I have fully subscribed to the “Iron Man” movie-hype machine. I’ll see the movie, buy the toy and eat the cereal (they’re making an “Iron Man” cereal aren’t they?). When I saw that the demo for the video game was going to be available on Xbox Live, I made sure to download it right away. Unfortunately for Sega, this might not have been the best thing to release. Fortunately for my wallet, I can still hold on to my $60.

I’m sure that the thought from the marketing department at Sega was to make the demo represent a lot of what you’ll can do in the game, but I didn’t get it. Maybe I needed a bit more of a tutorial. While flying, Iron Man handled as well as his alter ego, Tony Stark, does on a weekend bender. For those of you not in the know, Tony’s got a drinking problem. I was pressing the button which the control screen said “Fly,” but it seemed like I was just going to do a loopdy loop and crash to the ground. The only way I felt like I could get around in the air was to hover all of the way up into the outer atmosphere and fall forward - essentially leap-frogging through the sky. I probably should have just ran along the ground. Thank goodness for Iron Man’s armor because I was taking a severe beating from the cannons and gunfire due to my inability to lock-on to a target. Sure the screen showed you where all of the enemies were, but I couldn’t stay on one target for very long unless I remained motionless.

I’ll be interested to see how the game ends up scoring. I’m predicting a lot of 6.5 to 7.5’s. Iron Man is one of my favorite comic book characters and I am holding out some hope - I’m just not holding my breath. I’ll reserve my $60 for this game just in case a couple of things happen:

• The game gets great reviews, or
• The game gets decent reviews and includes a free ticket to see the movie

I have a feeling that I’ll still be holding out for those other, recently announced, comic book games: “Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe” and “Spider-Man: Web of Shadows.”

Edit – Here are some of the reviews via Game Rankings:

• IGN 3.8 out of 10
• TeamXbox 7 out of 10
• Eurogamer 3 out of 10
• 1UP D+
• Totally360 6 out of 10
• GameDaily 4 out of 10
• MS Xbox World 6 out of 10
• GamePro 2.25 out of 5