In its most memorable moments, Camouflaj's PlayStation VR-exclusive Iron Man VR is a wonderful showcase of virtual reality gaming at its best. An early battle against enemies around a fatally damaged Stark plane, with Pepper Potts aboard, is hurtling towards terra firma; zooming between skyscrapers in Shanghai while taking out tanks and gravity mines; flying around the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier before a head to head with Nick Fury: these are magical scenes where technology meets fantasy fufillment in a wonderfully unique way. There's no other medium that can give you this.
But Iron Man VR isn't just these moments. It's also training missions that can eat up too much time and make you feel everything but super. It's also storyline-centric sub-chapters where Tony Stark speaks with a purple holographic F.R.I.D.A.Y., or the new-to-this-game Gunsmith (at least I think he's new to this game; Marvel super-fans, feel free to correct me), an AI version of Stark himself with an appetite for destruction, which are way too gimmicky. It's also loading screen, after loading screen, after loading screen, snapping you right out of the flow of the adventure.
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So while Iron Man VR does the fly-around-and-shoot-things stuff very well - i.e. the gameplay that you want from a game like this - those sequences are broken up by a little too much staring at either relatively static environments, or at percentage figures slowing rising to 100. Add to this peaking and troughing of excitement some other minor headaches - it's way too easy to accidentally boost when you're trying to fly with precision; sharp turns are only possible by pressing a button to instantly snap to another perspective; and if you forget what button does what on the PlayStation Move controller, there's no pause-menu guide to help you out - and the end result isn't quite the experience you might have hoped for.
The game's story, too, is rather on the weak side in comparison to other comic-based games of recent history, such as Marvel's Spider-Man and Batman: Arkham Knight (which, as we argue here, is one of the best Batman stories ever told). The main antagonist is Ghost, hacker extraordinaire, and in this instance based on the character we see in the Ant-Man and the Wasp movie rather than the Marvel comics. She's dredging up Stark's past as a weapons manufacturer, which rather retreads ground we've seen well-walked already in cinemas, but it's fine. Also along for the ride is another historical Iron Man adversary, the Living Laser, but his involvement is only ever supplementary.
All the story and the characters have to do, though, is carry the USP of Iron Man VR - that zipping around in free 360-degree flight, shooting down nasties and being heroic. While the picking-things-up-in-VR-and-looking-at-them gimmicks of this platform remain in the quiet, Stark mansion sections - oh, an apple... and I can eat it... what a concept - the place-hands-here yanking out of wires and righting of bent wings (etc) in the action-orientated gameplay doesn't really get all that tiresome. Repetitive? A bit, sure. But when it's fun to do it, it's less of a problem.
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What is a problem is how repetitive the environments can be - in particular Shanghai. On our first visit, the low-detail high-rises can be somewhat overlooked as the combat and flight takes centre stage. But when Stark returns there, to kind of go through the same processes again, it feels cheap - and that's when you see that it looks cheap, too. Virtual reality games on PlayStation 4 obviously cannot match the visual punch of standard releases for the console, but there's no denying that if you take a second to really look at what you're flying around, it's often pretty poor.
Iron Man's signature weapons are intact and yours to play with as you wish - his palm-set repulsor rays can deal damage to weaker mechanical enemies, smart missiles can lock onto a few targets at once, and the Unibeam (when charged, by destroying drones) is a devastating option for when you're feeling a little overwhelmed.
You can also 'rocket punch' enemies - but in my experience, outside of training demands, I hardly ever used this - it's just more fun to pew pew pew the baddies, rather than get up close and whack them. It is handy for dealing damage to ground-based opponents, though, as you can slam down on top of them and then boost clear to safety. Weapons can be upgraded at the Stark mansion, and two loadouts customised for quick switching.
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Iron Man VR isn't a 'full-price' experience by any means, and its RRP reflects this - it's a penny under thirty pounds on Amazon at the time of writing. And that's really reflected in what you get: a handful of absolutely sensational, wholly immersive, heart-pounding highs compromised by middling production values, excessive-feeling loading pauses and irritatingly snap-to-position VR exposition. (Although, you can shoot some hoops in the mansion, which you inevitably will end up spending too much time doing... Or maybe that's just me.)
If you're curious and you have a PSVR headset otherwise collecting dust right now, there's a demo of the game available on the PlayStation Store. It gives you the whole crashing-plane sequence, which will be enough to determine whether this is worth more of your time and, more importantly, any of your money.
6/10: Good
Iron Man VR is out now for PlayStation 4 - VR headset required - and review code for the game was provided by the publisher. A guide to GAMINGbible's review scores can be found here.
Featured Image Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment, MarvelTopics: Review, Marvel, PlayStation 4