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Will Iron Man 2 Leave You Stark Raving Mad?

Is this the movie/game tie-in you were expecting?

May 10, 2010
You won't like this if...

you were expecting Robert Downey Jr.

Iron Man 2
Credit: Sega

Videogames based on comic books don't have the best track record, but there have been standout titles, particularly Batman: Arkham Asylum. And games based on movies have an even more checkered past, mostly due to the accelerated development cycle needed to release a game to coincide with the film's theatrical run. Sega Studios San Francisco's final game, Iron Man 2, based on this summer's movie, combines the worst pitfalls of both genres, leaving me with one simple conclusion: Iron Man 2 the videogame is not for anybody.

Iron Man 2 is not for the videogame fan in me.


There's no nice way to put this -- Iron Man 2 is a technical disaster. Visually, the game looks decent...from a distance at least; if you were to sprint by a TV with the game playing it wouldn't look awful, but putting in any time with it reveals a heinous unpolished mess. Your character model's texture is straight out of the pre-Nintendo 64 era. And my character frequently froze mid-animation, making me a sitting duck for enemies to take pot shots at.

Even the foes you meet are a disappointment. Throughout the entire game you face a grand total of two super villains (re-imagined versions of Crimson Dynamo and Ultimo), with the rest of Iron Man 2's enemies primarily consisting of tanks, helicopters, and flying robots. I understand that much of Iron Man's rogues' gallery is likely off-limits to avoid continuity issues with the film, but it's hard to feel superheroic when you're stuck battling hordes of such weak enemies. It doesn't add to Iron Man's heroism when the script calls for him to just sit and take verbal abuse from the non-super powered Nick Fury either.

Click the image above to check out all Iron Man 2 screens.

Iron Man 2 is not for the Iron Man movie fan in me.

A big part of what really made the first Iron Man movie (and from what I hear, its sequel) so great was Robert Downey Jr.'s take on Tony Stark. Instead, Iron Man is voiced by a decent sound-alike; Don Cheadle and Samuel L. Jackson lend their voices to the game as James 'Rhodey' Rhodes and Nick Fury respectively, but I would have traded both of them for Downey's voice instead. And furthering the disconnect, the game takes place after the events of the movie. Fans of the story wanting to fight the muscle-bound Mickey Rourke's Whiplash or relive any of the events of the film will be sorely disappointed.

As for casual fans that want to pick Iron Man 2 up because they saw the movie and thought it was so rad that they had to run to the nearest retailer, there's not much here for them either. I made progress through the game's broken aiming system and glitchiness by the skin of my teeth and can only imagine how frustrated someone unaccustomed to games would become after Iron Man or War Machine (you can choose to play as either in most missions) got stuck on a wall and summarily killed for the 20th time in a row.

Movie tie-ins have never been a haven of quality videogames, but other titles with a similar comic/movie pedigree, a la X-Men Origins: Wolverine, have been able to pull off some pretty impressive stuff; Iron Man 2 on the other hand is a huge disappointment. There's a lot to love about both Iron Man the comic and the movie, it's a shame that the videogame can't capture that same success.

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