The story of Iron John is an odd one. At the start, hunters seize Iron John, a man with skin of iron. John is caged at the palace and appears doomed to remain imprisoned for the rest of his days, until the prince's ubiquitous golden ball happens to roll into his cell. Iron John is eventually released, he and the prince find a well of golden water that turns everything nearby into gold, several years pass and the prince travels to a foreign kingdom to help fight a war, John returns to help him win a duel at an arena, and the prince settles down with a princess.

Huh?


The tale is only slightly choppier than the quick synopsis I have relayed, which doesn't exactly result in a compelling story. That's where you and Grimm come in. The goal of Iron John is the same as all of Grimm's adventures: run around and darken everything with your aura of putridity. Fun, but it's arguably run its course. The only way to make this tired mechanic interesting is to sufficiently change the story such that the player isn't thinking about how often he's done this very thing in Grimm, but instead delighting in how the environment is changing.

In this regard, Iron John succeeds over any Grimm entry thus far. American and his designers at Spicy Horse looked at the character of Iron John and apparently thought, "This guy already has skin of iron? Why not make him a cyborg similar to the Terminator?" Why not, indeed. It's not that much of a stretch, considering that Iron John's default narrative is already a tangled ball of yarn.

Instead of putrefying everything caught in the radius of his aura, level architecture morphs from the fantastical to futuristic. Trees become laser or chaingun turrets, cottages evolve into factories with grinding cogs and flickering screens, posts, fertile plains become shimmering fields of silicon, and Iron John transforms from a docile dummy akin to The Wizard of Oz's Tin Man into a hulking, fearsome cyborg complete with an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent.


Though still disjointed, the tale is made more interesting because of the cyberpunk atmosphere that pervades the land as Grimm pass through it. By the time I'd finished the war stage, robots were firing lasers fast and furious across either side of a bridge, UFOs were dropping bombs, and Iron John's massive chainguns were obliterating anything foolish enough to stand up to him.

Ironically, it is Iron John's gameplay that is the weakest element of the whole package. The gameplay is exactly what you should have come to expect from Grimm: corrupt everything, traverse a few tricky platforming-based challenges, and watch the dark theater.

Iron John's only saving grace is the world itself, and honestly, that's how it should be. Grimm is a series built on the desire to push forward, to darken anything in everything in an effort to see how the world changes. Iron John meets and exceeds that desire. Even the most bitter Grimm fans should give this one a try.