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We’re just over a week away from the release of Iron Man 2, but only 5 days away from the release of  the Iron Man 2 video game! This week we’re playing the the first Iron Man movie-to-game adaption to get pumped for the sequel, but it’s turning out to be more of a challenge than a thrill.

Iron Man

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Secret Level
ESRB: Teen
Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, PSP, Nintendo DS, PC
Release Date: May 2, 2008

The first level in the game throws you right into the action with Tony Stark in the Mark 1 armor beatin’ some terrorist ass. You’ll notice immediately how huge and beautiful the environments are, and this kind of level design stays consistent for the first half of the game. Crushing tanks and firing at enemies are cool ways to start the game, but it’s the early levels that really pick it up.

Next is a cool flying tutorial for your upgraded armor after Tony has been rescued, and we jump into our first few missions. Like the movie, you’ll return to the site of your capture to deliver some American justice. You only have a hand full of attacks: rockets and repulser rays will be your main weapons, and if you can spare the few seconds to charge it, you can shoop da whoop of your unibeam from you’re chest, but this attack drains a great deal of power from your suit.

Fortunately your armor is upgradable and you can improve charge time for your suit and overall health.

In addition to what your suit can do, you can also fool around with the environment. Tanks are there to be thrown like so much garbadge and missles can be pulled out of the air and thrown right back at your enemies!

Again, combat inside these vast and huge environments are the game’s highlight, but unfortunately it wares quickly. After the first few levels it becomes obvious that this is the entire game, and it actually starts to go down hill. While you are able to upgrade your armor and weapons, about half way through the game, the level of difficulty spikes dramatically. Enemies increase exponentially in numbers and are much harder to kill. And since there are no checkpoints in levels, dying becomes incredibly frustrating, especially since you’ll be dying a lot.

Through the game you’ll have some cool boss battles against familiar Iron Man villains like the Controller and Madame Masque, and if you listen carefully you’ll notice Iron Fist and Black Widow mentioned in the dialogue. Speaking of dialogue, Robert Downey Jr., Terrance Howard and Shaun Toub are the only voices you’ll recognize from the movie, and all performances are of good quality.

After you’ve dominated certain levels they’ll become available in One Man Army mode where you’re set in familiar environments with X amount of enemies to take out in X amount of time. Beating these challenges will unlock classic Iron Man suits from the comics which the hardcore Iron Man fans will have some fun with.

As far as movie tie-in games go, Iron Man stands slightly above the rest, but that’s not saying a lot. The game is riddled with issues and wont have non Iron Man fans coming back, but it’s definitely fun for a few hours.

Iron Man gets a 3/5.

The PSP and DS versions of Iron Man are, as you would expect, merely dumbed down versions that don’t compliment either system, but might be worth playing if you can find it cheap somewhere.

It wasn’t long after the release of this game that Marvel made a promise to the fans to not produce anymore bad games, and so far with games like X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, they’ve made good on that promise. But the Iron Man 2 video game is out May 4th, and we’ll see if Marvel can keep their word.

Next week on The Comics Console we’re playing Iron Man 2! Click here to play previous installments of The Comics Console.

Andrew Hurst
andrewhurst@comicattack.net