Just a year after Endgame, Iron Man VR was the first post-MCU attempt to give the hero his own single-player video game outing. The resulting experience was a faithful and engaging portrayal of the character, coupled with a solid campaign and exciting gameplay. However, its release on the original PSVR headset was complicated. Although a fantastic game, it was held back by the significant hardware limitations of PSVR and PlayStation 4.
As we wrote in our review at the time, Iron Man VR on PSVR has all the essentials in place. The gameplay was an absolute highlight, allowing you to truly feel like Iron Man in every way possible. The variety of weapons, combat and flight were all an absolute delight, paired beautifully with an original story that felt both familiar and yet unique and refreshing. Everything we loved about the PSVR version carries over to the Quest 2 version of the game – the heart of Iron Man VR remains more compelling than ever, no matter what platform you play on.
However, releasing on PSVR hardware – which was already outdated and at the end of its lifecycle – had a significant impact on the overall enjoyment of the experience. Load times were abysmal, sometimes taking several minutes just to load an area. Likewise, while the game featured a pseudo-360 tracking workaround that mostly circumvented all PSVR tracking limitations, it was still a wired VR experience. It’s hard to feel fully immersed as Iron Man if a cable gets tangled around your legs. Nonetheless, we rated the experience overall favorably, despite the hardware hurdles.
This new version of Quest 2, however, sees Iron Man breaking free from the shackles of outdated technology. Announced at Connect 2022 (alongside Meta’s acquisition of the game’s development team, Camouflaj), Iron Man VR is now available on the most popular and mainstream VR headset, completely free from literal and figurative constraints. .
Break free in quest 2
So how does Quest 2 improve the Iron Man VR experience? Well, the whole campaign and bonus content remains intact, but with some tweaks for the new standalone setup. For starters, PSVR’s few-minute load times aren’t an issue here. Loading on Quest 2 is smooth and almost instantaneous. You’ll never wait more than a few seconds to get in on the action.
You’re also now completely wireless, allowing for tangle-free 360-degree movement when reading. While it’s not PSVR’s biggest problem, it’s one less thing to worry about and it makes a huge difference. Being able to spin quickly without worry is a huge plus and greatly increases the immersion.
These aren’t huge overhauls – they’re essentially quality of life improvements, fixing issues that arguably shouldn’t have existed in the first place. However, this makes this version much more definitive and polished than the original PSVR release. The gameplay itself has always been exceptional, but now the whole package works as expected.
Performance and visuals
General improvements aside, the Quest 2 port is solid and overall performance is fantastic. There are a few moments in busy fight sequences where you can feel Quest 2 struggles to keep up with demand, but those sections are rare and short-lived.
The visuals are pretty solid overall, with a few standout moments sprinkled throughout the campaign. Environments and general clarity benefit from the increased screen resolution on Quest 2, although there are still some jagged edges to be found, especially when looking into the distance. Sometimes the large hover environments can feel a bit simplistic and blocky, but the stylized nature of the game helps smooth that out. While it’s not the most visually impressive Quest 2 game, it’s also far from the worst.
Camouflaj uses fixed foveal rendering, sometimes blurring the outer edges of the field of view, but you’ll rarely notice this. Likewise, there are a few visual glitches from time to time in cutscenes, but they’re easily forgiven and don’t detract from the overall experience.
There’s also now the option of smooth locomotion movement via the controller, in addition to the node-based teleportation system that was available in the original PSVR release. It’s a welcome option that makes environments more lively as you explore, but the implementation isn’t the best. Whenever you reach a waypoint via smooth locomotion, the game continues to appear and disappear, as if you had just teleported to the waypoint instead of walking there.
This is likely to ensure the player is facing the correct direction and oriented correctly for interactive cutscenes, but it does make some sequences a little slow. A more seamless transition between smooth locomotion and waypoints would have been appreciated, but likely would have required more work to implement. The current solution is an acceptable if slightly frustrating compromise.