Just as I kept my experience with “Marvel’s Iron Man VR” short and sweet, I will follow suit in keeping my own review of this game short and sweet as well. Is this game worth buying a PlayStation VR headset, PlayStation Camera, and PlayStation Move controllers for? I know the answer will disappoint many of you, but contrary to my original hopes (hence why I purchased all said things to begin with), “Iron Man VR” is not worth all of the extraneous effort to get your hands on. Yes, it’s nice that the game itself is priced at just $40 as opposed to $60. However, if you factor in the costs for the devices you’ll need to play this game, the price is just as expensive as getting a whole new gaming console.
Let me list off what the game gets right first. You definitely feel like Iron Man while playing this game. Obviously because it is in VR, you see everything through Tony Stark’s eyes through his iron suit. It is a pretty cool feeling to be able to fly freely in the air, while also doing it sitting down via the VR headset and controls. Even though Robert Downey, Jr. obviously is not doing the voice of Tony Stark in this game, the person that does voice Iron Man does a respectable job at getting close to his sound but also doing his own thing. The weapons and abilities you can use as Iron Man during combat scenarios are also satisfying in helping better navigate your story progression.
My reception to the game’s control scheme is as mixed as the quality of the controls themselves. Sometimes, they work well. I like the fact that I can press between the top two buttons on the PS Move controller to turn left or right as opposed to doing it manually through my body. On days that you just want to chill on your couch or something equivalent to that, this feature proves mighty beneficial. Other times, it’s a pain in the ass to get the PS VR headset to communicate with the camera and the Move controllers to the point that it’s exhausting. I lost count of how many times I had to recalibrate my distance from my headset to the camera and readjust the physically camera position every which way.
All these complaints are coming from someone who has played a few other PS VR games. In said games, I never got overwhelmed by an intimidating setup to get this game to work, unlike what you need for “Iron Man VR”. I think it would have been nice to be able to play with our DualShock controller and have the Move controllers as an option instead of a mandate like it is now. That way I have less things to worry about surrounding me that I can’t see. In all fairness, part of me realizes that the game is trying to work within the limitations of the current PS VR hardware. It should be noted however that this VR technology is still new in the grand scheme of things. So it will take time to refine that hardware power.
Compared to the other PS VR games I’ve played, the load times for “Iron Man VR” are unusually long and quite frequent between each level you complete. In a way, it doesn’t make sense considering the graphical fidelity really isn’t that strong with this title. As a matter of fact, someone like me might be so bold as to point out how inconsistent its quality is. One level felt straight out of a PS2 game with the presence of dated visuals and prominent pop-in feeling straight up mystifying in this day and age. Other levels, it looks better, but even then they have more of a PS3 vibe to its presentation than a PS4, and I was playing this on the PS4 Pro.
Simply put, for everything that “Iron Man VR” gets right, there is another frustrating aspect that is impossible to overlook. This is a game I only played once for a few hours and anything beyond that would be miraculous. If it ever becomes more work to enjoy a game than it’s worth, especially with all the necessary equipment you’ll need for this game, then I doubt that I will have enough energy to revisit this one. Maybe with improved VR technology, headsets and easier accessibility by the time PS5 comes around, VR will have a more meaningful future in gaming. But for me, that time is not right now.