Iron Man - Xbox 360 (360), Playstation 3 (PS3) Previews


	Platform 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PC, DS, PSP Genre Action Publisher Sega Developer Sega ETA Spring 2008
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Iron Man

It stuns me a little that a game like Iron Man -- that showed well at E3 -- doesn't have any screenshots available. I'm sure it has probably has something to do with an exclusive print preview. Whatever the reason, all we have to show of Iron Man is a brushed pic of the Iron Man suit that will be featured in the upcoming film (on which the game is based). This is not indicative of what I actually saw during the demo, even though I thought the game was looking pretty good. *July 27, 2007 - Concept art has been released. See below*

Superhero games really have exploded the last few years – I think it’s because the technology has finally caught up them. The Sega Genesis game Spider-Man vs. Kingpin can’t hold a candle to the latest Spidey game on this-gen consoles. This is great news because all those lesser known Marvel characters – if you could call Iron Man “lesser known” – a chance to shine.

Coming from Sega, Iron Man promises to deliver “thrilling sequences from the film” and will immerse “the player in . . . explosive militaristic combat with loads of additional content created exclusively for the game.” Even just watching the one level demo at E3 it cemented in my mind that I’ll have to play this when comes out alongside the movie next Spring (2008). Iron Man is also coming to handhelds but the demo shown appeared to be running on Xbox 360.

I was impressed by the demo – even with a year of development left Iron Man looked good. Switching from on-foot combat to flying through the air was

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absolutely seamless (just a push of a button it seemed) and the area that was shown – a snowy mountainous range – was large enough to be impressive in the way everything streamed into being, even when flying really fast. But Iron Man (a.k.a billion dollar industrialist Tony Stark) is not just about flying, pulling barrel rolls to avoid incoming fire and grabbing missiles and hurling them back when

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they can’t be avoided. Combat was shown in a limited way. From the air, Iron Man shoots with his repulsors and chest beam, while on foot he goes toe-to-tread with tanks. (It reminded me a little of the way The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction handled.)

Sega will obviously “handcuffed” to some extent because so much of the source material comes from the movie, including Iron Man’s armored suit, but the developers weren’t revealing anything more than “A lot of us are Iron Man fans.” (Actually, most of the questions were answered vaguely and with the classic, “We can’t talk about that right now.”)

Presumably the developers will approach the property in the manner that most of the recent superhero games have followed: alternate costumes, classic Iron Man villains, one or two cameos (War Machine, please), collectibles throughout each area, while touching critical points that are presented in the movie.

During the demo I didn’t even ask if the movie actors would be reprising their roles for the game, but given the last exposure we had to screen actors lending their voices to their digital counterparts – Spider-Man 3, ahem, – it might not be so bad if they weren’t included. Having Robert Downey Jr. reprise his role as Tony Stark / Iron Man might lend a note of authenticity to the character though since both have had their battles with substance abuse.

Many unanswered questions remain and we’ll have to wait nearly an entire year to find out the answers to all of them. Chief among those will gamers be able to tackle Tony Stark’s toughest opponent? I don’t think alcoholism has ever been fought in a game – that could be cool.

- Omni

(July 25, 2007)