Iron Man review (PSP)

Unfortunately, indoors or out, Iron Man is not a pretty game. Enemy models and explosions are a half step above two-dimensional, and draw distances for bigger environments are woefully short. More attention was paid to Iron Man's various suits, but even those efforts were not very successful. The graphics are most effective when you're flying at high speeds, largely because that's the one time that the pervasive blurriness is actually a positive thing. The PSP visuals are crisper than those of the PS2, but the frame rate will often suffer when enemies are around. Given that enemies abound pretty much all the time, the action feels slower than it does on other platforms. With these visual and technical shortcomings, it's hard to feel like much of a superhero.

Iron Man sprinkles some variety into the combat mix in an effort to break up the constant hover-and-shoot action. Melee attacking certain vehicles will let you trigger a grapple attack, which rewards your button mashing with an amusingly destructive animation. This is fun to pull off a few times, but you'll soon slide back into halfheartedly dispatching foes with your projectile weaponry while they halfheartedly return fire.

Halfhearted pretty much sums up this version of Iron Man. Enough effort was put into the gameplay and graphical design to keep it from crashing and burning, but not enough to inject it with any sort of life or appeal. Superheroes are meant to inspire you to do great things, but Iron Man will barely inspire you to finish the game.