Virtual reality is incredibly effective at making you feel immersed in the fiction of games. Rather than watching events unfold on a screen a couple of meters away, there’s a sense of being part of the action in a way that simply isn’t possible using a TV. Not all genres are affected equally though, and while shooters, driving games, and flight sims can all lay easy claim to being radically enhanced in VR, how does that work with tower defence?

A bit like playing Sony’s classic platform game, Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, which placed you in the middle of its charming robotic world, hopping your bot rescuing droid around the space where you were sitting, the original Iron Guard had you roaming a virtual battlefield about the size of squash court. In your right hand you held a drone with a laser you could use to help defend your base, while your left hand held a controller that let you build and upgrade turrets.

Scudding about the battlefield, you could quickly move towards any area causing you trouble, adding towers or using your miniature spaceship to pump rounds into mobs. But there was always an odd tension between holding what felt like a toy-sized ship, and a disembodied game controller of a similar size, while hovering over industrial sites that were meant to be a representation of the real world.

In Short: Absorbing VR tower defence that improves on the original game in almost every department, but is let down by a pointless, tacked on narrative.

Pros: Good variety of enemies, mission goals, and turrets. Graphically crisp with detailed structures and attractive settings. Impressively polished all round, in terms of gameplay and visuals.

Cons: Abysmal dialogue and voice-acting; glitched conversations have characters interrupting each other. No multiplayer.

Score: 7/10