The time has finally come. Today marks the day Iron Man 2 hits theaters and what better way to celebrate than to not only watch the film, but to assume the role of both Iron Man & War Machine in Iron Man 2, all from the comfort of your iPhone or iPad. With 9 levels to play, upgradeable suits, and plenty of enemies to fight, is Iron Man 2 a perfect companion for fans of the film?
Iron Man 2 for the iDevices starts off with with Tony Stark donning the Iron Man suit. Specifically, a new prototype suit he’s been working on that fits in a briefcase. Iron Man demos the unit to the public, when there’s a sudden attack where he happens to be performing. As luck would have it, this is the perfect opportunity for Iron Man to show what his briefcase suit can do. You start off as Iron Man, but in later missions you’ll be able to choose between him and War Machine. Both Iron Man & War Machine can perform melee attacks, fire repulsor lasers, missles, and hover / fly. As you complete mission objectives & defeat enemies, you’ll earn experience points which can be used between missions to upgrade Iron Man’s attacks, shields, and combos. One thing I found puzzling was why only Iron Man was upgradeable while War Machine wasn’t. I wouldn’t think Tony Stark would allow Rhodes to wear the ultimate suit, while he’s stuck with a fixer upper in comparison. There also weren’t many upgrades to Iron Man’s suit, so players can easily “max out” Iron Man less than half way through the game.
There isn’t much variety in enemies in Iron Man 2. There’s basically two kinds of enemies you’ll face in each level of the entire game. The only enemies that offer any kind of variety are the bosses. Enemy A.I. doesn’t pose much of a challenge either. Every fight can be ended fairly quickly by attacking solely with the repulsor laser while dodging incoming attacks.
The enemies might not have much variety, but one thing that does are the levels. Iron Man 2 will take you across a number of different locations such as New York City, small third-world villages, and even under the sea. Mission types suffer from lack of variety as well as they can be described as either “go here and defeat enemies” or “go here and defuse bombs”. The bomb defusal mini-games requires you to slide around tiles in order to match up an image of Iron Man’s chest piece within a number of moves. There are also small bombs on the playing field that, if matched, will blow up. I’m not entirely sure why the bombs were included as matching them up does indeed cause them to explode, but doing so does not result in failing at the mini-game.
Iron Man 2 does have its good moments. One of my favorite experiences had to be being able to fly through levels, especially in the New York City level as it gives the feeling of being in an open-world game. It’s a shame later levels put a limit on how far up Iron Man can fly, which results in keeping him grounded (or at least hovering a couple of feet above the ground). I believe if Gameloft would have focused more on this type of level design throughout the entire game, rather than making it squarely mission based, it could have improved the quality of the game by leaps and bounds. Nearly all super hero games released on consoles nowadays feature this type of gameplay mechanic, so I’m hopefully as iDevice gaming matures, this is something developers will consider.
FINAL THOUGHT: Iron Man 2 isn’t the super hero game I was expecting, especially from a developer who created Avatar. Enemies are too easy and uninspiring, missions lack variety, and combat can be considered “ho-hum”. If you enjoyed the Iron Man 2 movie and feel the urge to play an Iron Man game at home, just go watch the movie again as your $7-$10 can be better spent towards that than on the Iron Man 2 iPhone / iPad game.
Iron Man 2 for iPhone ($6.99) [iTunes Link]
Iron Man 2 for iPad ($9.99) [iTunes Link]