The Digest: With War Machine added to your arsenal of weapons and the chance to battle the Crimson Dynamo, this movie licensed game falls short.  Even if you are a huge Iron Man fan this is a rental at best.

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE:  May 04, 2010
PUBLISHER:  Sega of America, Inc.
DEVELOPER:  Sega
ESRB RATING: “T” for Teen
GENRE:  Action

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:
Iron Man 2 The Video Game is a single player action game that continues the adventures of Tony Stark and his alter-ego, Iron Man. In it players can take to the air both as Iron Man and the hero’s friend and ally, War Machine, as they battle through a unique storyline developed exclusively for the game that features the villain, Crimson Dynamo. Key features include a variety of combat scenarios both in the air and on the ground, improved controls and an optional lock-on targeting system.

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• Be Iron Man. Be War Machine
• Research, Develop, Refine
• Epic Foes and Cinematic Action
• Unrivaled Fire Power
• Go Beyond The Movie

With most movie licensed games you expect them to be below par because they are stuck to an early version of the script and typically have no original storyline.  But with Iron Man 2, Sega was able to employ the services of Invincible Iron Man comic writer Matt Fraction to help with the story.  So with his help I had high expectations for this game but even with a decent story what I got left with was an empty feeling of your typical movie licensed game.

To start out the game you find yourself in a room with limited armor functionality.  This sets up a nice tutorial mission to help get you used to the controls.  The first thing you notice is how much easier it is to hover and control flight in Iron Man 2 over the original Iron Man game.  Flight in this game was easier than ever but even when you are top speed it just felt like you were taking a Sunday drive.  The on screen popups give you good instruction on how to hover, fly, shoot, and change out your weapons.   The game also adds checkpoints for saves.  This is a welcome addition until you realize that when you hit a checkpoint however much health your armor had at that checkpoint is what you started with.  I had to restart an entire mission because I hit the last checkpoint with 1 bar of health left and every time I restarted at that checkpoint I would die right away.

The cut scenes early seem pointless but as the story progresses they seemed to flow better with the storyline.  I liked how you could just skip the cut scenes but I disliked how some cut scenes where back to back.

After you complete a mission you earn points that can be used towards researching weapon upgrades, ammunition upgrades, and close combat upgrades.  The visuals in the HQ are of good quality but the menu system to navigate through each section is confusing.  I couldn’t figure out why for each weapon you had 4 different versions but you only seemed to be able to fit one of the weapon types on each suit.  The game really drops the ball and could of used some extra information boxes or menus to help explain what was going on in this section.  Besides doing upgrades you can also customize your weapon load out for each suit.  Although in some missions you have no choice on your suit and weapon load out at least the game tells you before you start that you have no choice.

The character models are mediocre for Tony Stark and Nick Fury but the James “Rhodey” Rhodes (aka Don Cheadle) character model was just abysmal.  I think if they would have shown Don Cheadle his character before signing him to do the voice he would have said no thanks.  The voice acting to me was fine for a game of this caliber but I really feel like Don Cheadle could have done a better job.  I thought the sound a like Tony Stark did a good job of capturing the essence of his character.  Playing as either Iron Man or War Machine does change the cut scenes slightly but not enough that you would care.  Both characters have their pros and cons but I always found Iron Man’s ability to hack other enemies to be more of an advantage over War Machine’s big guns.

The missions offer a good mix of game play.  Some of the missions are strictly escort missions while others are hack into this door or this computer to get to this objective.  I would like to have seen the hacking be a little more than just smashing the B button as fast as you can but whatever works to get the job done.

The bosses also offer a good variety.  At first I thought I was only fighting Armigers (tank like robots) but eventually you get to some more intelligent bosses and some unique final battles that do offer a small challenge.

Conclusion: I had high hopes with Invincible Iron Man comic writer Matt Fraction helping with the story and the ability to research and upgrade your weapons but the short campaign, lack of even just a coop play, and overall subpar graphics ruined this game for me.  Also this is an extremely short game, on normal difficulty I beat the game (including watching all the cut scenes) in 4 hours.  After I finished I switched to Easy and beat it again in less than 2 hours.

Single Player: 5/10 | Multi-Player: N/A

Special thanks to SEGA for providing us with a copy of the game for review.