Quit Your Day Job

When the first Iron Man film came out I was so excited because apart from a kick arse comic book movie I knew that we were going to get toys (and we did) and a video game.

I know I should have been more wary because very rarely do video game adaptations of movies or comic books for that matter assure any quality.  There are exceptions of course but Iron Man was not one of them, this is what I wrote originally*:

Iron Man PS2 game – what did I do to deserve this?

I’m not buying a Playstation 3.   I can’t afford one right now, I don’t really have the need for one and honestly it would be wasted on my current television.   That does not however mean that game developers should be punishing me.

So I came down off the high that resulted from seeing the Iron Man film and picked up the PS2 Iron Man game after some debate over the sense of buying it now and how long it would be before it came down in price.   Unfortunately I forged ahead.

It’s not that it is a particulary bad game in that it just isn’t a really good one.   I couldn’t find any reviews on this version but did find video of people saying wonderful things about the PS3 one, I figured this would just be a lower resolution version of the PS3 with some of the features removed or shortened or whatever.

What I got was this clunky game that handles badly and won’t let you skip long winded dialogue.   There is no spark in the game that makes it even vaguely fun or captures even the slightest joy found in the film.

It generally follows the plot of the movie and you start off in the Mark 1 Iron Man armour as you make your way through the terrorist camp.   It took me all of a minute to realise that this game was not going to fullfill any sense of fun.   It won’t allow you just to learn as you go and forces you almost literally jumping through hoops.   When I was eventually able to actually punch I thought awesome I’ll hit something and watch it go smash.   Hey!?   My fist just passed through the wall and did nothing?   Oh wow it’s Super Nintendo quality nothing breaks and when you hit an enemy he just disappears *rolls eyes*.

The controls are unnatural, there is no jump button for instance!?   Sure you can fly but it is a standard thing to be at least able to jump up a step!!!

Flying is no fun at all, if you use the afterburners you fly straight up and get told off for leaving the battlefield, they are just really hard to control.

The game itself involves blowing up Stark weapons in various battlefields that essentially are long strips with nondescript enemies and remarkably boring level bosses.

I wonder if Sega actually should (sic) this version to Marvel or if they just presented footage of the next generation console versions?

Rent this game, don’t buy it!!!   You’ll knock it over in a weekend and be glad you only paid the rental cost.

One very minor positive, when you smash through the first iron doors the Black Sabbath song Iron Man strikes up as it does in the trailer.   Oh and apparently you can unlock other armours but as far as I can tell all that changes is the skin not the abilities or features… yawn.

I got a lot of comments from others who felt the same way and in the campaign of Iron Man the film this appeared as one of the few weak points.

Now I’m looking at that trailer for the new game and I’m not convinced I’m looking at anything any better, it looks like they are really hopeful that the footage of War Machine is going to sell this game.

What do you guys think of the trailer?  Played any good movie related games lately?

*this was prior to changing web hosts and losing all my posts.