Developer: Secret Level

Publisher: Sega

Release Date: May 2, 2008
Systems: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PS3, PS2, wii, DS, PSP, PC, mobile, Sega Master System (just kidding)

ESRB Rating: T

Official Web site

0:00 I liked the movie and I like Sega, but I'm still expecting a let-down from this one. It is a movie-based game, after all.

0:01 A gadget-porn pan over a pre-rendered Iron Man suit runs behind the menu screen. Some extremely generic light metal music plays in the background.

0:02 The controls screen mentions that the directional pad is used for something called "power distribution." This sounds way too complex for a game like this.

0:03 Difficulties are "Easy," "Normal," and "Formidable." I'm all for giving interesting names to difficulty levels, but you should go all or nothing. Why not "Puny" and "Nondescript" for the first two?

0:04 In a cave full of crates, Tony Stark works at a kiln. "Alone in a cave, surrounded by weapons. That is a very poignant way to die," says that guy from the movie whose name I can't remember. Tony's friend who helps him break out. You know who I'm talking about! "Ah, there he goes again, give it a rest, Shakespeare," says Robert Downey, Jr., er, I mean Stark. The guy whose name is on the tip of my tongue prattles on philosophically about what make a man a hero while Stark lifts the first Iron Man mask out of the kiln and stares at it, meaningfully.

0:05 Cut over to the Stark computer display that gives my mission objectives: escape from the Ten Rings encampment I'm being held in. How am I seeing this computer display? I'm trapped in a cave. Way to break the fourth wall already.

0:06 "Yinsin, you owe me 50 bucks, it works," Stark says as he stumbles out of the cave in his suit. Yinsin! That's his name! "These men were right to kidnap you... they could kill a lot of people with your weapons." Thanks for the plot setup, Yinsin. Still in a cut scene, some armed guys shoot at Iron Man, but the bullets bounce off. He takes them out easily with a flamethrower. COOL! I want to do that.

0:07 I get to do that, almost immediately, in fact. The enemies just kind of collapse when I hit them with the flames, though. Where's the writhing and screaming a burning and ashes? *Pout*

0:08 I don't remember Iron Man being able to run this fast in his original, super-clunky suit. Not that I'm complaining, lumbering around would be no fun, but still.

0:09 "Your suit's integrity is restored by your heart," Yinsin explains over my headset. "A momentary rest can help you." ARGH! What a stupid explanation for a stupid infinite health system.

0:10 I can take out a tank with four rather weak-looking punches. What is this, The Incredible Hulk?

0:11 Holding B next to a tank activates a mini-game where I have to press B as fast as possible to tear the tank apart. Big excitement here, let me tell you.

0:12 Seems my health isn't quite infinite -- a few hits from tank artillery takes me down. "Power Systems at 0%... system reboot initiated." I get up in the EXACT SAME SPOT I just fell, almost immediately. WTF? Shouldn't there be some penalty for death? I'm not Superman, after all.

0:13 Yinsin activates my radar and I can see the smuggled weapons I'm trying to take out. "I didn't build these weapons for the bad guys. I built them for... well, you know." THE GOOD GUYS! THE U.S. IS THE GOOD GUYS! DAMN YOU AND YOUR MORAL RELATIVISM, STARK!

0:15 There's some really annoying stuttering and slowdown whenever a group of enemies appears out of nowhere. Bad sign.

0:16 I forgot to mention I have missiles now, mainly because they're pretty anticlimactic. They lock on automatically and fire straight at the target, causing some rather pathetic-looking explosions and smoke. Bleh.

0:17 "Our friend Raza," as Stark puts it, rolls in in a super-tank. "Raza, I'm sorry, but our friendship must come to an end." Oh, Robert Downey, Jr., is there any corny line you can't make better?

0:19 Raza plays it smart, launching missiles from long range so I can't punch his tank. Luckily, I also have missiles that I can launch back at him. I lose all my energy again, but it doesn't freaking matter because I just get up again right away. They should have called this game "INVINCIBLE Iron Man."

0:20 Cut scene time. Stark goes back to save Yinsin, but Yinsin is forced to set off the stockpile of explosive to hold off his captors. I've got to say, his death came off as a lot more meaningful in the movie. Stark hangs his head for a second, then jumps off with rocket boots. Why couldn't I do that in the game?

0:22 Back at Stark's lab. "You want to ruin the company?" says the bald guy whose name I also can't remember. "Is that a rhetorical question? All I know is we're not selling weapons anymore," says the suddenly incredibly moral Stark. "Maybe it's time for a new kind of company." This is actually a decent 30-second summary of the second quarter of the movie.

0:24 Flight test time in the new, black, Mark II suit. "All right, let's see what this suit can do." The controls are actually pretty good. The analog trigger is used to hover while the shoulder button is used to fly forward at a good clip. I crash into the water because the Y-axis controls aren't inverted (easily fixed), but I automatically fly right back out. Man, this is one forgiving game.

0:25 "Wow... this suit is damn good." I have to agree with Tony, here. Flying is just pure fun. The city looks dead, though. There are no people or vehicles moving around and it's the middle of the day! WTF?

0:26 My assistant, Pepper, complains over the radio as I fly that people might lose their jobs if we no longer make weapons. Cry me a river, hippie.

0:28 So I'm supposed to grab a missile and throw it at a drone with the B button. I utterly fail to do this because I can't see where the missiles are coming in. But the drone explodes anyway. Wha?

0:30 The Unibeam attack reminds me of Dragon Ball Z. I just hover in place for a few seconds, charging up the beam, then fire it off. Kame...hame...ha!

0:31 Flight training is done, but Pepper calls frantically: there are men with guns at the door. Apparently some defense contractors are mad that we're not selling them weapons anymore, so they decided to send tanks and helicopters to invade our private business. This story is going off the rails rather quickly.

0:34 OK, ground combat in the new suit is kind of fun. The new missiles and longer-range guns replace the crappy missiles and flamethrowers. The suit picks out and highlights enemies that are hard to see against the dark city background. The helicopters explode real nice, too. A few problems: The camera needs a lot of attention and the radar is hard to use. Also, none of the enemies seem to really hurt me very much.

0:39 Now that the ground troops are gone, some aerial transports fly in to replenish the supply. Fighting them isn't nearly as fun: It's extremely hard to fly and take them out at the same time. Not to mention it's very hard to pinpoint them on the radar. Also, I can't seem to fire my missiles while flying. Why the hell not?

0:41 Since I utterly failed to stop the flying transports, I have to pick off roughly a bazillion ineffective ground troops. It's still fun, but somehow not satisfying. There's no risk, no danger.

0:43 "Stark gunship launch detected near Hangar 3," says my computerized butler (really!). "That's my baby, and she doesn't mess around," says Downey, Jr. Cue Lit's "My Own Worst Enemy." Not really, but that would be cool.

0:46 So apparently I can fire missiles from the air, but only when hovering, not actively flying. This is inconvenient, because the gunship keeps flying away from me, launching missiles and drones, and generally being annoying. Plus, there are still ground troops pinging me. I have to keep track of roughly a million things at once, when I can manage maybe one.

0:49 To make matters worse, I don't think I'm doing any damage to this gunship with my shots. Even my Dragon Ball Z laser doesn't seem to dent it. Hmm.

0:50 OK, it seems I was doing some damage, but it has super-regenerating powers that keep it near full health.

0:52 Eventually the game takes pity on me and makes the gunship hover in place, lobbing ineffective missiles (which I lob back). Even then, it takes a looooong time to wear down its health. Blarg.

0:53 "Civilian casualties reported," says my butler. "Damn... all this for weapons." Uh, yeah Tony, that's what weapons do. Were you really that naive until, like, five seconds ago?

0:54 Stark orders Obie (Obie! That's his name!) to destroy our weapons inventory so no one will try to steal it again. Wow, the character models look truly awful in this cut scene. Tony winks at Pepper near the end, and it makes my eyes want to retract back into my skull so they never have to see anything so hideous again.

@@

0:56 Now in the red and yellow suit, we've tracked down the base of the people who attacked us. They have a lot of Stark weapons stockpiled in the desert. "Can't wait to blow it into a million pieces."

0:58 "Oh ho ho, now THAT is an explosion," Stark's dialogue is getting decidedly less witty.

0:59 I'm finding it rather convenient that all the stockpiled weapons are piled in nice neat stacks of brown boxes labeled "weapons."

Would I play this game for more than an hour? No.


Why? A noble try, but in the end it just tries to do too much, and doesn't do any of it spectacularly well.

This column was based on a retail copy of the game rented from GameFly.

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