Iron Man VR Review

Just like the character it's based on, Iron Man VR is a tale of two halves. On the one hand you have Iron Man himself, and the spectacular superhero fights that come with jumping into the world's greatest man-made weapon. On the other you have the man inside the armour, Tony Stark, and the many personal conflicts that stem from being one of the (former) biggest manufacturers of cutting-edge weaponry.

Admirably, Iron Man VR attempts to bring both sides of this coin together. A few years ago, you would have expected a PSVR title like this to simply hit you with a few on-rails levels that allowed you to freely blast away bad guys via Move controllers and call it a day. Instead, the developers have attempted to craft a proper AAA VR experience that weaves a high-stakes story across globe-trotting combat scenarios with the skeletons in Stark's closet.

It's an ambitious experiment, and one the devs mostly pull off.

From your first moment booting up the game, the dream of stepping directly into the heavy mechanical boots of Iron Man is fulfilled. Putting the player in full control of Tony's flight systems, controlled by the thrusters on each hand, there's an intensely satisfying sense of speed, verticality and momentum to simply existing in this play space. Your first hour or so will essentially see you recreating that excellent montage from the original Iron Man movie, with the player getting to grips with the how best to channel these powerful systems into elegant superhero moves.

Fortunately, it doesn't take long to get the hang of, and quickly you'll find yourself soaring over Stark's Malibu island and weaving between rock formations with ease and finesse. It's genuinely giddy stuff, and even as the hours wore on, the sheer visceral thrill of flight never failed to inspire anything other than awe. Even better, there's enough nuance to the mechanics that you're constantly gaining mastery over them.

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