REVIEW - The Invincible Iron Man | GBA | 2002

GENRE(S): Action
RELEASED: December 10, 2002
AVAILABLE ON: GBA
DEVELOPER(S): Torus Games
PUBLISHER(S): Activision

By 2002, Activision had done quite good with Marvel's big names and even better stuff was on its way out of this lucrative business deal. In the end of the year, Activision was commissioned to re-introduce Iron Man to the video game circuit with a moderately cheap Game Boy Advance-exclusive probably meant to be not much more than a "test" of sorts - The Invincible Iron Man. It certainly doesn't feel like much more than a quick test, but well, at least it's better than the last game with Stark for the lead.

Scrappy's return

An alarm sounds through Stark Enterprises and Tony gets ready to don the Iron Man armour to save the day, only to find that it's been stolen. He fetches one of his extra armour sets and blasts after the thieves before they can use the armour to their advantage.

This is going to be quite brief otherwise, so I might as well tell you a little story - when's the last time I DIDN'T do that, exactly...? As I pointed out in one of the Spider-Man reviews, it was part my friend's suggestion that I did a Marvel marathon, and the thought lingered on for quite some time. The thing that finally drove me over the edge was my second viewing of the first Iron Man movie. You see, when you think of Marvel games, you immediately think of the endless swarms of Spider-Man or X-Men games, or Marvel vs. Capcom. You never think how big Marvel actually is, until movies like Blade and Iron Man, and the upcoming Deadpool slap you across the face (I'm not too sure if I want to see that last one, though). There's Daredevil, Hulk, Thor, Avengers, all that, even The Punisher and Men in Black, and if you dig deep enough, you'll find games related to each.

Guess where we're at? Starts with "D". That's
right.

Most of the aforementioned curiosities are so rare and forgotten that you won't know anything about 'em 'til you've tried 'em. That's what made this marathon such an exciting idea. Sure, most of the games thus far have been shit, but sometimes, positive surprises emerge. The Invincible Iron Man is not one of them - it's not too positive, and it's definitely not surprising. But, yet again, at least it's mildly entertaining, which makes it lightyears better than Iron Man's previous namesake.

What we have here is a very generic action platformer with obviously cheap production values in comparison to other Marvel-related franchises Activision was working on at the time. Weak music and sound effects, one-dimensional graphics, poor level design - pick the most generic and shortest Spider-Man game out of all the handheld games released in the last 13 years and downgrade it a bunch to get this one. Mild entertainment is offered in the form of decent controls; the action might not be what you expect of an Iron Man game, but it's almost what you'd expect from any Game Boy Advance action game you paid for.

There's really not more to say besides that The Invincible Iron Man was a save over the completely rotten Iron Man / X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal, but it pretty much goes to prove that no matter how awesome Tony Stark is, he was never cut out to make it in the video game circuit.

UPS
+ Decent controls and decent, yet completely unoriginal and anti-climactic platformer action

DOWNS
- Poor level design
- One-dimensional graphics
- Horrible sound

< 5.9 >