Of all the superheroes under Marvel’s increasingly massive umbrella, Iron Man is the one whose “powers” feel like the best natural fit for virtual reality, his suit basically allowing you to live out your playground re-enactments from your childhood. Iron Man VR might not be the PS4 exclusive to follow up Insomniac’s brilliant Spider-Man that many wanted, but it still manages to effectively put you in the shoes of the genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist himself — and make you feel pretty dang cool, too.
The demo I played at EGX 2019 was a short one that will most likely act as the tutorial for the game itself. Tony wants to test out his suit, so it’s up to you to fly around the ocean near his mansion, destroying drones and speeding through checkpoints along the way. The drones aren’t the biggest hurdle to overcome, however: it’s the initially tricky movement itself.
Iron Man VR doesn’t really play like any VR game I can remember, it making full use of the Move controllers and headset to give you a pretty broad sense of control over all of Iron Man’s movements. The triggers on the Move controllers are used to propel yourself in a direction based on where you are holding them. So, for instance, if you hold them downwards, you will fly upwards as the force of Iron Man’s repulsors propels you. And yes, it feels very cool.
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Your head movement also dictates your direction once you’re already in motion, which takes a little bit of getting used to in conjunction with everything else. You’re really going to have to let go of any pretence of looking cool while playing in virtual reality because Iron Man VR is going to make you throw some truly odd shapes, especially when you use a super punch. When you do have a good grasp of movement and how to absolutely zoom around the ocean, it’s a tonne of fun.
Combat is basic but empowering, you holding the Move controller straight before pressing the Move button itself to fire Iron Man’s repulsor beams from his hands. The game has a very generous aim assist that basically auto-locks onto enemies, taking away some of the fiddliness that comes from trying to fly while also in combat. While shooting down these rather braindead drones was fun, I hope that there’s more variety to the enemies in the rest of the game as they weren’t much of a challenge.
I do have a couple of concerns about Iron Man VR, though. The booth I played in at EGX 2019 was the optimum environment for VR, it being set up perfectly with the right lighting and space. With the game being so dependent on movement, I’m concerned that you might need a dedicated VR room to be able to play without encountering the habitual tracking issues that come with the PSVR. Adding to that, based on the length of the Spider-Man VR experiences and most virtual reality games in general, I’m worried the game’s credits might roll before it really gets started.
I’ll find out for sure when Iron Man VR launches February 28th, 2020 exclusively for PSVR.
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