Over the decades, the high-tech, high-flying Marvel super hero has peripherally appeared in several games, but he’s never been able to truly soar. Sure, he could sorta float in Captain America and the Avengers and a little hang time in that old-school Marvel vs. Capcom video games, but he wasn’t really flying.

That’s not the case in Sega and Secret Level’s Iron Man summer blockbuster starring Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, allows player to don  the boozy billionaire’s suit if armor and reach mach speen, as well as blast foes with missiles, repulse shots and that oh-so-devasting unibeam.
Iron Man devotes a bulk of screen time to stark building the armor that will make him even more infamous, the Iron man game spends only two levels on suck developments. The rest of the interactive experience is focused in flying around and blow stuff up. Interesting? Nope. Fun? Absolutely, for a little while, anyway.

Iron Man heavily relies on Stan Lee’s original source material to expand upon director Jon Favreau’s big-screen take on stark, taking gamer beyond the film’s Middle East and Los Angeles locales. However, because of some playground-like game play, plot never becomes an integral cog in this machine.
Every level of Iron Man is open, which allows winnable superheroes to seek and destroy robust battalions of enemy tanks, turrets and helicopters in any order they desire. However, such action quickly becomes repetitive, interrupted only by brief tussles with Iron Man foes lifted from the comics, such as Titanium Man and Whiplash. The game’s ability to alternate among flying, hovering and battling on the ground is overly ambitious. The ground is overly ambitious. The awkward control scheme ends up diminishing any joy of becoming an “Iron Man” who can rise more than 30 feet off the ground. In the heat of combat, Stark looks more like he’s having a surface-to-air seizure than battling as A One Man Army.

Upgradable enhancements and unique objectives give the game hefty amount of reply value, unless the arcade-like game play is completely off putting from the start. Hardcore fans can try unlocking suites like the Extremis and Hulk buster, as well as an exclusive “Ultimate” and silver centurion suit, for the PlayStations 3 and Xbox 360 versions, respectively.

Downey, Terence Howard and Shaun Toub from the film provide their voices in the game. Much like the movie, Downey delivers his lines with bite. His wisecracking asides are one of the most engaging part of the game. That’s more good news for the scene-stealer but not for gamer hoping for a completely fleshed out interactive Iron man experience.
Finally Iron Man can fly in the game.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!