Marvel’s Iron Man VR (PS4)
While giving players a chance to embody a superhero is a pretty easy idea for a virtual reality game, Iron Man might be one of the best fits for it. The Marvel hero’s attacks are easy to replicate, someone able to hold their hand forward to imagine firing a repulsor blast, angle their fist down to fire wrist-mounted rockets, and even Iron Man’s flight is controlled by the position of his hands. Marvel’s Iron Man VR captures these ideas fairly well even if the PlayStation Move controllers means you are more holding a controller forward rather than an open palm to fire lasers, but this isn’t just a chance to live the superhero fantasy as Iron Man VR tries to tell a proper story about Tony Stark between the opportunities to blast robots out of the air.
Marvel’s Iron Man VR takes place sometime after the modern formative experience for the hero, the weapons dealer Tony Stark returning from Afghanistan after his own weapons not only heavily injured him but he was held captive by terrorists in an effort to force him to manufacture more. While he instead made a set of armor to escape and has used it to help instead of harm, much of Marvel’s Iron Man VR focuses on whether or not you can truly put a past of creating weapons of war behind you. A strange figure calling themselves Ghost aims specifically to torment Tony in the name of all the victims of the weapons he created, the sins not just disappearing once he has come to regret them. While it is easy to empathize with Tony’s efforts to do right in the present, this subject matter is given some time to make its points including moments more about hearing Ghost’s history rather than doing cool tricks in the Iron Man armor.
There is certainly some levity to be found in the plot though, Tony Stark still quick to deliver a quip even in tense situations and while sometimes the humor isn’t always sharp, you are also given moments where you can pick the comeback during a conversation. One other major villain arises to tie into Tony’s history in a more comedic manner as well, the Living Laser having some running gags that maybe do grow a bit stale but there’s also a very effective payoff to it all. Underneath the Ghost story there are also moments that focus instead on Tony’s personal life, both checking in on his romantic interest Pepper but mostly balancing the two AIs he is relying on for help. FRIDAY is styled as a capable British woman who can serve as Tony’s less comical partner, speaking to him during missions to outline important tasks but also setting him up for some of his jokes. Gunsmith on the other hand is almost a ghost himself, styled to look just like Tony, quick to crack wise just like him, and originally an AI who helped develop the weapons Stark Industries once sold. While Gunsmith is eager to prove his worth and try to win over Tony after his change of heart, this does help with showing the differences between the man Tony has become and what he used to be like so that Ghost’s message lands better. In fact, Gunsmith was even turned off when Tony changed his life path and only reactivated as Tony has a crisis of faith in his capabilities, making the two AIs, one helpful, one harmful, a reflection of the personal journey he undergoes as he has to confront that he isn’t just who he is today.
Marvel’s Iron Man VR doesn’t forget to add thrilling set pieces in between Tony grappling with his past. In this first-person action game you control your actions with the PSVR headset and two PlayStation Move controllers, things like turning in place possible but often better handled by the buttons on the controllers so you don’t get too tangled up in cords. Most actions will involve a combination of hand placement and hitting or holding certain buttons, the Iron Man suit offering a wide range of attack options including ones you can add later through an upgrade system. Repulsor blasts can be fired easily enough and are your standard weapon, although firing them too rapidly will make them overheat and need to cool down so you can’t just blast wildly and hope to take down everything you face. Instead it is important to mix in other attack types, Iron Man able to charge up a punch to either lunge forward to strike a foe or slam down to the ground to knock nearby enemies away. Your alternate weapons are the most variable part of your toolkit though, because while you can use the upgrade points you earn for doing well in story stages and side challenges on turning your repulsors into things like a consistent laser, the alternate weapons are more diverse. Wrist-mounted rockets that home in, a gravity bomb that sucks nearby enemies together into a cluster, an EMP for breaking energy shields, and other options can not only be purchased, but you can assign a different weapon to each arm so you can mix and match them for different strategies.
Flight is an important part of this VR experience but it doesn’t impede the weapon aiming very often. While you will often need to position your arms properly to move yourself through the air, the airspaces you fight in are often quite open so you don’t always need to be fiddling with your position and you have an easy to activate hover option if you want to stay in place while you open fire. When flying is the main challenge it isn’t always perfect, extra missions like flying through rings or some story moments like a chase where Living Laser’s energy barriers only leave small openings demand you get a hang of not only flying but doing so quickly. It works well when its demands are limited, you can move around enemies well enough and if you do need to be careful in a tight space you’re often focused mostly on flight, but the tighter flying sections are quite stringent and expect a knack for momentum and adjustment that has to come more from your own experimentation than training the game provides. There is still a thrill to zipping through the air when there isn’t too much pressure on exactly where Iron Man must go and whipping around areas like a plane under attack better embody the excitement of having this armor under your control.
Besides the earlier mentioned villains, Iron Man mostly finds himself up against the drones they employ, and while these robots have less identity than a villain who can speak, they do each provide some new danger that requires changes to your strategy. There are some basic fodder for your repulsor blasts, but there are foes like ground tanks that fire bursts of shots that must be blasted out of the air or properly avoided and some fearsome flying foes with energy shields and powerful lasers. The Iron Man suit will gradually heal on its own if you avoid damage for a bit so even those powerful lasers taking off a third of your health isn’t the end of a battle, but there are moments where something like Ghost might briefly disable healing for a fight where you need to better handle dodging and picking your moments to fight back. You can buy upgrades to influence things like healing rate and flight speed as well, but while the game does mix its small set of drone variations well enough to make for enough action-packed fights, there are some economical considerations you can pick up on like how often trouble seems to find its way to Tony’s Malibu home. Areas like the glittering Shanghai skyline provide some good visual variety, but looking closely at some of it reveals some simple textures and shortcuts like flat terrain with buildings painted onto it where you’re not expected to go. Usually the game won’t draw your attention to these uglier spots though and the battles are often demanding enough and usually contain some extra danger to spice things up like needing to find and disable bombs, stealing back important items the villains are trying to take, or building up energy for your special Unibeam chest laser to break something particularly durable.
The 12 chapter story is still able to mix up its ingredients enough and sprinkle in the story that it feels like a fully formed experience despite some apparent limitations, and most of the story is focused in on utilizing the Iron Man armor in entertaining action contexts. There are little extras to do around Tony’s house too, from trying to set a high score in a basketball arcade game he owns to listening to amusing podcast excerpts from his clout-chasing cousin Morgan Stark, you can relax between missions with less demanding activities before popping into the next main mission or one of the combat or flying challenges. However, there is a bit of an issue with load screen frequency and length. When you’re in an area like the Shanghai skyline the game can put in all the necessary story and combat stuff in that space, but head indoors for a bit for story purposes and you’ll need a lengthy load screen for the setting change. Since some aerial battles can be a bit demanding it is nice to have a moment to cool down but these do take a while and are perhaps at their worst when you do fail a section and need to reload from checkpoint. A port to the Meta Quest 2 supposedly cleans up not only the load times but makes the movement even a bit cleaner, but the load screens aren’t majorly disruptive as you at least get the full experience of a battle or story scene before it needs some time to get whatever is next ready.
THE VERDICT: An interesting plot about the ghosts of Tony Stark’s past carries the player to each new entertaining Iron Man battle experience in Marvel’s Iron Man VR, and while load screens butt in a bit much, you do still spend more time in the air using a wide range of attack options to take down a small but effective range of foes than looking at load screen tips. Having Tony grapple with both Ghost and Gunsmith drudge up a past he struggles to put behind him makes the story moments hold weight and there is some enjoyable humor even if it does miss the mark with some puns and cliches at times, but beyond some moments where it strains the flight controls, this VR experience makes for a thrilling superhero simulator with more to it than just the sensation of controlling the Iron Man armor with your actions.
And so, I give Marvel’s Iron Man VR for PlayStation 4…
A GOOD rating. I do have the benefit of playing the cleaned up version of Marvel’s Iron Man VR, its load screens once much worse, new weapons were added, things like new armor colors are added as rewards for performing certain actions, and you can even skip things like non-story missions or even cutscenes without having to load them first. As such, besides the loading screens still being a bit lengthy, Marvel’s Iron Man VR runs rather nicely, although the flying still sometimes expects some precise control from you without helping you get there. More often the levels are designed to be wide open but not featureless, Iron Man flying through a good range of locations even if some do repeat but the exact activities still are diverse thanks to the extra goals and how the handful of drones are teamed up to provide new threats. It could have been nice if Ghost and Living Laser had more villains on their side to provide some additional unique fights, both of them bringing in new mechanics and adding in some personalities to an overall very small cast. However, there is a good amount of focus on the principal actors, Ghost’s motives are well explored, Tony Stark’s struggle with his situation is embodied well by the Gunsmith’s interaction with him, and Living Laser provides some levity in a story that needs some time to decompress after discussing the human cost of arms deals. While you can see some corners cut in visual fidelity, likely to prevent the game from ever slowing down and thus to its benefit, it does feel like a full story is being told and the action is well-focused rather than wound up in VR gimmickry.
Perhaps one day there will be an even more immersive way to move in VR to more closely mimic Iron Man’s battle style and flight, but the game does a good job capturing the fantasy of controlling such a powerful suit while grounding things in a plot that remembers part of the character of Iron Man’s appeal comes from the very human struggles of the charismatic but conflicted Tony Stark.