Iron Man 2

It’s getting to that time of the year again where the explosions in Hollywood movies become more important than the acting, and the marketing costs more than making the film.

Yes the summer blockbusters are beginning to rear their CGI heads, which inevitably means the flow of movie tie-in games has begun in earnest.

Normally you can replace the words ‘movie tie-in’ with ‘rushed mess’, as was the case with the original Iron Man game, which screamed ‘cash-in’ from a few hundred feet up in the air before plummeting to the ground faster than it took to load up.

For the sequel, however, there's a new pilot at the helm. Gameloft has locked itself in a room full of equipment and rebuilt the original’s suit into something that, at first glance, looks to be worthy of the Stark Industries stamp of approval.

The first striking difference between the two games is the viewpoint, with the retro overhead view replaced by a swish, pseudo-3D behind-the-character angle.

It’s initially an impressive spectacle, with the dusty streets of Mogadishu or the sweeping valleys of Siberia brought to life with destructible buildings and plenty of background activity.

The explosions are also excellent, shaking the screen and flashing wildly when they ignite, and some of the set pieces like dodging collapsing bridges give the game a true Hollywood blockbuster feel.

But it doesn’t take long for the chinks in the armour to emerge.

The viewpoint, while impressive, is very restrictive. Often enemies will either plow into your back or fling themselves in from the sides without warning, not helped by Mr Stark’s inability to turn around or stray from the prescribed route.

While turning on the spot may be too difficult for the Iron Man to manage, shooting enemies is far too easy.

The auto-aim works so effectively that it ends up degenerating the game into simply hammering the ‘5’ key waiting for the selected enemy to explode.

There's a laser beam weapon and a missile launcher to break up the thumb-mashing, but they’re either too slow or too weak to be worth bothering with.

The enemies do have a secret weapon to counter your overly-effective auto-aim, although it would be a stretch to say it was a deliberate feature.

The switch in viewpoint to 3D not only makes spotting your targets harder, but it also has the unfortunate effect of making it very tricky to gauge just how close enemies’ bullets are. When there are hundreds of the glowing orange pellets on screen it makes avoiding being hit practically impossible.

This is made all the more difficult by the sloppy and unresponsive controls, with Mr Stark reacting to inputs about as fast as a drunken sloth.

There are special ‘dodge’ buttons that in theory should quickly zip Tony out of harm’s way, but in reality they inexplicably cease to function during the most dangerous parts of a level.

So while Iron Man 2 is certainly an improvement over its predecessor, the glossy presentation and massive explosions can’t hide the fact that its acting stinks.