Iron Man at the App Store

So upon finishing my reading of this week's issue of Amazing Spiderman, I close the issue to find none other than Iron Man's red-and-gold mug painted across the back of comic. Yeah, nothing special, what with a movie, dvd release, action figure line and video games to the Marvel movie and RD Jr. career inflating box-office hit. Wait. That was all months ago.

I look down and see still shots from a new game. Graphics are a little light, so it's probably for a new DS or PSP title. I mean, it's a little slow, what with Iron Man on the run from the law in his own monthly and the movie being the fading summer memory it is. Then I start paying attention.

This: the words "Only on iPhone." The ad is puntuated by a review from "AppCraver," which doesn't tell me much from an actual video gamer perspective, so I looked to IGN as the first video game reviewer I could find in Google (I don't have an iPhone, so I can't be asked to review the game myself). From the 9/10 AppCraver review, the game plunged to a 6.5 (granted, a mediocre score rather than "bad" one) with the punchy line, "You don't actually control Iron Man; you just control his crosshairs as he flies in a along his set path." While it doesn't sound very super-heroic, it does sound reminiscent of 2-D sidescroller shooters in a more 3-D rendered environment, dressed up by whatever leftover movie budgeting they could find. Or Iron Man in Star Wars: Arcade.
That and the game is only $8 (which the reviewer laments). Compare this to the average $35 DS title punctuated by the additional functionality of the iPhone. Not to provide copious smoke-blowing for a platform I don't even own, but at $8, even if the game is a repetitive mire of mediocrity with Iron Man's repulsor-blasting mug taped over what would be a plane or one-man firing squad, it's only $8. Compare this to the aforementioned $35 (usually lower on less high-end releases; the DS title still costs more than double at $19.99 on GameStop's website). Even if the game's a dud, you didn't blow most of a $20 bill on it.