Good review, Meta.
Iron Man 2 review
Game Review | June 5, 2010 10:47 am
By Meta
Iron Man 2 is a single-player action game developed by Sega's San Francisco Studios and published by Sega. It was released May 4, 2010.
Firstly, this game doesn't follow the movie Iron Man 2. Instead, it has most of the same characters in an original story, occurring after events in the film, that also features other entities from the comic's stable like the Crimson Dynamo and ULTIMO.
The meat of the gameplay here is just shooting and blowing stuff up. Most missions have you moving from one set piece to another, destroying a certain amount of enemies and then pressing a button or switch, to proceed. There is an escort mission that is not terrible as far as those kinds of things go, and a few boss fights punctuate the short missions. Most of the time you can choose to use Iron Man or War Machine, but certain situations require one or the other and occasionally both.
Flight controls have been simplified from the first game, and while this makes it easier to get around at speed it also makes it more difficult to maneuver in tight spots. You use both triggers for your primary weapons and swap between them with the d-pad. You can choose what 3 weapons you want in your load out before each mission, but the 4th will always be repulsors for Iron Man and a Minigun for War Machine. In a nice touch, you can double up on weapons and fire them simultaneously. Each suit also has multiple "melee routines" to choose from, but all of them are equally useless in the face of overwhelming firepower.
The game has a lock-on targeting feature that works too well--if a locked target jets behind you, your camera will swing in a wild 180. It's a good thing the missions are so simple else the combination of sticky targeting and flailing camera would make it impossible to keep up with the action. Ideally, tapping the lock-on button will target whatever is closest in your cross-hairs but the system will sometimes decide instead to lock on to an enemy three times further away.
Completing missions earns you "field data" which acts as currency you spend to upgrade weapons and invent new types of ammunition and modules. This system was a nice idea but is overly complicated and a bit of a waste due to the game's short length and the fact that once you buy the Ultimate module, you won't want or need anything else. If you do particularly well on missions you can unlock multiple versions of the Iron Man armor but they are purely cosmetic and only really serve to store weaponry configurations.
The graphics in Iron Man 2 are only barely passable. The models for the main two shell-heads are fine, but the rest of the characters all look like horrendous caricatures of themselves. Levels have some neat design ideas that are thwarted by low-polygon architecture and low-res textures. The lighting is very inconsistent. The sense of scale in levels with the S.H.I.E.L.D. heli-carrier and ULTIMO is pretty good, but ultimately this game's visuals are a step back from the original's.
Audio is one area where Iron Man 2 excels. The sound effects are merely adequate; crushing hits sound like tinny clanks and most ordnance explosions are rumbles or thuds. The music, however, is pretty damn great. There is an exclusive song from Lamb of God, as well as tracks from Meshuggah and Soilwork, all top-notch metal bands. The majority of the rest of the soundtrack is handled by 3volution Productions, aka Ray and Chris from Fear Factory--their particular brand of metallic rhythm suits the game's concept perfectly. Don Cheadle and Samuel L. Jackson reprise their roles, and while they didn't get RDJ to play Tony Stark, the guy they did use does an excellent job mimicking his delivery. The great voice cast is rounded out by vets Steven Blum and Phil LaMarr.
Gameplay here is very basic with a load of good ideas that are poorly executed. With the missions all being less than 20 minutes and there only being 8 total, Iron Man 2 is criminally short for a full retail release. Having both Iron Man and War Machine as playable characters makes the lack of any sort of multiplayer stand out as a huge opportunity missed--mindless action games are at least twice as fun with a friend in co-op. The array of weapons seems great at first but they are all only effective within 100 meters so you'll end up using the ones that deal out the most damage in the least amount of time and never switching. It's nice that they included multiple difficulties.
Overall, Iron Man 2 gets a 5. It has its fun moments but is laughably short and very repetitive and unexciting. The ease of Achievements as well as being able to carry upgrades through different difficulties makes it a great rental and nothing more.
Rating: 5.0 of 10
Reviewed: Iron Man 2
Keywords: iron man 2, sega, marvel
)
