Last year when the Wolverine game was released, Marvel had stated that they would no longer make bad movie based games. They went as far as admitting that the first Iron Man game was a bad game.

Marvel's claims were more than just words because Wolverine turned out to be a decent title. However, the goodwill that Marvel had earned with me is entirely lost with the release of Iron Man 2.

An Improbable Task:

To get the formalities out of the way, Iron Man 2 is a bad game and one that needed a lot more time to be fine tuned before release. As most movie based games, the game suffered a lot due to a very tight deadline. The developers have some great ideas for the game, but almost every feature of the game is sub-par and lacks refinement.

If it is any consolation, flying games, especially those with jetpacks require a lot of development time to fine tune controls and movement. Unfortunately for the developers, we as consumers experience the game as is and not what it could have been.

The Story:

A great move developers took is to have a different plot from that of the movie. This way they avoided using a story that they could not spoil the movie or one that was not fit for a game. Unfortunately the story that they actually use is your usual run of the mill.

Only the voices of Samuel L. Jackson and Don Cheadle feature from the movie. With the exception of the person voicing John Stark and Samuel Jackson, the rest are lackluster and seem to lack any sort of enthusiasm. The voice work also suffers due to really poor audio quality which includes the sound effects.

The sub-par presentation extends to the last-gen like graphics with pixelated environments and textures with blocky and chunky animations.

But At Least I Can Fly:

Players can choose between Warmachine and Iron Man. A four weapon load out is chosen and two weapons can be used simultaneously. The weapons are easily interchangeable. Some of the weapons are unique to the character but these unique weapons are similar in their function.

Again the developers were in the right track by allowing weapon upgrades and modifications. Unfortunately the upgrade system is marred by a very tedious and poorly designed UI. I only discovered the feature 2 hours after playing, which represents a little less than half the game's length. But I found the process really tedious and didn't bother much with it.

The best part of the game is the ease with which you can switch from floating around to flying like a jet. Unfortunately, the controls get a little wonky and it becomes almost impossible to attack targets when flying fast. This is especially due to the weapons having very short range.

Due to these reasons the combat dumbs down to floating around, choosing targets via auto-aim and continuously pressing on the trigger buttons. With a touch of a button, both Iron Man and War Machine can send the enemy's missiles back towards them, which takes away any sense of challenge.

Most boss fights are easily won by gliding on the side as you unleash your weapons. As one can imagine, this results in a highly unsatisfying and un-thrilling experience. Instead of making the gamer feel like they are an advanced weapon systems, it feels more like conducting repetitive mechanical processes fighting unchallenging enemies.

Genre: Action

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3 (Reviewed on Xbox 360)

Time Played: 5 hours (Finished once)

Developed by: Secret Level

Published by: SEGA