Review: Marvel Iron Man VR for PlayStation 4 VR

Marvel’s Iron Man VR is an official Iron Man game casting you as billionaire playboy and superhero Tony Stark.

Iron Man VR for PlayStation 4 VR

IF a couple of years ago when the PlayStation Virtual Reality headset (PSVR) launched, someone had said “Pssst, hey, wanna be Iron Man in a game?” most of us would have responded gleefully with “Yes please!”

A couple of years later and someone – Camouflaj games – has delivered a literal Iron Man superhero game for PSVR, but instead of soaring high into the stratosphere, it’s cruising below the clouds.

Marvel’s Iron Man VR is an official Iron Man game casting you as billionaire playboy/superhero Tony Stark, with his iconic flying power armour, and the possibilities this offers.

However, the game is simply too ambitious for what the PSVR is capable of. The load times are hugely excessive (sometimes they’re in the middle of levels), there’s a LOT of black screen with nothing happening (a big no-no for VR), the experience starts to get repetitive and the graphics simply aren’t all that impressive in many places.

The flight controls are logical but not all that easy to master and I spent a lot of time flying into buildings, because the turn controls are based less on moving your head and more on using the tiny buttons on the PlayStation Move controllers. When you get the hang of it the sensation is great, but there’s certainly an adjustment period, and the actual controls are a bit confusing. Using your controllers to control direction as well as aim and fire weapons does require a bit of a juggling act.

Iron Man VR drone flight

On that note, the game requires PlayStation Move controllers to work – which is just as well because the experience wouldn’t work effectively without them.

The plot is well done and involves Tony Stark facing an enemy known as The Ghost, who wants him to atone for his “crimes” as an international arms dealer and the countless deaths his weapons have caused – even though Tony has moved on from that and insists Stark Industries only makes peaceful tech.

The twelve missions – and you’re looking at about five to eight hours of gameplay, which is about average for a VR title – look pretty good but they are a bit repetitive since they essentially involve fighting the same repurposed drone and weapons (and in some cases, locations). Some missions are quite fun. I particularly enjoyed a mission flying around a hover-carrier to fend off attackers.

I really liked the writing. It was very well done and captured the character’s personalities nicely, although for obvious licensing reasons the characters don’t look or sound quite like their movie counterparts.

Iron Man VR hover carrier

The general experience is fun too. Who doesn’t want to fly around in rocket armour with missiles and laser guns on your arms and blast things? But at this point in the VR medium’s development, we need to be moving beyond virtual shooting galleries.

The very nature of Iron Man means there’s not much else you can do in a game besides fly around and shoot stuff, so that’s not entirely the developer’s fault. To its credit, the between-missions sequences in Tony Stark’s garage are well done and also allow you to upgrade your armour with different weapons and booster and so forth as well.

If you’re an Iron Man fan then you’re going to want to play this and will likely enjoy it for the experience it offers, because when it’s coming together it does give you the unrivalled feeling of being the titular character.

Overall it’s a decent VR experience – albeit nothing to write home about – and one Iron Man fans will be keen to suit up for. As a general VR experience, I felt like it had the autopilot on, rather than engaging the afterburners.