Sequels have always been one of those weird beasts that either give the player more of the same old same old, milk the pocketbooks of fans or, in extreme cases, both. There is, however, that rare title in which the developers go back to the drawing board and put some serious thought into how to better the original title. This was the case for Iron Man 2: The Video Game. After the release of Iron Man, the development team listened to all the feedback and set out to make Iron Man 2 a much better game all around the board.
The biggest issue the development team wanted to address was the control of the game. For those who didn’t like the controls of the first game, you are in luck. The Iron Man 2 controls have been completely revamped. Flight is much easier and more intuitive than the first game. What this means is the flight simulation controls are gone and replaced by an easier way to transition between flight and hovering.
Also gone are the open environments. Smaller areas that can be destroyed replace the larger areas like those in the first game. Unfortunately, there isn’t much reason to fly around and explore or destroy the buildings in the area. When the mission says destroy stuff, you destroy stuff. When the mission says beat up bad guys, you beat up bad guys. There isn’t much in regards to “free play” in Iron Man 2; and I had truly hoped that wouldn’t be the case.
The other gameplay in Iron Man 2 wasn’t the greatest, but it wasn’t horrible. There were plenty of escort missions in which Iron Man had to keep the convoy safe. If it wasn’t an escort mission, it was a destruction mission. Those missions were of the sort in which you head to point A, destroy something, go to point B and destroy the same something there, so on and so forth until the mission was complete.
Although the gameplay was mediocre, there were some interesting aspects to the Iron Man 2 game. There were some really interesting boss battles, and part of that fun was playing as War Machine rather than Iron Man. Also, the weapon and suit upgrades helped give the game some play customization. It was fun figuring out suit upgrades and weapon combinations to use for different levels. Deciding whether or not to use Iron Man’s energy-based weaponry or War Machine’s ballistic-based weaponry also had some merit on gameplay. However, with only eight short (a few VERY short) levels, you don’t really get much of an opportunity to make the choice.
All things considered, Iron Man 2 wasn’t the best or worst game when it came to gameplay and missions. It was an average game, with average enemies. The story, however, was quite good. Written by Matt Fraction from Marvel Comics, the story revolves around an ex-employee of Stark Industries stealing a portion of Jarvis. I don’t want to give anything away, but the story was very entertaining and well worth a play through. Depending on the difficulty level you choose, that play through could take anywhere from 4-7 hours.
Lastly, I want to touch on the graphics of Iron Man 2. The first Iron Man game was absolutely beautiful. I loved the spectacular highlights on Iron Man, as well as the animations of different parts of his suit while flying. All of the “coolness” of how the original looked is gone in this version. The Iron Man suits in the second game are very flat and idle-looking. Nothing moves.
The characters in the game have very little life to them. The eyes move, the mouths move and there are body movements, but everything has a very stiff feeling. All of that and the added low-resolution clothing textures, everything came together looking like a third-year Xbox title.
Backgrounds weren’t much different than the characters in Iron Man 2, but there was movement. Textures popped in an out as the camera shifted. Mountains in the background shifted as the new textures loaded. The skybox was often painted with a low-resolution image that was rendered flat with the lighting in the scene.
To be completely honest, I was very excited about Iron Man 2. I expected a game that looked like the first but had better controls and was much more fun than the original. I played through Iron Man 2 and was entertained. I won’t be playing it again. However, playing the second game made me want to play the first again, which I found quite enjoyable. Of course, I am one of those rare individuals who liked the original game to begin with, but now the game seems even better.
