Maybe, just maybe, we made a huge mistake by going in for the Iron Man on the PSP right after having finished playing the excellent God Of War: Chains Of Olympus (GoW:CoO). While GoW:CoO embodies everything that a perfect game on the PSP should be, Iron Man sadly, turns out to be the exact opposite. The game seems to be a dismal failure right from the word go. A2M, the developers of the game seem to have got everything wrong as far as Iron Man for the PSP is concerned. So much so that it becomes quite clear right from the moment you pop in the disk that this is one game you won’t be playing for long, unless you happen to be an unfortunate reviewer like us who have to clench their teeth and bear through the 13 odd missions that the game throws at you.

Following the movie storyline, the game starts off with Tony Stark forging the very first Iron Man suit and making an escape from captivity. In between, you get to learn the ropes on how to control your super powered suit and beat the crap out of your enemy at the same time. It is easier said then done though, what with the flawed control scheme on the PSP. Agreed, with the current PSP layout, it doesn’t leave much scope for the developers but then again, the game is a chore to play with the horrible control scheme.

The face buttons help the Iron Man look around while the shoulder buttons are there to hover, fly or drop down to deliver a deadly punch and decimate enemies all around with a lethal shock wave. It takes a lot of effort to get the flow of controls right and even then you have to always worry about controlling the suit rather then going about your business of being a proper superhero and saving the day. The dumb AI helps here a lot with enemies waiting stupidly for you to get your alignment right and then blast them off with the Repulsor rays. If you really feel like it, you can just amble up to them and knock them silly. Not even a remote sense of challenge over here. You get upgrades on your suit from time to time but they are just not worth enough to sit through the game.

Most of the time, you can skip right through a horde of enemies and get to the objective directly, which in a funny way, helps you grow less frustrated with the game. Catch hold of an enemy vehicle and an ugly button will show up on the screen asking you jab on a specific button repeatedly. If you do it right, you get to see Iron Man smash the vehicle or else, end up eating dirt. Even doing it the first time, it’s no fun. We rather preferred to hover around and blast them with the Repulsor rays rather then go down and get our hands dirty. Better still, just fly directly to the objective. There is just not enough incentive that would make you bother about the minions.

And this brings us to the biggest disappointment in the game i.e. the horrible, horrible graphics. The game seems to have fallen from the ugliest tree and hit all the ugly branches on its way down. We can’t just help hide our disappointment in this regard with the muddy graphics, washed out and dull textures and an all around feel of ugliness in the game. The game shows the use of Havok in it’s start-up screen but we just couldn’t see it in action anywhere, whole through the game. Maybe the punching the stacked logs or the barrels blowing up were supposed to have it, but then, we saw none. Again, comparing it with a stellar title like GoW:CoO would be unfair but then, that should not be an excuse for a game developer that is supposed to raise the bar, not bring it down.

Save points are few and far between. So much so that you will be forced to replay endless stretches of the game just because you fucked up at the very last minute of the stage. Needless to say, it gets frustrating to the point where you would want to hurl your PSP across the room. God knows how many times we managed to talk ourselves out of doing it! Cutscenes and sound are mediocre at best and don’t add any value to the already drab package. Considering the limitations of the hardware, we could have gone a bit easy on the game but the shortcomings are so glaring and in your face that it becomes much harder to ignore. This game would make a very poor choice for showcasing your PSP. Definitely not recommended for anyone at all.

3.5 / 10

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By N2H

• Arachnid Says:
  May 13th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

  Damn – this makes the DS version seem better! (which i think it is!)

• Vijay Sinha Says:
  May 16th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

  What the Spider said. DS version is better (mostly because it was developed for the platform from the ground-up), but that’s not saying much. Or a whole a lot. Or anything at all, I guess! Also, in terms of titles developed, the PSP version is essentially the same as the PC and PS2 version (the only real difference being visual quality). Regardless, if you’re an Iron Man fan and need your shitty movie adaptation fix badly, can’t go wrong with the DS version.