Ugh
The original Iron Man was probably the worst Marvel comics related game of the last ten or so years, barely edging out Daredevil largely because Daredevil didn't actually come out for home consoles. So, it's been 2 years and Sega has learned their lesson, right?
Well, to be gentle, no. I hate using the term "crap" as an adjective, but it is the cleanest and least offensive phrase I can use to describe the quality of this terrible movie tie-in. Now, it's not the like usual movie tie-in where they were handicapped by the storyline of the movie. The game doesn't really have much to do with the movie, outside of the fact that Iron Man and War Machine exist. It's an original story of Stark Industries-related hijinks and shenanigans.
It's also really, really bad. I think this game actually looks WORSE than Iron Man 1, which did not set any new standards in the world of attractive-looking visuals in a game. Iron Man and War Machine look decent enough, but everything else looks like it was done on a PS2. and I loathe to use that term out of concern of insulting the venerable PS2.
I can handle poor visuals (I didn't utterly loathe Two Worlds, which looked like a microwaved turd), but when you add in the joys of a really bad camera, you hit a new apex of terrible. While, logically, not being able to see all of an ugly world SEEMS like a God send, it is very much not one. You are asked to attack targets on enemies, and the hardest part is not targeting the things (that is actually fairly easy), but actually FINDING the stupid things is a headache. You have to find small targets on a massive enemy and you get blasted to next week while trying to figure out if the target is on top, beneath, or somewhere in the middle. On occasion, I am fairly certain that the targets are actually over in Borderlands, which also doubles as a, you know, really good game.
I will give them credit in saying that the controls are better than the original. That is, to give you a professional heads up, a bit of "damning with faint praise". The controls are better than the unplayable original, but few games were much worse than the original in that regard. Floating/hovering is easy. One button goes up, one goes down, left trigger auto targets missiles and right trigger fires the guns. It is when you MOVE while flying that issues commence. You can tap the left button twice to fly and, allegedly, when you pull back on the left stick, you are supposed to stop. I might have missed the addendum of "...about half of the time", but that is basically what happens.
Difficulty in missions also has bizarre fluctuations. It is OK for a while, then the game rapes you. You almost have to GRIND to actually get enough money to get good enough weapons to finish the level, and I got sick of grinding about 4 console generations ago. I quit playing because I found a mission irritating and don't like the game nearly enough to go back and get enough money to really pimp out my weaponry.
I likely view this game as being WORSE than the original because, in defense of the original, it didn't have itself to serve as an example of what not to do. This sequel does and it still hits most of the negatives. It is better, but it is still terrible and I'm wondering if Iron Man is as impossible to make a compelling game about as Superman (I'd have named Aquaman here, but Iron Man isn't lame, so there). I don't want to call it the worst game of the year, but I will say it is one strong candidate for that award.
