankfully though, I really enjoyed the flying controls since they were so simple.
The gameplay is painfully mediocre, well, below mediocre. With a subject like Iron Man, you can’t go wrong with combining action with a dude in a flying suit, armed to the teeth with weaponry. Come on, it writes itself but the game fails and delivers generic and dull gameplay. The first level opens with Tony Stark already in the clunky tincan suit he created with Dr. Yinsen. Alright, the game opens with the first action sequence from the movie, where can you go wrong with that?
You pretty much run around, fire your very lame flame thrower at enemies, and they fall down. That’s pretty much the first level. There’s no other interactivity with the level at all; you point your weapon at enemies and they immediately fall down. All the character animations are stocky and rigid and the levels are plastered together with no interesting pieces or set design. It doesn’t get any more repetitive than this folks.
Overall, a game like this demonstrates how companies will release a poor excuse for a game in order to cash in on a marketable franchise. I would at most recommend the game to the die-hard Iron Man fans, since they’ll enjoy the new footage recorded just for the game.
Kyle’s take:
No one loved this game during development. It’s the unwanted bastard child Sega only remembers when the check comes in the mail; a grim reminder of what some will do to get ahead or, in this case, stay in business. Common knowledge tells us licensed games are universally bad. Fortunately for common knowledge, Iron Man is an unfinished mess.
In a game where the player is in control of a highly advanced suit of armor, armed with guided missiles and hand-firing repulsor rays, the high point is the unexpected voice acting from two of the game’s celebrity-voiced minor characters, more specifically Terence Howard as Lt. Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes and Shaun Toub as Yinsen. Unfortunately for the player, Robert Downey Jr. as the title character Tony Stark gives the most presumably phoned-in performance since Harrison Ford in the bad version of Blade Runner.
Spotty voice acting, sparse and weak sound design, conflicting story between game and movie, and buggy gameplay are somewhat forgivable if the game is fun to play. Iron Man isn’t. During the 3rd mission Jarvis says, almost self-acknowledging, “I do not understand this asskicking reference.” Don’t worry Jarvis, neither do the designers.
