Quote Top Cow: We can't say 'darkness' and 'video game sequel' in the same sentence, so 'darkness.' Wink 'Sequel.'

Full Link: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10088&Itemid=9

Looking forward to this, great game, bad ending. I need my questions answered!

Opening Statement:

Iron Man has always been one of my favorite super heroes, so after having to deal with the Spider Man, Super Man, and Incredible Hulk movies, I was overjoyed that Iron Man was coming to the big screen.

Unfortunately I was not overjoyed about hearing news of an Iron Man video game coming to almost every system known to mankind, which screamed cash-in to me. Video games based on movies have a bad reputation of sucking, but I was willing to give the newly released Iron Man Xbox 360 game demo to win me over.

1st Playthrough:

The demo only came with one mission, which was limited time-wise to a total of nine minutes, and there are three different difficulty settings. Before your mission launches you have a mission briefing screen giving you the details, then you can upgrade your armor, but the demo only allows you to upgrade two different components of the armor (Core Systems, and Secondary Weapons.). But the one upgrade grants you two different choices to mess around with. (More on the armor later) I choice secondary weapons, and got some more powerful unguided grenades and moved on.

After finally after going through these screens you arrive to the mission finally, which starts you close to one of your objectives. Now this is really where pain really starts.

We all know the ever-so-helpful screens before the demo starts telling showing you the control scheme, but this one was complete gibberish and after reading it I could not tell from shooting my repulsors to hovering, but I did not worry about this too much, I was assuming the demo would explain it as I went. I was wrong.

After ramming mountains at top speed several times, and getting knocked out of the air thanks to missiles, I could safely say I was confused. The nine minute passed, I was upset that the game was so unforgiving, and I was going to give this demo a negative review. But I decided to do something I don't do much for reviews; I gave it a second chance.

2nd Playthrough:

This time I selected the core system upgrades, and picked the most middle of road piece of equipment and hurried off to the combat. I was thoroughly surprised. I learned the controls the first time I played, so the game was much easier this time around.

Soon I was flying through the air like an angel of death, blowing away the puny tanks and turrets with my grenade launcher and repulsors. I held down the 'B' button close to a helicopter that killed me several times when I first played this, and after rapidly hitting the 'B' button times almost God of War-like I ripped the damn thing apart with my hands, and oh was it satisfying.

Not only did I finish the main objective, but finished a set of bonus objectives and at the end was greeted to a cut scene of a giant tank rolling out to challenge me before the demo ended.

Most of the time when I play game or demos a second time, my opinions don't challenge that much, but surprisingly when I replayed this demo, my views were completely flipped about this game; I loved it very much.

Graphics wise the game was okay, nothing mind blowing, but they did their job well. There were several times game had texture pop-ins, but I could not see much else wrong. One thing to note is that the Iron Man gorgeous itself is beyond awesome, and is actually done quite well, but that's what you get when you borrow the model from the movie. I have never had any frame rate problems, which made this game flow even faster.

The animations flowed smoothly, and I liked it was almost seamless going from land juggernaut, to jet aircraft-like speeds so quickly. They also combined air and ground combat very well together, and yet still keeping it balanced. You can quickly engage enemies by air, but risk taking more damage and getting knocked out of the air, or go at it by land allowing you to get your weapons out quicker and more accurately, but sacrificing the speed you gain in air and allowing yourself to become easily surrounded.

I fell in love with the upgrade system though. Each time you play with a different upgrade, the game and your play ****change dramatically, and that is only with two options to choice from! There also be a large number of unlockable suits to ticker with in the final game, so the replayability in this game is going to be huge for me.

Some things I didn't like were that they had this system where you could assign your power to four different areas of your armor to boost it in that field (Weapons, Melee, Thrusters, and Life Support) but I found almost no change in any of these fields, so they seem almost gimmicky to me.

While the map was large, and open for you to explore, you can move so fast that it really doesn't matter because you can arrive to the end of the map in less than a minute so it really feels too small. Hopefully the final game with have much larger environments.

Also, as I stated before, the part ripping apart the helicopter was fun, there is only one animation for each enemy, so tearing off the top of the tank or smashing humans gets old quick. And the rapidly hitting 'B' button feels almost like Viking: Battle for Asgard, in where all you ever do IS hit 'B'. There is not button combinations like Turok, or random buttons mashing like God of War.

Closing Comments:

Overall I enjoyed this demo quite a bit, and so far have replayed it four more times, messing with difficulty settings and upgrades, and just plain having fun.

But the demo did its job, it gave me a taste of the finished product, and so far I like a lot of what I am seeing. I will be seeing the Iron Man movie May 2nd or close to that date, and buying the game the same day. Look out for my review for both the movie and the game folks.

Game Play: 8 out of 10

Art: 8 out of 10

Content: 8 out of 10

Audio: 7 out of 10

Technology: 7.5 out of 10

Final Score: 8

(Please forgive all spelling mistakes, grammar errors, and incorrect information; I tried researching all information in this article to its fullest. Also please keep in mind; this is not trying to start a flame war, just an opinion of one gamer.)

/start_rant

A lot of threads recently are proclaiming game such as 'Gears of War 2', and 'Killzone 2' to be much better then each other and/or other games. What a sad world we live in.

I believe that now a days gamers are spoiled, we are getting great looking games such as Resistance: Fall of Man, Bioshock, and Mass Effect, and now won't touch a game with so called 'last gen graphics.', the phrase 'Don't judge a book by its cover.' comes to mind.

Yes I loved Mass Effect, (playing it through again a second time.) Bioshock is epic, and Resistance was amazing to watch, and while all of those games are pretty, but what makes them truly good games was they were 'fun'. But what truly brought these games together was the sum of its parts.

Now I would like to direct attention over to 'Too Human' developer, Silicon Knights. They have a formula for their games called 'Flow' defined as:

Quote: a mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

The formula comes out, as Silicon Knights say, like this:

Quote: Engagement >= Content + Game Play + Technology + Art + Audio.

If we take graphics and artsyle, they would be fit in, I believe, with 'Art'. Notice it does not repeat 'Art' five times. It's only on there once. Once. Count. So the graphics, which many people are focusing on, are only 1-out-of-5 of the key elements the Flow theory displays as needed to achieve Flow.

Now I would like to state that I am not trying to downgrade the game Art. I admit I find myself lost sometimes looking at screen shots of Resistance 2, and Too Human. They are beautiful. And they are still one of needed elements to achieve Flow, so they are important. But I think gamers, as a society today, and judging the book's a little too heavily these days.

For example, Turok that was released this year. It uses the all-too-familiar Unreal 3 engine, and no where near is it the best looking game using this engine. Or of any game engine, for that matter. Any while I was browsing the Gamespot forums, a lot of people were complaining about the game because of its graphics.

But I knew this in advance, and yet I still pre-ordered it. Why? Because to me, it was fun, and even though the graphics did not fry my brain with how amazing they were, they weren't bad. And now I am happily playing the game today.

Now for a more extreme example. Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. After reading through the forums, looking at screenshots and trailer, and after playing through the demo a couple of times. I have to admit, the game does not look very good at all, worse then Turok and yet it uses the same game engine. Unreal 3.

It looks bad, it was slow for an FPS, the plot was uninteresting, and the audio is the same epic stuff we gamers are forced to listen to year, after year, after year. This game just did not work for me, but am I baseing all of the reasons why I am buying the game because of the graphics. Nope.

Now back to what started me on this rant. Gears of War 2, and Killzone 2.

First let's hit up Gears of War 2. The game it's self is still unconfirmed, and no screenshots, trailers, or any game play news at all have been released. So it would not be accurate to say that Gears of War 2 looks better then Killzone 2, because we still won't know what it looks like. End of.

Next, Killzone 2. While the game looks amazing, almost like a full-leagthed CGI movie, is it going to be fun? We don't know, apart from a few tidbits of information, and by dissecting the latest E3 trailer, the publisher and the developer have not released that much information. So while Killzone 2 will, by the looks of it, be one of the best looking games ever. If you don't find it fun, would you only play it by looking at it?

In the end I have to say again, I am not discrediting graphics, but we as gamers need to realize that graphics are not everything, and we have to liberate our mind-set we currently have about games.

And in the end, now real can graphics keep getting? With games like Frycry 2, and Resistance looking almost completely real, as if what was happening in the game could pop out of the screen, game graphics will soon reach a point where the cant really get any more life-like, then life itself.

Maybe when that day comes, then gamers can finally start worrying more about how the game plays, sounds, and feels, then on how it looks.

/end_rant