Superhero falls flat after a flying start

IRON MAN VR PSVR ★★✩✩✩

There are moments in Marvel’s latest video game when you genuinely feel like you’ve pulled on the famous Tony Stark suit. As its the PlayStation VR’s biggest exclusive of the year, you’ll need the PSVR hardware and a pair of Move controllers to play it but with the extra dosh you will become Iron Man, pointing your hands down to the floor to blast up, forward or backward, and arching your hand and pulling the trigger to fire rays of energy.

Yup, soon enough you’ll be flying around your living room with aplomb, blasting evil drones to oblivion. But what goes up must come down and after about 30 minutes in the air problems arise, with nausea rearing its head. That’s not unusual for a VR experience but Iron Man VR is worse than many purely because of the way in which the superhero moves and due to an over-reliance on melee combat instead of the less dizzying long- or mid-range attacks.

The story is similarly restrictive with a fairly substandard good-versus-bad tale that never really gets going. And the graphics are equally lacklustre with the cityscapes and coastal regions lacking the visual VR punch, instead looking rather like bad holiday snaps.

Throw in some long load times and shoddy tracking, and this is a VR game that, outside of the brilliant flying simulation, lacks that wow factor.