Superheroes. They should work perfectly in videogames, allowing fans to become their favourite character from Marvel Comics and the like. This is sadly not the case though, and over the last few years we have seen nearly every superhero coming to our favourite consoles in truly terrible games. There have been some classics, but for every Spider-Man 2, there are five Superman Returns. Unfortunately, Marvel's latest blockbuster, Iron Man, falls into the second category, and is one of the worst games of 2008 so far.

For those who haven't seen the Iron Man movie, the story centres around Tony Stark, the billionaire owner of Stark Industries and a weapons manufacturer who supplies every major force in the world with armaments. To combat the threat that old enemies have on the world, Tony creates the Iron Man suit, which allows him to fly through the air at high speeds, shooting down incoming missiles with expert precision, all the while looking immensely cool. This is the basis of the story for the film though, and while the game should use elements of this for the tale that it tells, this isn't the way that SEGA has done it.

Rather than telling you anything about the plot, the characters, or the world that they inhabit, SEGA make the game feel like an endless slog of disconnected missions, most of which have nothing to do with the film's plot. Major plot points are missed out completely during the two-minute cut scenes that are sandwiched in between the missions, such as Tony's struggle with a piece of shrapnel embedded in his chest. If you have missed out on the brilliant movie then the plot will be an incomprehensible mess, leaving you with more unanswered questions than a season of Lost. Considering that this is a movie-based game, the lack of a decent narrative is the first of many reasons to leave Iron Man alone; just watch the movie instead.

As mentioned above, the game is split into missions - thirteen to be exact - all of which give you specific objectives as the mission progresses, sometimes ending with a boss battle. This structure is the same throughout the game, with tasks that almost always involve shooting a set number of targets to proceed. This amounts to searching the area for all of the orange highlighted targets and attempting to survive long enough to get rid of them all. This process then repeats with another objective, which can have you going back around the entire level again to locate the targets. This might be followed by an overly long boss fight, which can take upwards of ten minutes to complete - if you survive, that is. This basic mission structure is as repetitive as it sounds and by the fifth mission you will already have become tired of it.

This is even further accentuated by the way that death is handled. Rather than having set checkpoints after each objective, you have to play the entire mission again once all four of your lives are gone - and when your health can go down in three consecutive hits from an enemy, this happens too often to bear. As a way of lengthening the short campaign, this works against the game; playing the same level over and over again is worse than playing a very similar, but still different, mission. But in Iron Man, the mission structure is the least of the game's worries.

The game is primarily a third person shooter, albeit one that focuses heavily on air-based shooting. R1 and R2 control flight and hover respectively, with X giving you a speed boost in the direction you are travelling in. This flying should work well - and often does - but the left thumbstick makes it a nightmare more often than not. The stick is overly responsive, with even tiny movements sending Iron Man careening off course. This means that constant attention has to be held to the stick throughout each mission, so that Stark doesn't end up ramming into the vast abundance of abandoned warehouses that litter the game's otherwise barren landscape. You are supposed to be able to dodge - or even catch - incoming missiles, but I found that I careered into them more times than dodging them. Even so, the right stick does not share this trait, being surprisingly unresponsive when making sharp changes of view. But while this can be changed in the options menu, the more important - and more annoying - left stick cannot be altered, meaning that a lack of control will haunt you throughout the game.

The shooting is more successful than the movement in Iron Man, and although it gets repetitive quickly, it can be enjoyable. Shooting down enemies with your missiles or your fast action 'handgun' works well, helped by a decent targeting system that automatically locks onto the closest enemy. Each shot doesn't use ammo, but rather the energy found inside Iron Man's suit, essential energy that helps with healing, boosting and the special attacks that you can pull off. After I had played through the first mission, actually enjoying the shooting on offer, it was a shame to find the major flaw with the shooting gameplay - the sheer amount of enemies onscreen at once.

Rather than having small pockets of enemies to fight at set locations on the map, Iron Man has to deal with an unending barrage of missiles, helicopters, tanks, and anything else his company has made for the oppressive force you are currently fighting. The minimap at the bottom of the screen is always full of enemy and missile icons, all of which are shooting at you simultaneously. This means that death can be instantaneous, with you going from full health to none in a matter of seconds, forcing you to constantly shoot while moving around. The fact that you can barely control where you move makes the experience even more frustrating; I found myself blaming the game for all of the deaths I experienced, as opposed to me making a mistake, once again showing how lacklustre Iron Man is.

With the amount of onscreen enemies that Iron Man deals with, it's inevitable that the framerate will suffer. This is once again the least of the game's problems in this area, with the graphics themselves looking dreadful for the PS3. Iron Man is a high-res PS2 game, and is nowhere near as good looking as would be expected from the system. Iron Man's suit may look nice and shiny, but when your eyes drift onto the dull, badly-rendered textures and plain landscape, the horror of the visuals becomes apparent. The cut scenes are just as bad, with character models that barely lip sync with the voice acting, all the while looking distinctly unlike any human being. On the other hand, the voice acting is decent, with characters from the movie, such as Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man), reprising their roles. The audio is the best aspect of the game as whole as well, although it is just as repetitive as the rest of the experience. Explosions carry weight, but with the amount of explosions, gunshots and sound effects in general that occur every second, it's hard to distinguish them from everything else that's happening. The game isn't a technical marvel; Iron Man is another prime example of how you can't get away with adding some nice lighting to a good looking PS2 game and still call it next-gen. Visually this is a real disappointment, considering the polish that the developers promised.

Iron Man is a terrible game, but what did you really expect from a movie conversion? Everything about it is unpolished (save for the bearable shooting), from the graphics to the lack of any comprehensible plot, demonstrating why you should just go and see the movie instead. The game is surprisingly short too, without any sort of multiplayer and only the pathetic One Man Army mode to hold your attention outside the main game. An immensely high difficulty, due to the stupid amount of enemies that attack you at once, extends the lifespan, but for all the wrong reasons. However, despite all of this, the one thing that makes Iron Man such a god-awful experience is the fact that Iron Man simply cannot be controlled effectively. I can't believe that no one at SEGA noticed this, as it's such a simple thing to deal with. To be frank, Iron Man would make the superhero in question feel ashamed to be associated with it, before blowing it to kingdom come.

Reviewed by Sam Atkins for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).