Iron Man the movie was stellar and Iron Man the game tried hard to but fell quite short of stellar. The game tries to keep up with the movie and even uses the voices of Terrence Howard and Robert Downey, but deviates very quickly from the movie plot right after the first stage. The cut scenes and sounds are not impressive even with the use of the original actors voices, not sure why they couldn’t pony up and get the song from Iron Man in there.

The first stage has you breaking out of the cave where the movie begins and I have to say that this stage is horrible. The physics on the first stage are terrible and the graphics are a sad sight to see on a next-gen console. You can’t fly in this suit and only run around which may be part of the problem, but walking feels like you are on an ice rink and setting people on fire is so non-realistic, probably to retain a non Mature rating. The first stage really was a sad sight to see, but once you hit the second stage you can see a quick upgrade.

Once you get the Mark III suit you can now fly and use pulsar beams, which is a much needed improvement over the dual flame throwers. Iron Man is an interesting mix of flight simulator meets Hulk. The flight simulator portion is pretty good and maneuvering Iron Man in the air isn’t terrible but needs some improvements. The lock-on system leaves much to be desired and the weapons are very limited for some reason to missiles, pulse beams shot from his hands, the chest beam and pummeling vehicles. You can ram vehicles and grab them to do different things like rip a tank turret off or a helicopter wing off but this is only fun for so long.

Iron Man can hover in place to get better vantage points and fly around via his after burners, which makes chasing down jets and missiles pretty interesting. My main gripes with the game are the fact that it becomes very repetitive quickly. The missions are nothing more than search and destroy missions where Iron Man circles and strafes while shooting at tanks, helicopters an soldiers. So much more could have been done as far as the missions go, perhaps a GTA style mission set up where you need to do different things. The other main gripe I have with he game is the level of difficulty, it is either too easy or frustratingly difficult. You either blow through a stage without getting touched or have missiles destroying you before you can get up.

The game screams potential but looks like it was rushed out, which is very unfortunate as many gamers had high hopes for this title. Once you get tired of flying around the lack of weapons and repetitive nature will bore you to death. I tried very hard to enjoy this game and found elements of it that were pretty good, like being able to upgrade your suit in between missions and the flying portion actually is pretty innovative since you have full control of Iron Man, but the fighting mechanics and firing systems leave a lot to be desired which is ironic since that is what the game should be geared around.

If Iron Man would have been a more sandbox style game with an open ended environment it could have been a monster title. Unfortunately this game falls short of greatness and is relegated to the rental pile. There is some replay value in the addition of the One Man Army mode where you are pitted against a massive number of enemies, but this gets old quickly. This game is for hard-core Iron Man fans and nothing more.

Overall 5.5 out of 10

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