An uninspired man game

My understanding of this The Crow -esque revenge spree is hazy, but, at some point, the police officer from your past assists you in reaching Taye and provides you with a bird mask that seems to give you supernatural strength and the ability to resurrect. What happens after your confrontation with Taye I cannot say, as The Quiet Man broke irreparably, refusing to trigger a cut-scene that would advance the plot further.

I am simply unwilling to replay the section leading up to the encounter in order to see the game's conclusion, but I do not believe I would be remiss in assuming that the finale is just as nonsensical and uninspired as the story leading up to it.

I also tell you all of this because I seriously doubt you will make past the first few minutes of the game anyway.

On the topic of The Quiet Man breaking, the gameplay is simply a void -- a barebones and glitchy experience with the minimum amount of features required to call it a game.

No tutorials, no UI, no interactive objects, no moveable camera. The fixed camera has to be the game's worst offense. The Quiet Man plays like a beat 'em up, but attempting to kick, punch, and dodge enemies in 3D space without being able to adjust your viewpoint is, plainly, painful.

Combined with an unresponsive combat system, some of the later encounters feel excruciatingly challenging on the harder difficulty setting.

Actually timing a dodge properly in The Quiet Man felt so uncommon that I expected a statue to be erected in my honor every time I managed to land one. Fortunately, one of the game's few strengths is that the loading time after you are defeated is quite short, getting you back to the action quickly.

The only moments when combat feels passable are when you are fighting a single opponent, which minimizes the need to alter your focal point, or the game's playspace flattens into a side-scroller. While the combat would still feel wooden, The Quiet Man could be a serviceable brawler just by eliminating its third dimension.

Due to these immense shortcomings, I could never find a combat strategy that felt effective. There was no sense that I was ever improving, and I relegated myself to spamming a special move that made me temporarily invulnerable, clicking buttons, and praying that I would come out the other side alive. The problem with this approach, beyond its obvious failings as a compelling combat system, is that it was the cause of the game's critical failure.

As I neared my encounter with Taye, The Quiet Man 's camera was no longer able to handle my power-up move. When it was active, the camera would float in some liminal first-person space, never focusing on the action until I performed a finishing move that would end my invulnerability.

However, after fighting Taye, I put on my bird mask and went full Super Saiyan. The camera never recovered, and I was forced to quit out of the game. All of these elements felt on the level of PlayStation 1-era shovelware, and this blankness translated to the drab and detailless environments and enemies I engaged with. Players will complete a short tutorial to get them started.

The levels are large and well made. The visuals are truly great. Flying around the large open spaces is one of the games best features. The suit animations are also a sight to behold. The games combat however, is not as well done.

The gameplay trips overs itself in many spots. The fast flying fun that players are looking for is not a very effective way of dispatching enemies. The best tactic ends up being to hover over enemies and spam your repulsor while you wait for the missile attack to recharge and dodging the missiles the enemies fire in return. Being efficient at combat is very limiting and destroys the fun factor with tedium. The games horrible difficulty spike midway through the game almost forces the player into this mechanic for the duration of the experience.

For this reason, Iron Man is only moderately entertaining, and it only remains so for the first few hours of gameplay. Once the difficulty spike hits the things turn sour. Each level seems to be copied from the same template. Ulster come to Thomond Park this weekend, Castres and Wasps follow as the Heineken Champions Cup hopefully returns centre stage, and a trip to Zebre awaits on the far end. All that before February comes calling. Van Graan and senior coach Stephen Larkham will depart this summer but the latter spoke last week of the need for everyone to stay on course for the next six months.

The last thing the club needs now is for a sense of drift to take hold but the main man was in no mood to brook that kind of talk.

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