Iron Man feels like a perfect fit for virtual reality. In the movies, Tony Stark’s advanced armor works like VR, with a virtual screen projected inside his helmet. So when I put on the PSVR headset and started playing Iron Man VR I felt like that famous armored superhero. UnluckyBTW, I didn’t have to deal with just super villains. Technical problems ended up ruining much of my enthusiasm and enjoyment.
Iron Man VR It is, as its name implies, a virtual reality game created for PSVR headphones and motion controllers. In it, you play as Tony Stark, the famous billionaire who once ran a gun company, but became a crime-fighting superhero wearing a powerful mechanical suit. Iron Man VR It’s not set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s heavily inspired by those movies. Tony Stark, both in-game and in the MCU, has a big ego, is quick to spit out a joke, and seems to be hiding a lot of guilt over his gun-selling past. Their in-game home is almost identical in design to the MCU version of Stark’s Malibu Mansion. Even his suit not only resembles the Iron Man MCU suit, but has the same sound effects and abilities. This is good. It helped me lose myself more in the world, as it is a world with which I am very familiar.
The setting for this Iron Man story is the sudden appearance of the teleporting villain Ghost, who begins to wreak havoc on Tony’s life. Stark then reactivates The Gunsmith, a dangerous AI built before he was a superhero, to help him defend himself. Gunsmith is a super advanced weapon building and combat training AI that uses a Tony Stark hologram as an avatar. While Gunsmith is effective and useful, his cheeky and dangerous plans often cause more headaches and trouble for Tony and his more peaceful suit-based AI on Friday. The family dynamics between the three is at the core of the story.
Iron Man VR ‘The world and characters are its strongest and consistently good elements. The interactions between these various characters are my favorite moments. They joke, tease, get nervous, and fight or fight. The writing is sharp and often genuinely fun or interesting. I was worried about these characters and what was going to happen to them. Even villains become sympathetic characters who develop further at the end of the game. There are still some silly video game moments, like the boss fight at the end and some plot points that rolled my eyes at how obvious and silly they were, but overall, playing Iron Man VR I felt like I was part of an MCU movie. A level B MCU movie, like a Thor or a Ant Man, but it’s still a fun and solid superhero adventure.
Great character dynamics and solid writing aren’t the reason people are going to play Iron Man VR. The people want be Iron Man. They want to fly, explode, and fight supervillains. And this is where Iron Man VRUnfortunately, it falls apart most of the time.
Initially, I was impressed. It’s a bit gruesome, but actually using PS Motion controllers like Tony’s hand jets makes this feel different than any other VR flight game I’ve ever played. To fly forward, move your hands back. To stop, you can throw your hands in front of you, just like Iron Man in the movies, and stop for a penny. It feels good. Rotating is a little less intuitive, as it’s configured for buttons on either controller, but I got used to it quickly and within minutes I was flying like a pro. This is where I want to warn you that you need to have a strong VR stomach to play Iron Man VR. Spinning at high speeds, while moving your head to look around (start and stop quickly) can make some feel dizzy. There are comfort settings that you can turn on, such as a setting that darkens the screen when you rotate quickly, but this is still a fairly advanced VR game. I played around with all comfort settings turned off and felt good, but for less experienced or more responsive VR players, be careful.
You don’t just fly Iron Man VR, there is also a lot of combat. In theory, combat controls seem smart. You raise your palms to fire the famous Iron Man laser blasts and point your wrist downward to fire wrist-mounted auxiliary weapons such as grenades or missiles. You can also hit enemies with a rocket by pressing a button and then hitting. This may sound good, but in practice it is a bit tricky.
There are some major problems. For starters, PSVR tracking doesn’t feel accurate enough to always detect some of the necessary movements during combat. I often tried to shoot people with my missiles, but ended up shooting lasers, or vice versa. Another problem is that some of the movements necessary for combat are not comfortable. For example, moving your wrist down to fire a missile feels good, but then you have to slightly arch your arm and wrist so that the PS Move controller can aim at your target. It doesn’t work well and my wrists hurt quickly. Strikes are not always recorded, and button presses are sometimes delayed, increasing the overall feeling of inconsistency and frustration during combat.
However, you could have been able to ignore many of these issues if the game worked better during long combat sequences. Instead, the biggest problem Iron Man VR suffers is underperforming. In a standard television game, this is not always a deciding factor. In a virtual reality game, it is a big problem. As I said before, I have a lot of experience with virtual reality and I have a strong stomach for all the problems that can appear, including the big drops in FPS. And I’m thankful for that because I can easily see people who don’t have as much experience with headaches or dizziness from performance drops. I’m not talking about some missing frames, but about moments when the game almost turned into a slide show. I played Iron Man VR on a PS4 Pro and I still encountered these issues. It made the already complicated combat even more difficult to handle, as it was dealing not only with poor controls, but also with annoying performance issues.
And making it all worse is how much combat there is in this game. You spend at least 75% of the game’s approximately eight hours of runtime battling almost endless waves of drones and robots. The middle section Iron Man VR It’s heavy work, packed with multiple levels where you fly into an area, get some history, and then fight a group of robots for 15 minutes. The frustrating thing is that the beginning and the end of this game are much stronger and more interesting than the combat work you face in the middle.
The beginning is full of great character moments, a cool sequence with an airplane (which is in the demo), and some simple, but cute “learn to fly” moments. The final section is also creative and different, forcing the player and Tony to discover different ways to keep their suit on while trapped in a dark cave, being hunted all the time. Instead of feeling almighty, you feel trapped in your suit as you desperately try to survive. These sections of the game make me wish I had something half the time, but with more of these types of sequences. Instead, Iron Man VR it feels padded with endless combat and weapons in an attempt to make it feel more like a great full-featured video game.
Iron Man VR It would have been better to be smaller, focusing the game on telling a story and using the costume in cool and interesting ways. Instead, it focuses on being a great combat simulator that is too clumsy to enjoy. Strong voice and acting can’t beat everything Iron Man VRTechnical issues, which are serious enough to warn most gamers that they haven’t tried much VR, stay away. For those with strong VR guts and a love for the MCU, here is enough for you to have a good time. But you better download the demo instead.
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