Iron Man VR in the test

PS4 owners had to wait a long time for the VR superhero adventure with Tony Stark and his "Iron Man" suit. After several postponements, the time has finally come - and fans of the man in the metal battle suit will get at least as much out of it as PSVR fans in general.

The comic book author Stan Lee created a whole series of iconic characters during his creative period. Alongside Spider-Man, Hulk and many others, Iron Man, the alter ego of the inventive industrialist and billionaire Anthony Edward Stark, is one of his most important creations. At the latest since the three feature films starring Robert Downey Jr. and a series of appearances in the "Avengers" films or "Spider-Man: Homecoming", Tony Stark has been the talk of the town. Now the man in the iron flight suit is making his debut in "Marvel's Iron Man VR" in a virtual reality game that is one of the best in terms of gameplay, storytelling and atmosphere that has been available for Sony's PS4 so far.

Action spectacle with Move

In order to play Marvel's Iron Man VR, you need two Move controllers in addition to the PSVR headset for your PlayStation 4 or PS4 Pro. This is one of the reasons why publisher Sony is offering the game in a special edition with two Move controllers of the latest generation, which, unlike the "old" models, can be charged via a micro-USB cable. The fact that playing via DualShock 4 is not possible, in contrast to some other PSVR titles, makes sense. Because with the Move controllers you control Iron Man's hands to move freely through the levels with your jets and to use your various weapon systems in the fight against drones in the sky or tanks on the ground. The makers had to make the compromise that Iron Man controls his movements in the air with the hand jets. However, the alternative would then have been a rail shooter, which would definitely not have achieved the same intensity. This might have significantly reduced the occasionally annoying but ultimately tolerable inaccuracies in the tracking of the Move controllers. However, it would certainly have been detrimental to the intensity.

In any case, you don't just use the nozzles to move forwards, sideways or up and down. If you double-click on the trigger, you accelerate briefly, for example, to avoid a powerful thrust attack or energy beam from the enemy. Individual opponents make such evasive manoeuvres unavoidable. This is because their protective shield is only deactivated for a short time when you use thrust to dodge. Your normal impulse weapons, homing or even armour-piercing missiles, as you can equip them later, can only harm the enemies then. However, it is not only the variety and sometimes the slightly exaggerated mass of enemies that you fight with the aforementioned weapons or even with a stormy fist punch, but also the spectacular staging that really makes you think you are in the role of a superhero. Already in the prologue, we chase after our own plane after an attack by Tony's nemesis Ghost, have to rescue Stark's better half from the jumbo jet and prevent it from crashing into inhabited territory. It's no different in the other locations, when we have to defuse several explosive charges in Shanghai, for example, while we are constantly attacked by combat drones or protect Nick Fury's visually impressive helicopter carrier.

In Marvel's Iron Man VR, the focus is clearly on the combat action, where we take on all kinds of battle drones or tanks on the ground. But developer Camouflaj also captures the other strengths of the original. For outside of his role as Iron Man, Tony Stark is also an exciting character, whose light but sympathetically packaged arrogance always puts us in a good mood. This is one of the reasons why Tony and his development from a successful weapons manufacturer to a high-tech protector are sketched out in detail, and in between you are allowed to look around his villa intensively and pursue many side activities. Some of them are small things like lifting weights or doing pull-ups on the bar. But you can also try to dunk basketballs in Tony's basement and beat the existing record. This is definitely fun, because after initial difficulties, we couldn't resist finally breaking the record instead of just moving straight on to the new main mission.

Weshalb «Marvel’s Iron Man VR» in den ruhigeren Szenen atmosphärisch ebenso gut funktioniert, liegt nicht zuletzt mit an den gut geschriebenen und exzellent vertonten Dialogen – auch in der deutschen Sprachfassung. Die Credits geben über die deutschen Sprecher von Tony, Peppers oder Gegenspielerin Ava Stark, auch bekannt als Ghost, zwar keine Auskunft. Hochwertig besetzt ist der Cast aber definitiv, obgleich nicht die Sprecher aus den letzten Kinofilmen zum Einsatz kommen – übrigens auch nicht in der englischen Version. Herausgehört haben wir aber unter anderem Erik Schäffler, der etwa die männliche Version von Commander Shepard ab «Mass Effect 2» gesprochen hat und in «Marvel’s Iron Man VR» den Part von Nick Fury übernimmt. Wenn uns nicht alles täuscht, steckt in der deutschen Fassung der Synchronsprecher Björn Schalla hinter Tony Stark respektive Iron Man. Schalla war in der Vergangenheit beispielsweise in der TV-Serie „Smallville“ als Lex Luthor (verkörpert von Michael Rosenbaum) zu hören.

Anders als viele andere PSVR-Titel bietet «Marvel’s Iron Man VR» einen deutlich grösseren Umfang und mehr Spieltiefe. Hier seid ihr jedenfalls nicht innerhalb weniger Stunden durch die Kampagne durch und habt dann quasi schon alles gesehen, was das Actionspiel hergibt. So könnt ihr euch zwischen den Hauptmissionen auch immer wieder an Flugherausforderungen probieren und dabei versuchen, die Rekordzeit der Entwickler zu unterbieten. Stellenweise könnten diese Challenges vielleicht sogar noch etwas kompakter ausfallen, obgleich vielleicht drei bis fünf Minuten für einen Versuch an sich nicht übertrieben sind. Ihr könnt diese Herausforderungen zudem für die Erprobung neuer Waffen nutzen, denn mit den in Haupt- und Nebenmissionen verdienten Entwicklungspunkten dürft ihr in Tony Starks „Werkraum“ seine Iron-Man-Rüstung erweitern und verbessern sowie in der Farbgebung anpassen.

Even on the middle of the three difficulty levels, it is not easy to achieve a 5-star finish. But "Marvel's Iron Man VR" skilfully ensures, without any tendencies towards frustration, that we are willing to repeat a mission in order to achieve a better result and more research points. However, you never have to do this right away, although we were sometimes forced to tackle challenges again when we had a particularly bad completion time before we were allowed to take on the next main mission. While the campaign is still running, you can voluntarily return to previous missions and complete them again. But even if you go straight through the main missions, you can expect to spend about ten hours. How much you end up spending depends, of course, not least on your skill and the difficulty level you choose. And in terms of the latter, with levels that can be adjusted practically at any time, there really is something for everyone - from beginners to professionals.