Iron Man 2, easily one of the biggest movies coming out this Summer, is right around the corner, which can mean only one thing. The tie-in game is also right around the corner. It’s due in stores on May 4th, three days before the movie opens. We got the chance to participate in a Q&A with Development Director Mike McHale and Dean Martinetti, the game’s producer.
The first thing you need to know about the game is that it doesn’t follow the plot of the movie. It’s set in the movie’s universe, but is not a scene-by-scene recreation. The team didn’t want to try to shoehorn gameplay into the movie’s story, which is a shortcoming of many movie games. The game does things that would have been too expensive for the movie, such as giant boss fights and missions that take place on a SHIELD helicarrier high above the ground.
An area where movie tie-ins fall short is in the lack of modes, and Iron Man 2 might disappoint those who were looking for co-op and multiplayer modes as Iron Man 2 is only a single player campaign. To make up for that, both Iron Man and War Machine are playable characters. You can select which of the two superheroes you want to play as at the start of each mission. There are two missions, however, that require you to be a predetermined hero, one for Iron Man and one for War Machine.
With the game taking place in the film’s universe but not following the plot of the film, the developers were able to take some liberties with the characters that appear in the game. Several of the heroes from the movie appear in the game, but with only one or two villains in the movie, those voids had to be filled with other characters from the Iron Man comics. To help make this process easier and to make it feel more like the comics, Sega enlisted Invincible Iron Man writer Matt Fraction to write the dialogue and cut-scenes for the game. The devs remained tight lipped about whom we might see but promised that in the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game, the final boss battle will be awesome. They also said that the bosses in the game might be some of the biggest bosses ever made for a video game.
When asked about the length of the game, Marinetti said you could run and gun the game in seven hours, but if you take the time to discover things, it can take about 11 hours. In fact, he hinted that many of the game’s achievements and trophies were tied to discovering things.
One aspect of the game that McHale and Martinetti were very excited about was the lab. Everything in the game is customizable, not just the armor, but even the melee attacks can be changed. There are multiple slots on the armor for weapons, and the weapons can be altered with different ammo types. You can even mix energy and projectile weapons. Some of the weapon customization can get pretty complex. You can upgrade a rocket launcher to fire six rockets at once, but then you can also customize the rockets to do different kinds of damage. Normally, the rockets would behave like any other rockets in a video game and explode on impact, but with the right customization, you can have them explode and do damage over a wider radius, hurting all enemies in an area. Melee combat is definitely a focus in Iron Man 2, when upgrading your character, don’t neglect it, as it seems to be a crucial component when fighting bosses who will not go down easily from long range.
A major complaint about the first game was the controls, especially when switching from hover to flight. Well luckily, it was one of the first issues the team addressed in the new game. Flight controls have been moved to the right stick and changing from hover and flight modes are now button presses. You never have to hold down any buttons to accomplish anything in Iron Man 2.
The game isn’t open world, but it isn’t completely linear either. The outdoor environments are large enough to explore and fly around in while the indoor environments are suited for large in your face battles.
If you think that the Wii, DS, and PSP versions were going to differ from the current generation models, you would be right. While not getting into too many details, the Wii and PSP versions are essentially the same while the DS version plays differently from those. All versions of the game follow the same plot; they just get through it in different ways. The developers also hinted at each game having completely different features from each other but couldn’t elaborate, only saying that we will know more soon.
Iron Man 2 sounds like a great attempt at capturing the intensity of the Marvel Universe in the same vein as last year’s Wolverine game. While I don’t think it will be THAT intense, the game sounds very promising. Straying from the plot of the movie is probably a very smart idea, and as a comic book fan, I can tell you that having Matt Fraction write the dialogue was also a very good idea. We should have a full review of the Xbox 360/PS3 version of the game in early May.