Movie license games have a tendency to be pretty terrible. In fact I remember playing Street Fighter: the movie: the game in the arcade and actually felt like I was being spat on. Times have changed and so have Movie games, for the most part anyway.
Iron Man is based on the recently released Marvel film of the same name which is based on a series of comics focusing on Tony Stark, a ‘playboy billionaire’ who gets kidnapped and forced to make a weapon of destruction against his will. Being left to make the weapon in a cave he instead makes a large suit of armor. This is for two reasons, because he’s a disobedient jackass and because he wants to escape before he is killed. After escaping Stark builds a better suit than before fitting it with all little gizmos and the game carries on from there explaining Starks future fights to undo his past and change his legacy. It does an admirable job of following the movie at some points and going its own direction at others but this could be trying to fill the areas the movie couldn’t cover.
One example of the game following the film’s story is the initial mission which sees Stark using the prototype Iron Man suit to escape his captors. But this can be countered by almost every other mission after that, in which the objective is mainly to kill everything with a red target on it. Its mindless fun, but better than Street Fighter: the movie: the game that’s for sure.
One of the best parts of the game is being able to pick which Iron Man suit you wish to use for each mission. Most people will stick with the standard ‘MK III’ model (the main suit seen in the film) but as you progress through the game, other suits become available to be used. Suits can then be customized to the players taste with weapon alterations and upgrades available after killing enemies with that specific weapon type. If for example you wanted machine gun upgrades, simply use the machine gun to gain the sufficient amount of experience needed to upgrade the system. It’s not rocket science, nor will it sell any copies, but it’s a pretty neat idea.
In the controls department it’s a mixed bag of gimmicks, bad ideas and sensible choices. While movement is controlled with the Nunchuck analog stick, the camera is controls with the IR function of the Wiimote. That’s an OK setup until you put melee attacks in controlled by a waggle of the Wiimote also, making camera stability fly out the window. Otherwise the controls are just fine and personally I prefer them to that of the Xbox 360 version.
The most annoying part of the game (which also affects the score the most) is how sloppy Sega have been with the graphics on this game. When the game starts up I notice the game runs in 480i, not 480p. While this may not bother a percentage of you out there, any of you who spent a good £25 on a fancy cable to make the Wii look good on a HDTV will be disappointed with the way it looks. Add that it doesn’t run in widescreen (none of the game, menu, fighting, cut scenes) and most people will be very disappointed when starting the game up. I can only say that a year and a half that the machine has been out, Sega have just been lazy.
Still keeping with the graphics, the in-game graphics aren’t pretty. Blemishes and dead space are visible throughout the game. What is here looks like a PS2 game so it’s no surprise it runs smoothly. The FMV cut scenes before every mission are also quite funny. As stripped and compressed versions of the PS3 and Xbox 360 videos, these short clips just ooze cheesy soap opera, which I personally laughed about.
Closing Comments
Iron Man won’t change the Movie game genre any time soon but, for a game based on running round and killing everything I did enjoy playing it. Not as much as playing Smash Bros Brawl or Space Invaders Extreme but enough to keep my interest till the end. Fans of the series should rent this and have some fun, and others could try it out if found in the bargain bin. Be warned though gentle gamer, this really is just ‘kill what moves’ kind of game, if you’re looking for a deep experience you’ll find this as shallow as a bird bath.
Score – 6.0
+ Fun game play.
+ Good varied weapons.
+ 10 hours single player campaign.
- No replay value.
- No multiplayer.
- Sloppy graphical support.
- Some bad control choices.
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