I am Ironman

Hey guys,

A game I dug out of the bottom of the bag, the invincible Iron man is up for review. Tell me what you think.

Overview:

Iron Man is a T rated game developed by Secret Level, published by Sega and released by the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 systems. Iron Man is rated T for it's mild violence and slight use of bad language. While playing Iron Man I found some things that I like, but a lot of things that could have used some work. Iron Man captures the player with a series of vast levels, powerful enemies, and unique boss battles. The game takes a player through a movie storyline, changed and twisted by the developers for a more home-made feel. This YouTube clip shows the opening cinematics of the game. This obviously does not account for the difficulty of the game, but does a good job showing off real-game graphics as well as giving you a firm grasp of Iron Man's limits: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX-Fe_2iyF8&feature=related. Interspersed between Tony Starks' escape from one of the games' antagonists, the Ten Rings terrorist organization, lies challenges such as saving Russians from a nuclear explosion, or Manhattanites from deadly helicopters and killer drones. In a word, Iron Man was modest.

Game play:

This game is a stunner when you first start to play, and has you hooked as the player finds the uses of all of the different techniques Iron Man has. After the third level, however, the game starts to loose the zest it once had. Shooting and dodging missiles and gun fire quickly grows boring, and this being the primary way you interact with the games' enemies, the whole game suffers. The upgrading system offered me some solace; particularly because one of the upgrades, the chest upgrade, allows me to use countermeasures that changed my game play. These augments gave me energy shields, missile decoys and more, and made dodging missiles a little more bearable. A little. Greg Miller of IGN wrote this in his May 5th, 2008 entry:

"... Secret Level and SEGA have made sure that most people will never enjoy their time as Iron Man. Let's go over the formula that every level follows: there's a terrible looking and sounding cutscene, it's followed by a short intro to the oncoming battle, orange objectives pop up on the screen, Tony goes after the orange objectives, Tony destroys the orange objectives, more orange objectives pop up, Tony beats those objectives, and this process continues until the level is over."

While I agree with Greg on the fact that the game follows a very routine process, I don't think that he gives the game all of the credit it's due. The game focused on a particular quirk that has always interested me; A one man army against hordes of baddies, the time-worn tale of a single devastating force fighting an uphill battle and having to use his environment and his quick-thinking to defeat his opponents, and look fly while doing it. The only problem was that I couldn't win an uphill battle because I wasn't powerful enough. Iron Man was a ridiculously hard game, even on easy mode. After level five the game unexpectedly and drastically ramps up the strength of the bad guys and flings more missiles into the air than monkeys throw poo. Some levels ask the player to save citizens from rockets, or calling on you to take down sky behemoths. None of this can be done though, because the dozens of missiles and tanks that show you you're space on the food chain never take a break. I found myself running my hands through my number one fade and seething in frustration as I died once more and had to start the level from the beginning. Again. With no checkpoints or anyway to get anymore lives, the player finds him or herself picking themselves up off the floor. I couldn't take it after a while, and had to find something else to do while thinking of another hare-brained strategy. The difficultly in the latter half of the game made my think about lending it away, if it didn't cost me $60.

I started the game thinking that I would fly into battle, shedding missiles and other attacks while I shot into a sea of evil, and soon realized that my only options were dodging or dying. What I think Iron Man really needed were new weapons and features instead of the upgrades that just gave me more defense or speed. I would much rather an EMP (Electric Magnetic Pulse) to knock missiles and planes out of the sky, or the ability to call air support. Surprisingly to me, the United States did not care in the least that a flying machine was blowing things up in New York. Rah Rah America. All jokes aside, the gameplay was good, but could use some work.

Graphics:

Iron Man displays a very beautiful setting for every level. From the details on the buildings to birds flying in a V, the game has some very acute details. Unfortunately, the player has no time

Iron Man's suit is presented in surprising detail, but the rest of the game wasn't so lucky

to enjoy them. Granted that as you fly over populated towns the player can see the terraces and patios of buildings, there is little time to enjoy them while evading gunfire. Your own gunfire; the repulsor, missiles, and uni-beam were nothing special, though the details on Iron Man's suit is nice, as well as the small shifts and jiggles of the armor as it takes on fire. While the landscape was beautiful, the skies were not. I'm not talking strictly the sky,

Shooting missiles and gunning down foot soldiers is fun at first, but quickly
looses its appeal after you've done it a million times...

but more of the horizon. While flying away from enemies to regain your health, the player finds themselves looking at a very dismal screen. A cloud passes by, a mountain spire catches fills your periphery before you swing back into action. As you can see in the photo above; Iron Man looks stunning, yet his missiles and the explosions they produce as not as captivating. Though it is not necessarily part of the graphic, I need to mention the voice-overs used in the game. To be blunt, they were poorly done. Word seemed to come out of thin air as the characters failed to speak fast enough, or even mouth the right words. According to Chris Watters from game spot, only Robert Downy Jr. and Terrence Howard were used, and that they did an "adequate job". While I disagree with the last part, I think that the cinematics were disappointing

Grade:

Iron Man was a decent game, but its many pitfalls destroyed the potential it had.

Gameplay: 2.5 - Good Ideas, just not the right plot and not enough time spent on what was given to make it excellent

Graphics: 2.5 - Not terrible by any means, but due to the game play, much of it cannot be appreciated

Overall: 2.5 - This game has some good point, but falls very short of showing the awesome power of the incredible Iron Man. I wouldn't go out and spend 40 dollars on this game.

Thanks for reading. Check back often for new posts, videos and information. - Tahj




Key words: Ironman, invincible, marvel, sega, pitfalls, Tahj, Blow, Terrence, howard, secret level, disappointing, Chris, Watters, Game spot, gamespot, gamspot, Robert, downy, downey, cinematics