There are certain things in this world you can always count on: death, taxes, summer movie blockbusters and lackluster games based on said blockbusters. This year is no different as Iron Man arrived to much fanfare, critical and commercial success, bringing with it a handful of unimpressive movie tie in games. Iron Man for the Sony PSP has a lot of issues, namely bland levels, twitchy flying controls and a distinct lack of a challenge, but mostly it’s just not any fun to play.
The game follows the events of the movie, with the first level based on Tony Stark’s debut as old Shellhead as he dons the Mark I armor to blast his way out of the clutches of his captors. Once he’s back stateside he continues to perfect his suit of armor all the while venturing out and destroying caches of weapons he sold to various nefarious characters. The game has none of the interesting character development of the movie, despite good voice work by both Robert Downey Jr. and Terrence Howard, as Stark seems like a jerk, Obadiah Stane is a power hungry bad guy from the beginning and poor Pepper Potts apparently doesn’t make enough money to buy more than one outfit. Get that woman a pantsuit, pronto!
You’re not playing the game for the incredible narrative though, you’re playing to blow things up and to do this, Iron Man has plenty of tools at his disposal. Repulsor rays, Gatling guns, rockets and the ubiquitous Unibeam are all around, as well as an assortment of ground punching and foot stomping attacks. As you fly around taking out enemies, you can reroute power to your propulsion system, armor or weapons, at the expense of lowering power to your other systems.
It’s an interesting idea, however most of the time, you won’t need it. Iron Man seems incapable of getting damaged, even when taking a tank shell upside the metal clad noggin’, so there’s rarely any reason to divert power to the armor. You can catch up to most enemies by simply hovering, so there’s no reason to divert power to your propulsion system and unless you want to fire the Unibeam, your stock weaponry can take out most enemies in one or two shots.
The option of leveling up your weaponry via repeated use is also a good one; however the upgrades don’t seem to do much, given how powerful your weapons are in the first place. You end up switching up weapons, not necessarily so that you’re using the right tool for the job, but so that you can level up your weaponry, just to see what the next upgrade is. Add to this the fact that rockets take repeated shoulder button presses to fire, and that the Unibeam needs to be charged up to be used, and you’ll find yourself sticking to the repulsor beams most of the time because they’re easier and just as powerful.
Levels are relatively bland and uninteresting. Missions all break down the same way. You’ll enter a large area and have some weapon caches to destroy while fending off soldiers, tanks and helicopters. Once you destroy all the weapons, it’s off to the next area. Some times you’ll have to pause to take care of some missiles headed for populated areas, but it’s never all that difficult to take them up. Enemies have an annoying habit of respawning, and often times you’ll run across enemies stuck in the level, incapable of being killed or assaulting you, doomed to run up against a crate for all eternity, but even with the respawning, they act as only an annoyance as they can’t seem to do anything to you.
This brings us to one of the largest complaints of the game, namely that it is incredibly easy. There are some stages that have insta-kill situations but most of the time you can just tool around, shooting people if you want, until you complete all the mission objectives. If you don’t want to shoot people, don’t bother as they can’t do anything to you anyway.
In the rare event that they actually damage you enough to drain your armor’s energy, you’ll have to either manually restart Stark’s heart, or use one of your backup power cells. These moments usually come as a surprise as you’re not used to actually being damaged, and it can be hard to tell when your armor’s energy is low. In the event that you do die, you’ll have to do the entire level all over again, paring the heady stink of frustration to the bland flavor of uninteresting activity.
