We’re not going to beat around the bush. Transformers: The Game is almost solely based on the Hollywood movie and does come with a lot of the precursory flaws that come with virtually all movie games that are released these days. However, Transformers manages to almost do more right than wrong, and manages to pull off a decent romp. Still, it’s the obvious bind with the movie that holds the game back. Rather then taking into account the over twenty years of material, it’s unfortunate that the game is confined to the one movie. Whether it’s Michael Bay, Paramount or Activision who made the call, it's unfortunate that it happened.
The story in Transformers is a simple one and is something of a throw back to the older stories. Basically, the “All Spark” that gave life to everything on Cybertron (Transformer home world), was lost in the war between the Autobots (good guys) and the Decepticons (bad guys). As you’d expect, the All Spark crashes on Earth and now the war is played out on Earth. You’ve got two separate campaigns, where the Autobots campaign follows the events of the movie, while the Deceptcions follow a story that resembles the events of the movie but eventually falls in their favour.
Bumblebee is the man... err... machine?
Again, the story really just dances around the events of the movie, and not much more has been added either side. It does give a little background to the movie and is played from the Transformers’ side rather than the human perspective of the movie. Each side has four core chapters to play through, as well as one final chapter each that is essentially “the final battle”. In each of these chapters, you’ll play through an open-ended level where you can either follow the green marker to the next mission or cruise around and look for the multitude of other tasks and goodies scattered around the place.
The missions are quite simple in their layout. They’re pretty much a big mix of “destroy this”, “go here within the time limit”, “follow the checkpoints”, “find X amount of random objects” and so forth. The main difference is that you’re playing as giant transforming robots and the objectives will slightly vary depending on situation and side. The good thing is that at least you’ll play as almost every Transformer that was in the movie, with Bumblebee in particular getting a big work out. As you play through the simple and often repetitive objectives, you’ll feel like you’ve been there before. It really is the simplest of structures.
For giant robots, all of the Transformers handle reasonably well and even differently. Each Transformer has different weapons, a different melee combo, different height and somewhat different transformation. Transforming is as easy as pressing a button. It’s not as fluid as it was in the PS2 game, as you need to be in certain position (generally with two feet on the ground) and it takes a couple of seconds. However, now it’s at least useful and necessary to getting around. Still, the game has been reasonably well tuned, so maneuvering in vehicle or robot form is relatively simple and fluid. Virtually all Transformers can climb up the side of buildings and the ones that can fly, namely Starscream and Blackout, have been tuned quite well so you don’t need to be a veteran gamer to pick them up and fly them around (though the precursory invisible walls get in the way).
We're going to need more bug spray!
Given that you’re a giant robot, it would make sense that the environments that you fight in an almost completely destructible. It’s actually reasonably impressive to see how much damage you can cause to you environment, or to the traffic, given that you’re completely impervious to anything and anyone while driving. Virtually any car and anything that is lying around or that been dismantled can be picked up and used as a weapon. In most cases you’ll find that your fists are your most effective weapon. However, in many transformer-on-transformer battles, the only way to get to your opponent is to first stun them by throwing something at them. You’ll find that the game will rely more on this as you progress, even though you start off by senselessly pummeling the “drones” of the opposing forces.
If you’re not expecting much, the game can be reasonable dumb fun. However, there are some rather frustrating issues that can get in the way. Your weapons, while varied, borderline on being useless. This is especially true for Autobots. Most Transformer enemies will block any fire but at least Decepticon weapons can be used for any destruction objective. One really frustrating issue is that the game uses canned animations for picking up objects. Often, you’ll run to pick something up and the icon to allow you to pick it up will appear, but the object will often be kicked away and you’re left watching a giant robot do squats. The camera and lock-on only further compound the issues, because when you pick something up, even though your reticule indicates that you’re pointing in one direction, it will be thrown in another. In other situations, the lock-on is rather weak and will get in the way, while the camera can be troublesome in tight spaces and it has trouble adapting. Finally, the camera “bounces” quite discernibly if you’re controlling a huge Transformer, such as Optimus Prime or Megatron.
The game has a rather large array of unlockables. There is a rather massive gallery of images and a couple of movies, though most of them are related to movie, rather than anything else Transformers. The best unlockables are the vintage skins, including a GI Optimus Prime skin, which is just downright sexy. Looking upon these, it makes us wish that a little more Transformers material from outside the movie went into the game. Still, the resulting game is reasonable, particularly if you liked the movie. Some of the flaws indicate that the final product was rushed as well. While it is decent romp and it is better than other recent movie efforts, the game does end up being something of a typical movie tie-in effort.
Blackout watches some of chaos he just caused.
Graphically, each and everyone of the Transformers is superbly rendered and detailed and shine in HD. While not everyone is happy with the new style adopted for the movie, they certainly look the part in this game. They are all very finely detailed and fluidly animated. The transforming sequences are close to making the experience fluid. As fantastic as the Transformers look and as impressively destructive the environments are, it doesn’t hide the fact that they are tiny by open-ended standards, sparsely detailed and somewhat bland. Still, they are somewhat faithful to the movie. Technically, the game is solid most of the time but does take a few severe frame rate hits and next-gen versions look slightly compromised.
The best part of the sound in the game is the fact that the original Optimus Prime and Megatron voices have come back to reprise their roles and we must say, it feels right. They do their jobs quite astutely and manage to bring back a great feeling of nostalgia, particularly with dialogue that resembles that of the original show. Around this, it’s a mix of movie tied in sounds and tracks as well numerous shattering sound effects of buildings crumbling and cars exploding. Nothing you haven’t heard before but they get the job done. It's a shame that the original transforming sound didn't make it into this game (and for the record, we think the "new" theme song sucks).
Yes, Transformers: The Game is essentially you're usual movie tie-in. It's shallow, it's repetitive, it sticks too closely to the movie template and it has flaws that would have been probably remedied if the game wasn't pushed in time for it to be tied in with the movie. However, as long as you're not expecting anything else, there is a core game that's good for some mindless fun. That, and if you're a fan, you've only got one other option and you've most likely exhausted that one by now. If you enjoyed the movie, the game is certainly worth a rent or a budget purchase. It is after all, purely about playing as the Transformers. Unfortunately for G1 fans, you'll have to wait a little longer to see a true rekindling of your childhood dreams, though we'd advise against holding your breath.
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