UFC 2010: Undisputed

Once upon a time there was a little boy in Las Vegas named Dana, and this boy had great dreams. “One day, I’m going to be the bravest bald man alive. And god do I hate that Tito kid!” So he worked, and struggled, and toiled, and knew some people who owned some casinos, and they bought a strange organization called Ultimate Fighting Championship. And through a combination of blood, sweat and tweets, he transformed this small haven of underground boring Royce Gracie fights to a mainstream epicenter of boring Anderson Silva fights. And now they make a stupid amount of money on UFC merchandise, run twenty-hundred UFC shows a year and now have an annual video game.

THQ and Yukes, whom somehow made a vastly superior Mixed Martial Arts game on their first try than their tenth annual wrestling game, return for UFC Undisputed 2: More Undisputed Than Ever. The good news is that most flaws that may have, errr, disputed UFC Undisputed’s gameplay have been addressed. The bad news is that Fedor Emelianenko’s people still make ridiculous demands that keep him from fighting in the UFC. And I guess the game has flaws too.

Career mode, for example, has seemingly been improved and scaled back, in a manner that reminds me of past career mode failures in the Smackdown vs Raw series. Menus have been streamlined and load times scaled back, meaning the downtime between fights is reduced and you are less pre-occupied with reading e-mails and having boring sparring sessions. The bad news is that your stats manipulate themselves in a strange fashion; whatever stats you don’t invest points in will actually regress over time, forcing you to carefully spread points earned in training sessions over 16(!) different attribute bars. This kind of bizarre micromanagement wore me out on career mode, and slowed down what was already a rather lengthy process of turning a shlump kid who gets picked last in school dodgeball into the next generic tattooed fighting sensation.

Just like in last year’s game, though, the upside to Undisputed is that the game so accurately recreates each fighter that you don’t need Career mode. You can just as easily amuse yourself through piecing together one dream match together. For example, you can virtually tell Lyoto Machida and Anderson Silva to stop being BFFs and fight each other in a conflict that could shatter televisions across the nation from the sheer weight of boredom should such a fight occur. You don’t even need to look at those 16 bars, either; a regular UFC fan can have the faith that each fighter is true to form and can base your in-game strategies on real life tactics. You can assume, for example, that you don’t want to let Jon Fitch take you down and hump you to tears.

And just like in last year’s game, the gameplay is an accurate recreation of Mixed Martial Arts…is what the marketing taglines might say. This game doesn’t quite reflect the sport so much as depicts what Dana White wishes MMA would be. Any given virtual fight will have both fighters throwing a trillion punches back and forth, the kind of brawls that make the Sports Legacy Institute wince with terror. Even the ground game features both fighters constantly squiggling for positions like two angry wrestling earthworms. Mind you, I shall not complain, for I’d rather be entertained than have virtual Tito Ortiz lay and sleep on my arse. I’ve had one fight go to the judge’s decision in my entire play time, and it was an Ultimate Fights Challenge with said Huntington Beach Bad Boy. However, he did not cite his cracked skull or other injuries as reason for defeat.

Speaking of, Ultimate Fights did become my single-player experience of choice. The player is given the chance to recreate a famous past encounter as the winner or loser, and a list of optional goals like “score three takedowns” or “endure Joe Rogan’s stand-up comedy.” (Fortunately not a real goal.) Each fight is given an introduction by one of the UFC ring girls; beautiful ladies with the charisma of bricks. Afterwards, the actual pre-fight promo video plays, and it’s hard to not get amped up for your digital encounter after hearing the real life dude lay the virtual trash talk. It’s a seemingly small detail that just does wonders to get me excited about an upcoming battle.

Other new features include a more easy-to-comprehend clinch system that mirrors the ground game’s right analog stick squirming system, and no more mashing buttons for submissions. New to the list of fighters in 2010 are Dan Hardy’s mohawk, Shane Carwin’s receding hairline and Kimbo Slice’s beard. Savor this one folks, because Kimbo may not appear in another UFC game again. For whatever reason (perhaps discrimination against obesity) TUF 10 alumni Roy Nelson is only available as pre-order bonus. The Playstation 3 version of the game gets exclusive dibs on fighting legends like Royce Gracie and Dan Severn, as well as such minor events as Lesnar/Mir 2 and St Pierre/Penn 2 in their entirety. (Brock’s post-fight line about Coors Light was tragically edited out.) Why they’re PS3 exclusive, I don’t know. To make up for the lousy online servers?

About the online play then. In theory, fighting other Sherdog message board hounds that think they know anything about MMA is still the main attraction here. You can now join camps, which sound like ranked clans of sort, and I guess it’s a neat idea. A neat idea I’ll never try in practice on account of broke friends and my renting this game, but alas. The netcode is a pain, or at least it’s a pain in Canada on the PS3 version (just like it is with the Smackdown games), where matchmaking always scrambles under pressure and it takes many, many minutes staring at the background video of random fight clips before I found a challenger. Mind you, the game rarely lags when you do start a session, but these were problems I never endured when I played last year’s game on the Xbox 360.

Also, a note on this Octagon pass code business. I’m not entirely adverse to the concept of one-time use codes, but I was the first person to rent this specific copy of this game, and it will forever deck my conscience knowing I robbed a future fight fan of the online experience. And that there is a one-time-use code is poorly advertised; the player whom attempts starts an online game will be transported to the PSN Store and asked to spend additional money, rather than use the code on the back on the manual. Much like Paul Daley’s tactics in his fight with Josh Koscheck, that can’t be legal.

Oh, that introductory cutscene is a laugh. It’s the game’s original trailer, with the fighters talking tough and morphing into each other. I couldn’t help but chuckle as Tito Ortiz’s massive chin morphed into formation.

If you didn’t already own a UFC game before, than Undisputed is the one to buy, if through default. With all due respect to the people working on EA Sports MMA, I have no desire to ever look at a digital Jake Shields, so this is the game to stick with. But the decision to upgrade from last year’s model may be difficult, and depends entirely on how enthusiastic you were about the previous game. Anything less than a strong passion for digitally plucking at Kimbo’s beard may not be motivation enough to make the purchase.

3 ½ stars

Red Dead Redemption

Red Dead Revolver was a modest action-shooter-game-thingy released on last generation’s consoles in 2004. I’d best describe it as an unorthodox spaghetti-western game with strange controls and a cast of cowboy archetypes that had the benefit of stylish load screens and trumpet-fueled music music. Red Dead Revolver is the non-sequel to 2010’s Red Dead Redemption, and quite frankly you will not hear the name of the former game in this text review again on account to how little in common the two western games have.

No, Red Dead Redemption is less the sequel to that western game than it is the prequel to Grand Theft Auto 4. It would not surprise me to find that I accidentally shot up Brucie’s ancestor in after an arm-wrestling match in Mexico gone wrong.

In Grand Theft Auto 4, you play as a former soldier, transplanted from his home to hunt down a former colleague or colleagues that betrayed you. Your attempts to approach things in an honest, law-abiding manner fail, both because the characters around you are decidedly immoral and because gamers hate abiding by laws. So, you will have to indulge in legally-questionable activities (often involving loss of life) to find your former allies, and do a lot of civilian killing and television-watching if you so desired.

In Red Dead Redemption, you play as a former outlaw, transplanted from his home to hunt down a former colleague or colleagues that betrayed you. Your attempts to approach things in an honest, law-abiding manner fail, both because the characters around you are decidedly immoral and because gamers hate abiding by laws. So, you will have to indulge in legally-questionable activities (often involving loss of life) to find your former allies, and do a lot of civilian killing and cinema-watching if you so desired.

Honestly the biggest difference between Redemption and Grand Theft Auto 4 may be the lack of a sidewalk to veer off on, making it harder to accidentally rack up a Wanted level through reckless abandon. But all things considered, Grand Theft Auto 4 is not a bad mold to be borrowing for your sandbox concept, and Red Dead Redemption successfully plays to most of GTA’s strengths, sometimes even to greater ability.

For example, protagonist John Marston is effective in his role of Hillbilly Bellic. He’s got the same strengths and weaknesses as unrelated cousin Niko: he oozes sarcasm like a leaky barrel oozes rum, he sees through the insanity of the game’s sleazeball characters and he presents himself a respectable, moral-driven man. He does have that same problem Niko had in that all the cutscenes of him defending women and resenting his criminal past do nothing to stop would-be players from tossing a prostitute down a flight of stairs. And he also has that same gullible streak of bending over backwards for every single individual that claims to have “information.” It becomes a bit pathetic to watch the man so willingly slay armies of goons and make large sums of money for certain people because they claim to know something about his targets. Your employers include a variety of western-oriented GTA-castoffs, from the shady snake oil salesman to one or two drunkards, lending the first third of the game a friendly tinge of dark humour.

Then John takes a trip to Mexico, aka the no-fun-zone. The light-hearted parody of criminals fades in favor of a story about corrupt Mexican government battling corrupt Mexican revolutionaries. But now I’m getting ahead of myself. Perhaps the biggest issue with Red Dead Redemption is that the pacing is rather uneven; you have the obligatory hour-plus of tutorial missions that Grand Theft Auto 4 subjected players to. Heaven forbid, you can’t go catching criminals without first learning how to herd cattle. Then there’s a rising build of drama leading towards your hunt of certain outlaws, and as you finally reach the end of that story arc…you conveniently remember about the leader of your former gang and begin a new quest to hunt him down. After that storyline hits a second peak, there’s another hour of drab, dénouement-oriented missions before the game hits its third climax and the campaign ends. (Actually, once the campaign ends, there’s a side mission you can complete that truly wraps up the plot and brings forth end credits and closure.) I shan’t spoil anymore, but I will justify the game in saying that the peaks of the game’s story are indeed interesting and the endgame is an inspiring twist for the sandbox genre.

Like Grand Theft Auto, it also helps that there is a decent variety of missions to complete. Mind you, there is nothing that compares to the creative odysseys of challenges in GTA4 or San Andreas; you won’t sign up to a gay online dating site to assassinate someone or break in Area 51 to steal a jetpack. But the game at least comes up with a reasonable number of variations on “attack the enemy base” and “fight off the enemies chasing you”, gradually introducing new gameplay mechanics at a humane pace. Most of the action comprises of duck-and-cover based shooting that has since become more the norm in video games than jumping on enemy heads. But the combination of the lack of automatic weapons in the 1900s and the typical outlaw’s poor nutrition makes gun combat a quick, blunt, satisfying affair; it typically takes two shots from your coarse rifles to take down any number of enemies. Unoriginal as it may be, gunning down large swarms of outlaws is more entertaining here than in the likes of Uncharted or Grand Theft Auto or even Gears of War.

Then you have Dead Eye, the one single holdover from Red Dead Re…I mean every western game from the last 6 years. Here, time slows down, allowing you to pick individual shots off several targets at once. The immediate logical use seems for Dead Eye would be to clear out a room of baddies, but I rather enjoy the more oddball purposes; such as sniping birds out of the sky, or blowing the firearm out of an enemy’s hands. As cathartic as virtual murder can be, I found greater enjoyment in disarming an enemy, then tying them up with the lasso, throwing them on the back of the horse and riding to the sheriff as they make assorted vows of violence. An assortment of the game’s side missions offer better rewards for bringing in outlaws alive and as a means of defying the sandbox genre’s typical pro-death message, I was happy to oblige.

Which brings forth the point that Red Dead Redemption is not a game with a want for more to do. At any given point, you can divulge in a bevy of side quests, many with their own story arc. Or you can hunt for bounties, take part in the neighbourhood watch (which is similar to a real-life neighbourhood watch, but with guns), gamble, go hunting, herd cattle, break in horses, raid gang hideouts, search for treasure or get drunk and engage in the most hilarious drunkard physics in gaming to date. Seriously, the bar from Grand Theft Auto 4 has been raised in the field of getting your character plastered and tripping over stairs.

The most interesting missions are the ones you don’t even know about; the game has a funny habit of throwing random events at you. Bandits may raid the town, strangers challenge you to duels, someone throws the idea of robbing a bank in your head, wild animals appear, or the most common of all; the hooker being abused. The town of Armadillo has no respect for women. You can elect to ignore these events, or take action for the name of boosting your fame and honour. “Honour” is the obligatory good vs bad morality system that nigh every other game must feature, but Redemption smartly uses this in a passive manner, rather than forcing it down your throat the way titles like Imfamous or that last Spiderman game did. “Honour” is merely a reflection of how the people around you react; civilians may hate a scoundrel whom also earns the respect of fellow outlaws with poor dental hygiene, for example. In turn, this feels like a smarter use; enforcing the idea that you the player are in a breathing world that knows you exist and responds accordingly.

There are also a few odd quirks and strange features that hold back the experience; you’ll run into a handful of bugs and glitches; one sidequest cutscene is acted out by two talking, invisible figures, one pulling a con on the other, and their lack of errmm…presence made it hard to figure out what was going on or who I’m supposed to lasso. Another instance saw a herded cow fly off the face of the planet, Earthworm Jim-style, never to be seen until I rebooted my last save. I also wish the game’s quick-travel system was a tad less finicky at times. To quick-travel to a location, you must first start a fire and set up camp, which I presume is illegal to do in the middle of a town square or on a near a lake for whatever reason. I get that the game wants you to always take the scenic route and appreciate all the effort the developers put into their wild rabbit animations, or that the stagecoach drivers need income too. I don’t care. When I have the urge to gun down rustlers, I want those rustlers in front of my Winchester rifle now.

Finally, a note on the multiplayer; you can elect to play in ranked matches, which distill the experience into your basic deathmatch/team deathmatch/capture the flag variants. Likewise, a standard online session merely drops challenges, shoot each other, shoot the locals, gang up to shoot the locals and likewise. Playing this mode with strangers is kind of pointless, being that strangers will just mind their own business and take a dump or two in the woods. But as a means to goof off with a group of online buddies eager to exercise the second amendment, this mode is tops.

The cop-out final summary sentence for Red Dead Redemption is “if you like Grand Theft Auto 4, you’ll like this game.” True as it is, this game at least deserves credit for other successes. It’s the first western game that feels like a western game and not the mod of a more popular third of first person shooter. And for all intents and purposes, it may be the most “successful” sandbox game I’ve ever played. What I mean is that it’s the game that best leaves me feel like part of a virtual world in which I have true interaction with. Not in the canned “do this mission to free this percent of town from criminals” structure of Infamous or the virtual playground of cathartic death of Grand Theft Auto, but rather a living, breathing world that you can soak in the scenery and engage in activities befitting a cowboy-person-guy. And finally, this is the first real contender for the best game of 2010.

4 ½ stars

Final Fantasy 13...finally

Final Fantasy 13 has had a highly positive effect on my life. I found myself studying more diligently for finals, effectively boosting my grades to honour-roll levels. I spend more time exercising, socializing with friends and family, and dating a lovely lady (insert winking smiley face) thanks to Final Fantasy 13. The reason being that the disc for Final Fantasy 13 sits there, begging to be played, and the part of me that puts the guilt trip for spending $70 on the game is demanding I finish it before moving on to another game. But the other part of me just refuses to torture myself with a title that punishes me so. So as a deterrent to gaming, Final Fantasy 13 is great!

As you’d guess from this unlikely revelation, Final Fantasy 13 is lousy as a form of entertainment. There are many reasons why. Let us start with the plot. Here is a base summary.

“There is a city encapsulated in a sphere, sheltering itself from the outside world and viewing all foreigners as terroristic monsters. Within both the city and outside world are god-like figures that curse random citizens with a destiny. Feared by the general public, these citizens must either complete their assigned task and become crystallized in peaceful slumber or fail and become hideous monsters. A random group of colourful characters are brought together and cursed by said gods and must attempt to break the curse.”

I challenged myself to summarize the background of the game’s universe and plot in the simplest means possible, as a way of defying the game. Final Fantasy 13 does an outright terrible job explaining its fiction. This franchise has a history of using abstract naming conventions for characters, settings and ideas and FF13 raises the bar in the field of confusing terminology. Why is a destiny called a “Focus”? Why is the outside world labeled under the sweeping term of “Pulse”? The game doesn’t make an attempt to explain these terms for hours, asking the player to read some datapad/codex/thingy so they can be brought up to speed. In turn, the player is spited at the 6 or 7 hour mark when the game finally decides to tell you what it means to be a L’Cie, for example. This is a very badly-paced plot.

Which is a shame, because there are some good ideas buried somewhere within the game. Even if past Final Fantasy games have beaten religious and nationalist themes to death in the past, there’s at least somewhat of a creative angle here. And there are likable characters such as the perpetually jaded Sazh and the perpetually fist-pumped Snow, but their charm is squandered in a wave of dialogue, riddled with the game’s own lingo. All I ever hear is “Fal’cie-this, Cocoon-that”, and even knowing the terminology, I felt like I’ve been bombarded with one cutscene after another that existed for no reason other than for the sake of existing. Final Fantasy 13 feels more drawn out than the negotiations for a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight.

And don’t get me started on Vanille. This woman does not think; she merely speaks what random thoughts enter her mind. Had she not wielded a magic whip, she would not survive South Central Los Angeles at night. And even then the leather whip will give people the wrong idea.

There seems to be two reoccurring themes in Final Fantasy 13. Either the game is trying to overcomplicate matters, or thoroughly distill them. The combat system, for example, can be rather convoluted if you so choose it to be. There are tomes worth of spells and attacks to learn and use in combat. The idea here is that characters are meant to use attacks in combinations, with some combinations working more effectively than others. What combinations work best against what enemies…I can’t be made to figure out. How should I know if Fire and Blitz works better as an attack than Blitz and Attack, for example. So instead, I opted for the more user-friendly “auto-battle” option, where you just take the game’s word that it’ll pick the correct offensive madness. It’s like Manual Transmission in racing games; it’s there for purists, but why wouldn’t I want the streamlined approach? Because of the Auto-Battle optionm most of my battles consisted of my mashing of the X button repeatedly. How ironic that, in attempting to stray from JRPG conventions with its combat system, Final Fantasy 13 embraces a common JRPG stereotype.

The other issue with the combat in the game is that the game both gives and takes away a considerable amount of control to the player. On one hand, you can only control the actions of the party leader. On the other, each character has multiple character classes, like “Ravager”, “Sentinel” and “Synergist”, which are of course needlessly complex ways of saying attacker, tank and buffer. The game allows players to control the general ebb and flow of battle by changing to different combinations of character classes to dictate different needs, whether it’s full offense or recovering from an ass-whooping. However, the partner AI leaves a bit to be desired; if an AI is the “Synergist”, the buffer, they’ll cast all their buffs on a single person rather than spread the necessary, life-saving wealth around. Likewise, you’ll want your character to be an attacking class, not just because casting buffing spells is not manly enough for you, as your attacks dictate which adversary the party focuses their efforts on. It’s a very strange system that takes too much control out of the player’s hands for no reason other than to needlessly complicate the game.

The way the game handles upgrades is also worded in a matter that makes it seem more complex than it really is. There are a great amount of strange lingo that go into the “Crystarium” system, which is best described as Final Fantasy 10’s sphere grid in High Definition. There is somewhat more depth in being able to level-up separate jobs per character, but the process of booting up and making tweaks to an individual character is slow and bothersome, further damaging the game’s uneventful pace. You can also upgrade each character’s weapons by breaking down items found in the game world, a system I’ve never been a big fan of. I’ve always been scared to death of investing all my resources into a single sword, only to stumble across a bigger sword, for example.

And when you’re not fighting assorted throngs of colourful enemies that underwent a strange evolution (like the tribal-dancing birds…Darwinism in Pulse is a mystery) or fumbling through menus, you are… not really doing much of anything. Someone at Square-Enix decided that silly little details like shops, NPCs and interactive objects were unnecessary and distilled them from the experience. Within the game world, the player can only truly interact with treasure chests and a computer that handles all your saving and shopping needs. After all, we are the generation that communicates, surfs the web, reads, writes and makes farting sound effects with one IPhone. Otherwise, the world is but an empty, single corridor that the player must walk forward on, dueling with whatever monsters enter their path. The world, as visually appeasing as it looks, feels empty and confining, rather than inspiring and alive. And you feel like you are merely walking from one cutscene to the next. Again, in seeking change from the norm, Final Fantasy 13 embraces more of the genre’s stereotypes.

The constant murmurs I’ve heard in the past were that Final Fantasy 13 does get better at a specific point. At the 25-hour mark, the strictly linear paths go away and the player is allowed to explore a sprawling field in any direction they so desire. I did reach that point, inevitably, long since fatigued by the first 25 hours of punishment. But once I found this field of dreams, I ceased to care. All that awaited me were more loosely-controlled battles and more cutscenes with worse-spoken English than Metal Gear Solid 4 (and that’s a huge insult.) At the 28 hour mark, at a difficult boss that no strategy that my Auto-Battle-weaned mind could figure out, I gave up. I tapped out. Threw in the towel. No more Final Fantasy 13, please.

The game isn’t completely without redeeming qualities that would warrant attention from the most devout of JRPG fans; the art style, unorthodox as ever, is still flashy. The fights have a frenetic feel to them, as characters unleash bombastic magic attacks at a quick pace, littering the screen with shiny explosions. The CG cutscenes are ideal for showing off that sweet new flatscreen TV you’ve just hauled home. The orchestral soundtrack is the kind of sweeping affair you’d expect from Final Fantasy. So this game does hit all the right aesthetic notes, if that’s what you value in a video game.

But as virtual entertainment, it’s the biggest letdown of 2010 thus far. The story is terribly paced, the combat is unstable and the game feels very non-interactive and dead. If you’re looking to enjoy yourself playing a video game, this is not the title for you. This is a game that wants to be looked at; to be appreciated for its appearance over its substance. In that regard, Final Fantasy 13 is the Snooki of video games.

3 stars

Unrelated to Final Fantasy 13 – how the hell do people side with Manny Pacquaio? He is refusing to fight Floyd Mayweather because Floyd wants drug testing…and Floyd is the villain? What is wrong with the media? Hell, why is Larry Freaking Merchant condoning drug use in claiming Mayweather is unfair?

Iron Man 2

It’s not morally ethical to mock death, it seems. Even if it sounds ridiculous to hear of someone passing on for licking a lightning rod, there’s still the tragedy that a human lost life, so I don’t know if I’m allowed to call out that person for the buffoon he was. Such is the predicament that comes when a game developer closes down before their game is released. It’s happened with Pandemic and The Saboteur, and now it’s happening with Sega’s San Francisco Studio and Iron Man 2. A lot of probably great, hard-working citizens lost their jobs in the studio closures. Thus, I feel like I would be vilified for holding the developers accountable for the final product sucking the dog’s bollocks. And unlike Pandemic, Sega Studios San Francisco (originally Secret Level Games) did have a lousy track record with a shoddy Golden Axe remake, so is it a bad thing to say these guys might be at fault for their own demise?

Besides, what kind of name is “Secret Level Games” anyways? What is their mission statement, “To enter the warp pipe of the player’s heart”? Curious, I dug up their website and found that they are actively seeking a senior gameplay programmer. Apply today.

The Iron Man 2 video game has little to do with the movie. Don Cheadle is in it, looking scary as all hell, perhaps the biggest victim of the uncanny valley in gaming history. Samuel L Jackson is also in there as Nick Fury, making me yearn to play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas again. Someone that looks like Robery Downey Jr but sounds distinctly more nasal is in the game as well. Sadly there is no digital Mickey Rourke for this game is not worthy of such an honour. Rather, the plot is built around some evil businessman and the president of Russia (no joke) building their own Ultimo. And said Ultimo lives up to his long time gimmick of being the evil robot that betrays whatever tried creating him, so it’s Iron Man and War Machine to the rescue. The plot is standard comic fare, though some poorly-edited cutscenes provide the odd moment of unintentional humour. One particularly great moment has what I can only describe as all of the main characters together spouting one random exclamation and phrases after another and at least one person has what I think is a heart attack in the process. And another near the end of the game features a simulation of detonating Legos in an explosion worthy of the Playstation 1. Metal Gear Solid 4 this is not. In fact this game may have occasional moments of worse English than Metal Gear Solid 4.

You can choose (most of the time) to play as Iron Man or War Machine. But being as you can outfit each of them with similar weapons anyways, the core difference seems to be which one you’d want to spook children with. Once you hop into a mission, you face the dire task of wrapping your mind around the game’s unorthodox controls. Nigh every button on the controller is used for something important, from flight control to weapons, and I feel as if this game was designed on an imaginary controller with 10 shoulder buttons. I was particularly annoyed when a mission-specific superpower (like Iron Man’s temporary “I AM IRON MAN” invincibility or War Machine’s temporary “I AM WAR MACHINE” weapon’s power up became available,) because the same Xbox 360 d-pad that activates it also scrolls between weapons. This game needs recognize that I’ll always want to use Tony’s hand lasers, and switching otherwise is killing my Iron Buzz. But once you wrap your mind around the bizarre control scheme, the game at least succeeds at making you feel like you are Iron Man (or his lackey, in Rhodey’s case). You fly, hover, shoot things and execute canned combos like one would expect Iron Man to. This is very much the closest we’ve gotten to virtual Iron Man since that unlikely-yet-so-sleek-looking Game Boy Advance game.

And once you comprehend the finer points of playing like Iron Man, you’ll realize that a superhero’s job really isn’t as amusing as you would hope. The vast majority of the game’s missions feature some kind of escort or protect concept, always a chore in gaming to begin with. It seems like the ships and people of SHIELD are well in over their heads when it comes to fighting the forces of evil and need your aid. Most vehicles or people will have a third of their health chip away if you allow so much as a single missile barrage past your watch. Thus, the best course of defense is to fly directly in front of a barrage of missiles like the suicidal millionaire you are and use a specific deflection counter-attack. Bear in mind that the enemy knows that Tony Stark has a missile deflection technique and responds by sending several smaller enemies to melee attack you. You see, the enemy as attempting to exploit the bit of code in the game that states “when an enemy punches you, the game gives that enemy your undivided attention; time slows down, the camera refocuses and you are forced to counter with a canned combo of its own, abandoning any prior targets you were trying to protect your friends from.” Hence the protection missions becomes very frustrating very fast, and the game has a hearty load of them.

Between missions, the player is given the chance to use points earned in battle on upgrades. And my the upgrade system is considerably unwieldy. The game attempts to go more elaborate than the normal “this upgrade makes your attacks stronger” by offering different ammunition types and modules to purchase. Then it gives the player four different versions of each of the game’s weapons that you can, in theory, load out with different modules and ammo. Trying to wrap your mind around what all this fictional science means is a bit of a long process, and while it may not be much an obstacle for people used to old Mechwarrior games, normal folk who struggle with setting the microwave clock are in for a cold learning process. And why do we need four different versions of each weapon? Most weapons are only compatible with a select few set of mods anyways. The laser weapons in particular seem to be only willing to accept one other ammo type, so why have four of them? This is just another example of a game making things more complex than need be. And children are going to be playing this too, eh?

The comedy of errors continues. People always joke about how absurd ragdoll physics can be, often forgetting how even more absurd things can be without them. Your typical death animation consists of floating in the air for a few seconds, being hung by the invisible rope before crumbling on the floor. The game really has all of three boss fights and I feel no shame spoiling them. You’ll battle against Crimson Dynamo, the Russian villain in an Iron Man suit (and I feel like there’s at least six of those in the Marvel universe.) His attacks include a series of short range explosions and swipes that he’ll randomly attempt, even if you’re a mile away, listening to AC/DC in a Hummer with the troops. His other attack can only be described as the Colossus Grab from Marvel vs Capcom 2; maybe it’s some common Russian Sambo tactic. His version has homing capabilities; as he lunges at you slowly, from a mile away. And yet this goofy reach attack is nyet impossible to dodge. It’s almost funny how slow-paced and yet almost-inescapable this dashing heroic reach technique can be.

There’s also a specific spider tank boss that you’ll fight about 5 or 6 times, with a hearty amount of time spent widdling away at his mighty health bar. Later, in what can either be called a plot swerve or an attempt to reuse as many in-game assets as possible, a spider tank joins your team and you must guide in…yep, an escort mission. Then there’s that final battle with a giant, hulking Ultimo, which could perhaps be considered a memorable battle in regards to scope, even if the friggin commercial spoils it.

If you are wondering why this review is up so soon, well I’m surprised too. This game is very short, about 4-5 hours long. And that is with a considerable amount of filler; two back-to-back levels (both protection missions of course) take place on the same locale, defending Officer Tenpenny’s warship from incoming Grove Street Families. With the numerous protection missions, this game does feels padded out in length.

The best compliment I can give to Iron Man 2 is that it is a good deal more enjoyable than the first Iron Man video game that Secret Level made. But that statement merely refers to the upgrade from “unplayable” to “playable.” Maybe another year in development could’ve turned this into something special. But the current game feels grossly undercooked. It’s not dreadful, but is not particularly fun either. This game isn’t really worth the $10 rental, to be honest.

2 ½ stars