The Invincible Iron Man Gameboy Advance Review

Everyone loves Superheroes. They’re strong, they pull all the gorgeous women, and they wear their underpants on the wrong side of their trousers. Conversely, Iron Man doesn’t wear his underpants on the wrong side of his trousers, nor does he seem to pull gorgeous women. Not in this game anyways. However, he is strong. Invincible as a matter of fact. He’s called ‘The Invincible Iron Man’, see? Yet in The Invincible Iron Man, it’s rather easy for him to die at the hands of these gremlin-type chaps and these dingly dangly things that come down from the ceiling. Dying is in fact something you’ll be doing a lot in Activision’s Iron Man title.

The game pitches itself as something like one of those lovely side scrolling shooters/platformers by Treasure and in some places it’s almost reminiscent of Factor 5’s classic Turrican. Only it’s not half as good. It’s not in any way atmospheric, the levels are generic and there’s very little variation in the enemies you’ll be fighting. The graphics aren’t amongst the best you’ll see on the GBA, but they are still quite good. The animation is fluid and the character sprites and backgrounds are fairly detailed. Unfortunately great deal of looping exists with the same enemies and backgrounds appearing repeatedly. The aforementioned ‘looping’ applies to the music with the same tunes being repeated time and time again. Whilst they are perfectly adequate for the game, they do begin to grate once you’ve heard the same background music for the hundredth time.

The Invincible Iron Man is a relatively challenging title although platform enthusiasts are likely to breeze through it. It’s also quite short, with only nine levels to play through and very little in the way of unlockable extras with a small artwork gallery on offer for completing the game. The story is told between levels and split up by various stills, which look lovely and are true to the feel of the comic. Perhaps the biggest fault with the gameplay is that it simply doesn’t change from start to finish. The level design remains largely unchanged from level to level and there is absolutely no sense of either discovery or time to upgrade and enhance Iron Man’s abilities. What you get at the beginning of the game is what you have at the end of the game, it’s as simple as that.

Sadly, despite some good points, The Invincible Iron Man falls short and ultimately finds itself in the generic platformer category – not what we want to see on the GBA. If you’re looking for a superhero game on the GBA then you could do much better. The ‘Spiderman’ titles are in general far more polished and enjoyable and if you just want a game in this style then Gunstar Future Heroes is available now and is truly brilliant.

The Invincible Iron Man is not an awful game by any stretch of the imagination – it’s just sadly a very average platform game on a system home to some of the greatest. Unless you must own an Iron Man game, this is one to avoid.

6 out of 10