Product Reviews

As is often the way with film-licensed games, Iron Man appears to have been developed hastily to coincide with the release of the movie. There's little here that's worthy of praise, and almost every aspect of the game proves substandard, making Iron Man a monumental letdown.

Based loosely on the recent action blockbuster, Iron Man sees you stepping into Tony Stark's metallic suit and embarking on a collection of unimaginative missions in which you battle predictable enemies such as jet fighters, helicopters and evil henchmen. The third-person action is utterly bereft of originality, often boiling

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down to hovering in one place while indiscriminately blasting your foes and soaking up the laughable amounts of damage they inflict on you in return. On the rare occasion when your health bar does drop to zero, you're given the opportunity to kick- start your heart with a simple mini-game that involves pressing the buttons in the order they appear onscreen.

Iron Man's only saving graces are its upgradable weapons, which grow in power the more you use them, a half-decent sense of speed when flying and the ability to manage your energy output. This final option enables you to boost certain systems such as your thrusters, weapons or armour. While it's a nice idea, the game's sheer simplicity makes this feature somewhat redundant.

With so many problems already dragging it into the mire, Iron Man's fate is sealed by visuals that would make a PlayStation 2 game feel inadequate, with levels that feature some horrifically blocky textures. Despite the odd moment of mayhem and some decent voice acting from Robert Downey Jr during the cutscenes, Iron Man is just another film-licensed dud, and one that fails to do justice either to the movie or to PC gaming. At least it's cheap.