Iron Man 2 Review

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This summer is seeing a surprisingly large amount of quality titles on all the major consoles. It's a bumper crop for videogames in a season where I usually play some crappy movie tie-in just because it was the only thing out. And it's this great string of games that makes Iron Man 2 that much more of a let down. It's a mediocre game that you shouldn't waste time on when you could be playing something awesome.

Iron Man 2 for the Wii and PSP is developed by High Voltage Software, and looks to use the engine for The Conduit. Much like the previous game the story is separate from the film, though it's hard to tell whether it's supposed to take place after the movie, or if it's just an original story. Not that it matter much because the story is told by cardboard cutouts of the film's actors. What makes it funnier is that sometimes they stuck game models in (Did Scarlett Johansson not approve her likeness?) and it clashes with the realistic images of the characters.

The game is very basic. Iron Man runs through the level shooting down everyone he sees on his way to an objective. Usually this is a computer terminal that he has to hack. Sometimes there's a boss (which is cool because it's often a classic Iron Man villain like the Crimson Dynamo) and ol' Shellhead has to defeat him, too.

On the Wii, players use the nunchuk to run around, and the Wii remote to aim. The A button fires primary weapons and the B button does secondary (which can be switched between different types of missiles and lasers). The PSP version uses the analog stick to move and the buttons to aim, the classic clunky interface. The difference between the games is night and day. It doesn't make either more difficult because there's a lock on mechanic, but man does the PSP version feel wonky. Plus, I can't change my control scheme, so I couldn't make the analog stick aim and just use the buttons like WASD controls, which would have been way better.

Iron Man 2 isn't terrible, but it rarely gets exciting. It's fun to blow up tanks and trucks, and Iron Man has all his powers like his repulsor shots, and his unibeam laser. But the whole game feels repetitive. You see the same enemies over and over again, and even though they get bigger guns and more armor as you go, the gameplay stays the same. The PSP version features even fewer guys than the Wii game, so a lot of times areas just seem empty because there aren't artillery trucks rolling up and dumping out bad guys.

The boss battles are the highlight of the game because they require the player to be more strategic. Though that usually just requires targeting specific points on the boss. They're usually some sort of giant robot though, so the scale of the game increases, making it feel more like a superhero game.



Ultimately even the boss battles can't save Iron Man 2. And it feels like Iron Man 2 was supposed to have co-op. I can choose to play as War Machine, and upgrade him too, but I never get to experience them teaming up to kick ass like they did in the film. I just get one or the other.(IGN)