It’s difficult to take on groups of enemies while flying not only will you soon pass them by, but you’ll also likely stir up more enemies while coming back around for another pass. Of the myriad martial means at Iron Man’s disposal, the missiles and repulsor beam are the most useful, but also the least exciting.
With detailed suit animations that help bolster the sense of speed, Iron Man is at his best when flying into or out of battle.Īctual combat is a different story. On most levels, the terrain is thoroughly contoured and provides plenty of opportunities for flying low through valleys or ducking behind ridges to evade enemy fire. Flying around these large spaces is one of the more entertaining bits in the game, given that they are satisfyingly big and look quite good while you’re screaming around them at high speeds. Taking the Mark III suit out for a joyride is a blast.Īfter the initial, linear tutorial level, Iron Man is set loose into open battlefields for every subsequent mission. and Terrence Howard have lent their voices and likenesses to the game, and their performances, like the cutscenes themselves, are adequate. Levels are bookended by cinematic cutscenes that generally show a little bit of character interaction and then a lot of Iron Man flying hither and yon. After his escape, the plot diverges from that of the movie, following similar themes while pitting Iron Man against a host of enemies that fans may recognize from the comics. Iron Man begins in the cave where Tony Stark constructs the rudimentary rough draft of what will evolve into the iconic hot-rod red and gold suit. After that, there’s just no reviving Iron Man. Zooming around and blowing up stuff does have its thrills, but that new-suit shine grows dull about halfway through the game as the difficulty spikes drastically while the level design flatlines. Iron Man dons the high-tech suit of wide-open game spaces and shiny visual effects and tries to leave the old stigma of movie-based video games behind. Iron Man, a game recently released in conjunction with the feature film, parallels Tony Stark’s plight. Stark constructs a high-tech suit of armor and becomes Iron Man, embarking on a quest to ferret out the evil fueled by his creations and salvage his shameful family legacy. Faced with the ugly truth about the world he has helped create, he resolves to turn his genius to other purposes.
Held captive in a cave by soldiers armed to the teeth with weapons of his own design, Tony Stark ponders his fate.