It's so easy to be disappointed with a superhero videogame. They always start off with such great potential. After all, who wouldn't want to play as some dude who can fly around and punch other dudes through walls? The problem is, superhero games very rarely live up to our expectations. Sure, every now and again you get a good game along the lines of Superman 2 or Marvel Ultimate Alliance, but more often than not, you end up with a Batman: Dark Tomorrow or Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The problem stems from the fact that it's tough to design a game around an exceptionally powerful and nigh invulnerable protagonist and the sad truth that most licensed games are terrible. What does it say about the genre that one of the games that best recreates the feel of being a superhero isn't even a superhero game? Yeah, we're talkin' about you, Crackdown.

Still, hopes were high for Iron Man, which is, of course, based on the new (and quite awesome) movie starring Robert Downey, Jr. The prospect of climbing into Tony Stark's legendary armor to do a little fighting and smiting with repulsor rays is just too tempting.

The game begins with a couple of introductory levels that help ease you in to the suit's powers. The first stage has you wearing the Mark I armor while escaping from your captors in Afghanistan. Here you learn the basics of moving and using simple attacks. Stage two places you in the Mark II armor for a brief test flight that leads to a conflict where you must master Iron Man's palm-mounted repulsor weapons. From there, it's into the Mark III armor and the real game begins. Like many movie-based games, Iron Man expands on the film's story by introducing characters and situations not seen on the big screen. In addition to tackling the foes from the movie, you'll also face comic characters like Titanium Man and evil organizations such as the Maggia crime syndicate and Advanced Idea Mechanics.

Within each stage, you're given a variety of different goals to accomplish. These tend to be of the "fly to a certain location and shoot a specific object" variety. As such, the missions tend to grow a bit repetitive after a couple of stages. Luckily, none of the stages are particularly long, so at least you're able to move to a new environment before true boredom sets in. To encourage a bit of exploration, each stage contains a few hidden stockpiles of Stark weapons. Destroying them all nets you unlockable goodies.

Throughout each stage, you face off against two main classes of enemies: airborne (like helicopters) and ground troops (tanks and soldiers and whatnot). Although you encounter plenty of enemies at once, you rarely feel as though you're being overwhelmed. The Iron Man suit recovers its energy after taking damage, so if you're hit by a missile or two, you can simply fly out of range and recharge.

This PSP version of Iron Man is actually the same as the Nintendo Wii game, but unfortunately its controls aren't nearly as refined as those of its console big brother. The game uses the standard "FPS-on-the-PSP" control scheme, where the analog stick is used to move your character and the face buttons are used to look around and aim your weapons. This makes it extremely difficult to accurately target the enemy, especially when in the middle of a firefight. Adding to the poor controls is the awkward flight mechanism, which is controlled through various presses of the L button. Holding the button raises Iron Man into the sky; giving the button a quick tab drops him to the ground. To initiate full-on flight, you must quickly double-tap and hold the button. Keeping this little finger jig straight when you're being attacked on all sides and trying to properly aim is remarkably frustrating.

One feature that seems like it would muddle up the controls is the ability to reroute the suit's power. By tapping left and right on the d-pad, you can send more "power" to the suit's armor and propulsion. This boosts your health recovery and flight speed, respectively. You can also boost your weapons, which activates the extremely powerful Unibeam cannon. You may not bother with this feature at first, as you'll be too busy getting the basic controls down, but once you get adjusted to hitting the proper button to reflect your current battle situation, it adds a fun element to the fights.

Iron Man deserves some credit for getting some of the film's actors to reprise their roles: Robert Downey, Jr. (Tony Stark), Terrence Howard (Lt. Colonel Rhodes) and Shaun Toub (Yinsen) all make appearances. Of course, their presence also makes the absence of Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges all the more obvious. Not helping matters are the somewhat bland performances that the actors give. You can almost see Robert Downey, Jr. looking at his watch in the recording studio as he's reading his lines. The voices don't seem any better when they're coming out of the horrible CG representations of the actors.

As mentioned before, the version of Iron Man is essentially identical to the Wii version, which is an entirely different game than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, complete with a different developer. Although the graphics aren't very impressive, they do look a bit nicer on the small screen. As a bonus, this PSP version sports a few mini-games that involve races where you fly through beacons or a contest to wipe out as many enemies as possible within a time limit. These games are about as exciting as they sound (that is, not very). The core gameplay is actually pretty good, certainly much better than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, but the awful controls on the PSP ruin it. That's a shame, too, as it knocked a perfectly serviceable game down into "avoid" territory.

This review was based on a retail version of the game purchased by Crispy Gamer.