In 2012, the movie Iron Sky came out. It was a sci-fi parody in which a group of Nazis escaped to the far side of the moon near the end of World War II and established a secret colony. Decades later, their existence is uncovered by two astronauts during a lunar mission, prompting the Nazis to launch an invasion of Earth. It was a ridiculous film that garnered fans and became a small cult hit, but any potential storyline ideas died after the second film bombed. Iron Sky: Invasion was a tie-in game to the movie that also came out in 2012, and it did fine despite receiving a drubbing from critics and mixed rating from players. That should be the end of that, but a funny thing happened in the middle of 2026: The game received DLC that upscales the game to 4K. If you already own the title, you're only asked to buy the DLC and not the whole game. The question is whether a game from 14 years ago can hold up today after all of this polish has been applied.

Invasion opens with what is essentially an extended version of the film's trailer, using additional footage to summarize most of the movie's plot, bad and dated jokes included. The story serves as a prequel to the film. You play as an unnamed pilot of an American spacecraft sent by the U.S. President to negotiate a peace treaty with the newly discovered Nazis. However, upon arriving at the Nazi admiral's space zeppelin, you're immediately attacked after the Nazis declare war on Earth. Although reinforcements eventually arrive, it's ultimately up to you to defeat the admiral and prevent the full-scale invasion.

Unless you have extensive knowledge of the film, most of the characters you meet are one dimensional at best. Their acting matches what you'd find in the film, for better or for worse. It also doesn't help that these interstitial cut scenes last a bit too long, so you'll end each one with long awkward moments of silence before the feed cuts off. It all ultimately works if you don't think about why you're doing what you're doing, so treat the story as something disposable and you'll be fine.

The game is essentially a flight combat in space, but it straddles the line between being arcade-like in nature and having a few sim-like elements. The arcade part comes from the fact that you don't have to lead your shots to hit an enemy, and you can practically be at any distance to do so. You also don't have to refuel your ship, so the only reason to dock your ship would be to refill your health and weapons. As for the sim elements, your ammo is always limited, so you can run out of secondary weapons and need refills. Your primary weapon is also limited in supply, but the energy needed for that can either be obtained through a slow recharge or by diverting some thrust power into ammo. Likewise, you have a shield that slowly regenerates over time, but you can also give it a boost by spending some health.

Invasion immediately falls into a loop that doesn't deviate throughout its entire run. You pull up a map to see where the action is and warp there. You destroy all of the enemies and pick up some space salvage while you can before you warp to another area and repeat the process. If you have time, you can stop by a nearby space station to sell the salvage and upgrade your ship or switch to a new craft whose abilities don't differ too much. There may be some missions that'll have you getting space salvage or trying to protect a station that's under attack, but they never change the fact that you're flying between destinations and blowing up stuff.

For an arcade-style combat sim, that loop is completely acceptable, and the game would be enjoyable if it weren't weighed down by a long list of design issues. One of the most notable problems is the game's color contrast, which makes its font surprisingly difficult to read. The light blue text blends into bright backgrounds such as Earth, explosions, and the stark white space stations where you dock. As a result, nearly everything on-screen is harder to read than it should be. Salvaging space junk to pay for upgrades is a solid idea, but inconsistent junk prices make it difficult to tell how much you'll need for more expensive purchases. That raises another question: Are the upgrades even worth buying when their effects are barely noticeable? The uneven difficulty only makes matters worse. In one moment, you're cutting through standard enemy ships with ease, and in the next moment, you're facing massive vessels that soak up damage while landing pinpoint-accurate shots. You'll die fairly often in these encounters, and although the game saves your progress every time you warp, it doesn't restore your stats. If you enter a fight with low health and no secondary weapons, you'll respawn in exactly the same condition.

The game length will be a big issue for many players. Six missions don't seem that long until you realize that each mission is a long trek consisting of multiple tiny battles strung together. There are moments when you'll reach what should be a good stopping point for a mission only to discover that you're still warping from skirmish to skirmish with no end in sight. The game quickly becomes a slog, and even when the fights are all going your way, the near-endless missions combined with the slow upgrade system will make you want to tap out of the game.

The primary goal of the DLC was to update the visuals for the 4K era, and in that respect, the developers have done a solid job. The movies and other cut scenes look wonderful in 4K, with the upscaling process showing no obvious artifacts. Ship textures appear clean, provided you can get close enough to appreciate them and don't mind that nearly everything is either white or dark gray. The star-filled backdrop of space is initially impressive, but that sense of wonder fades because the scenery never changes. Explosions look somewhat low resolution, but the pixelation is only noticeable if you're close enough to inspect them. The previously mentioned issue with the font's poor color contrast remains impossible to ignore.

The audio remains unchanged from the original release, for better and worse. The live action scenes match the acting from the film, but your pilot's voice acting ranges from passable to outright poor, and he never feels like a right fit for the role. On the positive side, the sound effects are excellent, especially on a surround sound system where the explosions make full use of the bass. The music, however, is far less consistent. Combat tracks deliver the kind of cinematic score you'd expect, but the music around your base resembles a calm tune from a 1940s film. Meanwhile, the title screen opts for a moody, melancholy theme that feels more suited to a goth/edgelord aesthetic that the rest of the game.

If you're on Linux, then you'll need to switch to the latest CachyOS version of Proton to get the game to run. Proton Experimental will give you the "test pattern" video to indicate that a codec is missing, and the latest Proton-GE version doesn't get past the initial load screen. Even then, the game isn't completely playable with Proton, since most of the interstitial videos in a mission don't appear, forcing you to skip almost all of them to continue playing. Initially, you'll be confused about what you need to do next. At the moment, if you want to get the full experience with the game, you have to be on Windows.

Steam Deck users will find that interstitial cut scene issues are inconsistent. They'll play fine some of the time but fail to play at other moments, with the choices of either being randomized. The lack of cloud saving also means that you'll need to start anew no matter where you're playing. It discourages players from bouncing between portable and home play. Otherwise, the game's age does a good job of ensuring that the Deck's performance is solid. You can get around a little over four hours of playtime on the portable device from a full charge and do so while locked at 60fps.

Again, it is fantastic to see that both the developer and publisher of Iron Sky: Invasion opted to do a paid upgrade to an existing game and immediately place it on sale during one of the big Steam events rather than ask for a full price for the title. The game remains a hard sell when the only improvement is in the graphics. The base combat is fine, but between the almost nonsensical story and middling performances to the drawn-out levels and sudden difficulty spikes, there's enough to turn away even the die-hard movie fans. Unless you really, really need a flight combat game that can run on your old PC, it'll be fine to give this title a pass.

Score: 5.5/10