Marvel's Iron Man VR PlayStation 4 Game Review

Step into the armor of Tony Stark with PSVR.

Reviewed by Noah F. on Jul 15, 2020

Rating:

Iron Man VR gives players a fully immersive Iron Man experience with the power of PlayStation VR! Check out Kidzworld to see what we thought about Marvels Iron Man VR!

In the second Marvel game exclusive to PlayStation, Marvel's Iron Man VR puts players directly in the armor of Tony Stark, AKA The Invincible Iron Man.

Marvel's Iron Man VR Launch Trailer

Super Hero Immersion

PlayStation VR is home to quite a few quality exclusive games that you can’t find anywhere else. Iron Man VR, despite some graphical oddities, is another fun title to add to the pack. From the beginning, the controls felt solid and responsive, and once you get used to flying around like Iron Man would it all works well. The small learning curve of figuring out where to point your hand repulsors to get momentum in the air is really fun, and the sense of speed feels great.

You get a short tutorial section, in the beginning, to get your acclimated to life as Tony Stark, practicing your flight and flight skills before the story begins. One of the most glaring issues is the frequent and long loading screens that frequently break up the game. I thought there was something wrong with my console at one point because the game seemingly just stopped, but shortly after the scene loaded in.

In the levels, you get plenty of open space to fly around in, and the first time you see the Iron Man helmet hud appear right in front of your eyes is a special moment. Flying and blasting work for the most part, even though the situations can get a bit repetitive. Where it suffers is whenever the game asks you to use your hands in a very specific way that requires you to bend and contort your controllers in odd ways. Sometimes you’ll attempt to grab an item to progress the story, and oftentimes the game wants you to interact with the object in a very, very specific way or else it doesn’t work.

You fight a lot of mechanical drone enemies throughout the game.

The Story

In Iron Man VR, you are front and center during the story, seeing everything from Tony Stark’s eyes. Tony, shortly after becoming Iron Man, decides to give up producing weapons for the world’s military. This is a setup that anyone familiar with the films or comics will likely be familiar with, so it doesn’t have the same impact as seeing his moral struggle for the first time. By the time the game starts, Tony had already had his change of heart, but ultimately things are more about the consequences of that decision as weapons from Tony’s past come back to haunt him as forces seek to exact their revenge on the hero. Villains like Ghost and Living Laser make life tough for our hero, and you the player, and a couple familiar faces from the Marvel Universe make an appearance.

Throughout the 10ish hour-long campaign, the performances don’t ever really sell the story as being anything special, but more of a means to give excuses for gameplay moments to happen. It tries to set up the classic story of Tony Stark giving up the creation of weapons for the greater good, but ultimately what is fun here is simply letting you be Iron Man regardless of the story. The visuals don’t help either, often looking jagged and unnatural. But with the limited graphical power that the PS4 is capable of, it looks good enough where it counts, like the Iron Man armor itself.

Seeing Tony's suits and workshop in first-person is great for Marvel fans.

Final Thoughts

Iron Man VR, despite not looking or sounding amazing, has plenty of moments of fun. Something is satisfying about seeing all of the Iron Man technology right in front of you and at a realistic scale. The feeling of zooming through the sky and blasting enemies feels good, but the gameplay stumbles whenever it wants you to do anything beyond that. For any Marvel fans who just want to enter the boots of Iron Man and can stand to wait through the loading screens, there is a thrill here that hasn’t been created before. Hopefully Marvel's Avengers can translate that feeling in a more traditional action game, but time will tell.