Previous Next

Different than the HD versions, but Sega is still 0 for 2 on good Iron Man games now.

Iron Man 2 for the Wii doesn't quite follow the storyline of the film, despite its name and strong tie to the film that released earlier this summer. Instead, it seems to pick up on threads from the film and carries over into a new storyline, involving the remnants of Hammer Industries being bought out by the Roxxon Corporation (a name that might be familiar to Spider-Man fans too), as they try to use the existing tech to supplement their own "Iron Man" program. Toss in a healthy dose of the no-good AIM group, a terrorist tech group in the comics, and you've got a recipe for disaster. Thankfully, Tony Stark and his buddies are ready to deal with the new threat, and that's where the game kicks off.

It's a shame then, that the gameplay doesn't match the fun and definitely comic-inspired plot of the actual game. This particular version of the game, developed by High Voltage Studio and standing a bit separate in style from the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game, attempts to cater to the Wii strengths, but generally falls short of doing anything interesting with either the motion control or pointer aspect that's offered up by the unique controls of the system. HVS is no stranger to the Wii either, they developed the somewhat well received Conduit FPS title last year, which didn't generate huge response with critics but did do a great job of giving players a whole lot of customization when it came to controls. Iron Man 2 doesn't quite match that, but there are some decent things you can fine tune in order to get your pointer control set-up the way you like.

The game is a third person action title, while the Conduit was an FPS; however there are points in the game where it feels like it could have transitioned into a first person shooter without much difficulty. The game feels a lot like a shooting gallery set-up wherein you can actually control your view, so you'll take on waves and waves of enemies, aim your on screen reticule at them, and fire away endless energy beams or missiles until the next batch roles your way. The enemies themselves are almost brain dead in how they react to danger, oftentimes not moving out of harm's way, unless they've already had the benefit of spawning behind some limited cover. You'll encounter a number of human enemies, both Roxxon agents' and yellow-clad AIM bad guys, but a good number of your encounters will involve robots of some sort. Humans are easy enough to take down with a couple blasts, but the robots tend to be damage sponges. The problem stems from them not being that much smarter than the humans, so while they take longer to kill, they don't pose much more of a threat. This makes a lot of the combat encounters tedious and boring, with little threat to Iron Man (or War Machine), which in turn takes some of the fun out of the game.

It also doesn't help that the level design is about as bland as the enemy encounters. You'll carry out missions in a variety of locales, but there's little difference between them to really make you think that you're in an actual real world setting. Building design seems the same from city to city, textures are pretty poor and grainy looking, and there's no other populace around other than the enemies you fight. There's little to interact with except for the occasional destructible object, which seems really random at times. Sometimes you can blow up a car or truck, or maybe a monitor, but oftentimes you'll run into similar objects that can't be destroyed. Why one computer is different from the other is beyond me, and it doesn't really help when it comes to feeling immersed within the game world. Especially with characters that are brimming with artillery, I really feel like Iron Man and War Machine should make some type of physical impact to the world around them when they're firing off salvo's of missiles at everything around them, but that sense of realism is really lacking here. I'm sure it's more of a hardware limitation than anything, but I found it disappointing nonetheless.

Another letdown in the game comes from the various tasks laid out before you in each mission. Oftentimes you'll just be going from waypoint to waypoint, displayed via a direction bar at the top of the screen. Arriving at your destination might spawn a number of enemies to fight off, which in turn will give you your next waypoint upon defeating them. Sometimes, however, you'll be tasked with finding hostages, which have some hilarious looking animations when you save them (but they never run away!), or you'll need to hack into a system, which gives way to the only "mini-game" the game possess. If you need to hack into something, you'll get a grid in the shape of a honeycomb set-up that features a number of dials to turn around with different symbols on each end. You need to match these symbols together to form a solid pattern, which in turn "hacks" the system. It gets tougher as the game progresses, but this is the only hacking mini-game, and because of that you'll get pretty bored with the novelty of it by the time the game ends.

Finally, there's an upgrade system in place for both Iron Man and War Machine. Completing certain objectives or finding a number of Tech Trophies within a stage will net you experience points that can be spent on the different sub-systems of each hero. These upgrades can provide targeting, health, or weapon bonuses as you upgrade, and there is a pretty big variety to check out. That said, I found the descriptions of what these upgrades do in the game to be a little on the vague side, and while some benefits were obvious, like shield recharges, there were a few that I literally wasn't sure what they changed. A little more explanation or feedback on what these upgrades did to the gameplay would have been nice to see.

On the whole, I feel like this game falls into that typical movie tie-in slump that a lot of licensed film games do, and while I haven't played the PS3 and 360 versions of the game, I will say that I thought the Wii game was disappointing at best. The controls aren't problematic, which is the best thing I can say and something that should be expected coming from High Voltage, but everything else about the game just screams quick movie cash-in. I imagine there are a lot of elements here that are out of the developer's hands, like the storyline, limited cut scenes, mostly awful voice acting, and a few other elements, but I really think a concentrated effort could be put forth with Iron Man as a character to make a really fun action game. That game doesn't seem to exist just yet though, so even if you're a big fan of the movie or comic, I'd suggest avoiding this particular release.