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