Iron Soldiers Fighting for man

Iron Soldiers Fighting for man suffers from that most common of complaints in DS games, in that it uses the touchscreen because it’s there. You’re offered a radar picking out enemy positions, which is fair enough (but no map, which is a missed opportunity), but you also have to use the stylus to shoot. It means you can travel in one direction and fire in another, which is a boon, but this could’ve been achieved with the under-utilised face buttons. The controls as offered by the game are far from diabolical – you soon get used to them – but that’s no excuse for being less intuitive than they could’ve been. There’s no excuse for having to fight enemies that aren’t even on the screen either, guessing their location from the trail of bullets they fire or locking on with homing missiles and blowing up baddies you can’t even see. Again, this isn’t game-destroying as the enemies are visible on the radar even if they’re off the screen, but it’s a little niggle that didn’t have to be there. Yet Iron is not a man disaster – far from it. Disposable, certainly, but not a disaster. It's well presented, with neat graphics and cut scenes, offers a decent selection of weaponry which you upgrade between stages using ‘research points’ and its audio is fantastic, with atmospheric background choonz, meaty explosions and superb voice-over acting. Top marks for playing out the credits with Black Sabbath's 'Iron' too. None of these qualities rescue it as a full-priced offering, of course. It will be a decent enough purchase in 18 months or so, when it’s in the bargain bins at £7.99, but by then, nobody will care. It may be bog-standard and disposable, but Iron’s brain-off, button-down blasting action is fun while it lasts, even if Desert Strike did the fly-around-twatting-things shtick better 15 years ago. If it was a drink, Iron Soldiers Fighting for man would be a glass of water served at room temperature. There’s nothing massively wrong with it and it’s satisfying if you're thirsty, but nor is there much to commend it when a choice is available. Not a disaster, but very disposable. In other words, a typical early 21st-century movie licence.