Iron Man [PS3]

This is what Iron Man is good at -- making you not give a damn about being a hero because the world you're living in is so goddamn cheap. Most of the time, battling a boss or an objective means putting some kind of obstruction like a mountain or a building between you and your target and then slowly hovering from the ground to the air, firing your payload, and drifting back down behind the cover to heal from the ass beating you just took. Repeat until everything is dead and you can move on.

To survive in this game, Tony Stark must be a wuss.

I'm sure the Iron Man fanboys who bought this game and now feel the desperate need to champion it are going to flame me for taking the coward's way out, but that'd be an unfounded attack. I tried to be the hero in this game and to play by the rules and morals Mr. Stark would have. When I was getting decimated time after time in the Artic as I tried to blow up some orange objectives, I started my umpteenth run with the mindset that I'd take out every enemy as they came at me. The level began, and the bombers that had been making my life hell came in for their first flyover. I took to the skies, lit them up and began to move on.

Three more came from the exact same spot on the horizon. I blew them up. Three more. Explosion. Three more. Explosion. Three more.

This cheap crap doesn't stop here. When I was trying to take down an island outpost, I had to take out these sets of couplings. Of course, each coupling is crawling with bastard enemies who have laser sights on their weapons. So, after hovering out from behind a rock and blowing the bad guys up, I took out the coupling and moved on. The process continued, but suddenly Jarvis broke in to tell me reinforcements were being deployed. Then, Jarvis let me know one of the couplings had been repaired. Then, I screamed curse words and quit to go play something worthwhile.

What sucks is that when you're not getting 15 missiles up the ass, it can actually be pretty cool to be Iron Man. The shoulder buttons control flight, hover, repulsors and your unibeam, while the face buttons are your secondary weapons and melee commands. Once you get into a game, the scheme feels like second nature and it's pretty cool to see Iron Man with his arms at his side flying through the air as the sun reflects off his suit. When you're sitting down to play in a world built around a superhero who can fly all over the place, there's always that fear you're going to slam into the edge of the "battle zone" or something equally as lame. For me, that didn't happen with Iron Man. Sure, there are ends to the maps, but they're not close to where you'll be playing, so you'll actually have the feeling that you're part of a massive world.

Still, this isn't enough of a silver lining to overlook the other crap in this game. Beyond the story mode, you can replay missions in the archive and unlock new suits of armor in One Man Army. However, One Man Army is just you in the same old levels trying to beat a specific number of foes in a set time limit. Do you really want to relive the horror?

Closing Comments
The problem with Iron Man is that at some point someone sat down and said "You know what would be fun? Drop players into situations where they have to do repetitive, meaningless tasks and then add respawning, overwhelming douchebags." That's a shame. Flying is fun, the upgrades are neat, and the game can look good. However, these pros are outweighed by the aforementioned frustration, crappy storyline and lame cutscenes. You never feel like Iron Man in this game, and if you're like me, you never feel like you're having fun.

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