Iron Man for Nintendo DS is a pretty generic Twin-stick shooter. Except, Nintendo DS doesn't have sticks whatsoever, so the game settles for D-Pad for movement and a touch screen for shooting. It sounds like an interesting idea, but I don't think it works as well as actually having two stick control scheme. It can be difficult to aim with touch screen controls and the shots don't always fly the way you want them.

The main criticism I have for this game is it's really easy to take damage, usually because of enemy swarms that you have to deal with. Another main issue I have with the game is all you really do is shoot stuff and enemies. Maybe you'll be on a timer or have to destroy specific something but the gameplay is pretty much the same through the game, and there's pretty much no variety. There are air sections where you move in air shooting stuff and having freedom to move around, and there are a few on-land sections inside buildings, and while there are less enemies, I think these sections are worse because you can't dodge projectiles as easily, because when you shoot you move incredibly slowly. Despite having bullet hell, I don't think this game is terribly difficult if you're conservative with shield pickups that can appear when you destroy a construction. When you lose all your shield, you'll have a backup generator (or a battery, I don't remember), basically acting as a life in any regular arcade game, and you have three of these, at least on default "Hero" difficulty, which is the easiest one in the game. You restore your shield and generators upon transitions within missions, so that's nice at least. There were a few close calls, but I haven't failed due to losing all shield and generators. But I can see some players getting frustrated with this game because it can be pretty overwhelming at times. There are a couple boss fights, a giant vehicle thing that has multiple guns, and again the bullet hell can be overwhelming, and the very last boss, Stane, who is surprisingly easy, all you really have to do is keep behind him and shower him with bullets.

Iron Man besides just shooting normal shots has a few other tricks up his sleeve. First, there are homing missiles, which I used frequently because they can lock onto multiple enemies and deal decent damage, though they are limited and you'll have to seek out rocket bonuses. Iron Man can also summon an energy beam that acts as a powerful attack, but leaves him as a sitting duck, so it's not always useful since you can still take damage. There's also EMP stun that can temporarily stun enemies that are on-screen, and I almost never used that. Mostly because I just forget to use it. Even then, it's recovery time and stun times are trash on low levels, and not that great even after upgrading it. Speaking of upgrading, there's an upgrade system in this game. When you kill an enemy or destroy constructions, you get research points after you beat a mission that can be used to upgrade various stats, such as maximum shield, movement speed, upgrading rockets and so on. These are critical for beating this game, and upgrading shield and combat capabilities is important. It seems like the game encourages exploration for defeating all enemies and constructions for research points, but it can be annoying having to track these things for essentially 100% completion.

The graphics use 3D environments, but the terrain (or the lack of thereof) is not very interesting or varied, so the game ends up looking pretty plain, even inside buildings there's not much. The music (in levels) is some intense super hero sounding music. One of the tracks doesn't loop properly, which is interesting. Aside from that there's not much track variety and I think the music sounds kinda generic.

Overall, I think this is game is just mediocre. The shooting gets a little repetitive, there's enemy and projectile spam, and there's just not much variety. You're doing pretty much the same thing for 8 missions. If you're looking for some shooty super hero action, maybe you should look elsewhere.