Game review: Iron Man 2 - Xbox 360

Ok, perhaps that’s a little harsh, but consider this – the Iron Man suit is the very pinnacle of weapons technology, one which is piloted by a multi-billionaire with a super-cool attitude – and it comes in hot-rod red.

How could SEGA possibly get this wrong? The simple answer? Easily.

Let’s start with the obvious. The game is called Iron Man 2 – there are two battlesuits on the cover and two main characters – and it’s a one-player game.

If ever there was a missed opportunity, this is it.

On top of that the graphics are poor, it’s short, the controls are duff, the sound is off-kilter, and the sensation of flight is now about as exciting as walking to the bank…to pay a bill. Namely, it’s a let down.

Unlike what the developers would have you believe, this game is not an improvement on the first one.

The huge open environments are gone, the story makes even less sense and the graphics and rendering are lazy and shockingly bad at points. It’s not an improvement at all – if anything it takes the only good things about its predecessor – the sensation of flight and reasonably cool battles, and ruins them.

This story takes place after the events of the movie (which, incidentally, is pretty good), and sees Iron Man, played by Robert Downey Jr, and War Machine, Don Cheedle’s suit, team up with the Strategic Homeland Intervention and Enforcement Logistics Division (“Just call us SHIELD”) to kick ass and take names.

There’s a whole plot revolving around a rival company to Stark Enterprises’ stealing tech and causing trouble, but as the plot is badly written and only spread over eight short levels, it’s not worth going into.

The gameplay follows the same line as the previous game, featuring Iron Man and War Machine taking on legions of baddies, tanks and other powered suits on the ground, in the air and (in the only half-decent level included in the game) on a massive flying battleship.

Iron Man and War Machine each have their own suite of powers, ranging from Stark’s repulsors and shoulder-mounted rockets, to War Machine’s deadly chain gun, missiles, lasers and powerful blaster cannons (shotguns).

There are also a selection of close combat attacks built into the suits, but as you’re likely to have defeated the exceedingly weak enemies with ranged attacks before they even get close, they’re pretty redundant.

The suits and weapons can be upgraded in a central hub screen, but there seems to be little or no point in wasting your time as the upgrades are all so similar it’s difficult to figure out what does what, or even to see the effects in-game.

There are also a variety of different suits available to unlock, but they all suffer from the same dodgy control scheme and poor weapons, so it’s a minor bonus at best.

My main bugbear is with the flight mechanic. In the previous game Iron Man could reach pretty nippy speeds before diving down to the ground and landing in his signature ‘ground-pound’ move.

This time around flying feels slow and unwieldy, and even using afterburners doesn’t make things any more fun- it’s the dream of all human kind to fly, so why make it so slow and boring?

The controls don’t lend themselves to the game either, with the aiming mechanic targeting distant objects at will and switching between targets made all the more difficult by an auto-aim system that is a little too overzealous.

The camera is also pretty shoddy, needing constant adjustment to stay on the action, and makes each battle all the more difficult.

It also struggles with enclosed spaces, spinning the camera on its axis at random – a very irritating problem.

Not that you really want to see the graphics anyway – they’re rough around the edges with tacky textures, bad facial mapping and lip-sync, a poor draw distance and odd colours – it’s a real let down.

The total lack of multiplayer is another nail in the coffin.

Surely there has never been a better opportunity for multiplayer co-op? Just think of it- you and a mate, blazing through the sky, kicking ass and taking names, covering each other’s back.

Such a shame this was totally missed in development.

The game’s only saving grace is the voice acting, which is pretty well done, and features Cheedle and Downey Jr at their best, with dry humour and put-downs every few lines.

But even these two titans of cinema are not enough to save the game itself, which is little but a cheap rip-off of the last title with even less effort put in.

Iron Man should be video gaming gold – a super soldier in a powered suit who can fly, punch through metal, fire weapons from his palms and then pull off a smooth one-liner? Absolute pay dirt. So why is it then that production companies can’t do the character or movies justice, and keep rolling out disappointing games which leave critics, and more crucially fans, disappointed.

Score: 2.5/10

Good Stuff: Lots of suits Good voice acting

Not So Good Stuff: Poor gameplay Shoddy graphics Too short No multiplayer