In the not too distant future, games based on movies might actually have a decent level of polish that we have not seen in most titles rushed to release the same day as their film counterpart. Iron Man 2 is a step in the right direction, with many issues from the first having been resolved but it unfortunately still fails to impress. The four to five hour excursion follows Tony Stark as his AI butler Jarvis has been copied by a nefarious group who plan on creating a self-healing massive robot killing machine. War Machine, Iron Man’s new partner in heroism joins along for the quick and oft boring tale spun throughout the campaign. Unfortunately, the only characters voiced by their real world counterparts are War Machine aka Don Cheadle and Nick Fury aka Samuel L. Jackson. This isn’t a bad thing by any means, but they are unfortunately weighed down by their impersonator voiced leads, as a fake Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow do anything but steal the show. The campaign can be played through as either Iron Man or War Machine, which was a nice touch but throughout the game I found myself sticking with Iron Man. The gameplay in the game is ok for the first few missions, but you quickly come to release that it has a rinse and repeat formula that wears thin after the second mission.
As Iron Man you can easily fly, hover, or land and launch your assault from the ground with each being fairly easy to control, except for the fact that switching between each completely changes the control scheme. So you almost have to prepare yourself when you take flight as each outing will disorient most players for a second or two. You can auto-target enemies with one of four weapons that you select in the load out menu before each mission. The auto-targeting is fairly wonky, but it’s even harder to hit your target without using it. The game also gives you a melee attack and optional shotgun for close quarter situations, but you’ll be so annoyed when these happen that you’ll do you best to avoid them. My biggest gripe is the fact that this could have been a cool co-op experience, but of course that is one of the components it completely lacks is multiplayer. The game also has little replay value aside from earning more credits to buy all the suit upgrades. Overall, the gameplay has been significantly improved over our first outing with Iron Man, with less overall frustration but it continues to bore all the way up to the credits. As I mentioned earlier, before each mission you can customize and overhaul Iron Man or War Machine with different weapons and upgrades. It is a nice touch with a small amount of depth, but it is far more complicated than it needed to be. The component lacks a tutorial of any kind, so you’re left to fumble through the menu and learn it on the fly. Once you finally find your favorite load out, odds are that you won’t mess with throughout the remainder of the game and you’ll avoid it like the plague. There is no point in the game where you feel that a different load out would better suit the situation.
I have to admit though, the various unlockable Iron Man suits are a nice touch, any of which you can choose at the start of each mission, but this was the only component I found myself changing between each mission. Visually, the game fails to stun with plenty of pop-in and poor character design, especially Nick Fury. Don’t expect to be visually stimulated over the course of the game, as the game will usually do the opposite. There were a lot of things I disliked about Iron Man 2, but as I stated earlier Iron Man 2 is a step in the right direction for movie tie-ins. It’s far from unplayable; it’s just not a polished game whatsoever. The trip is fairly boring as you take the same actions over and over usually consisting of blowing up a generic enemy with a few halfway decent boss fights sprinkled throughout. The game fails to impress for the most part, but its one glowing achievement is the fact that I could play through it and didn’t ever really find myself hating my time with it. I just really didn’t enjoy my time with it either. I wouldn’t really recommend the game to anyone other than super diehard fans of the Iron Man universe, since most of you have better things/games to do/play. However, I do think that you should keep an eye out when Iron Man 3 comes around, it might actually be an enjoyable experience if the formula is tightened once more.
