Transformers: The Game

Transformers: The Game

Movie Tie-in games are almost universally awful. There are rare exceptions, and when they are good, it's usually in spite of the movie license, not because of it. Guarenteed sales because of well-meaning but clueless parents/grandparents make it a dicey proposition to devote any more resources to a game than the bare minimum, and it shows.

Transformers: The Game is sadly not one of those exceptions. The average gamer's age is hovering in the late 20's and rising - these are your core game-buying demographic, and they grew up on the Generation 1 Transformers. Even if you were going to slavishly base your game around the atrocious 2007 eponymous movie release, failing to include the ability to switch to Generation 1 skins (at least, switching without disabling achievements) is a major failing of the game. While the animations are slick and the game looks nice (although with a painfully short draw distance, especially for an open-worlder with so many tiny collectables), there's nothing more cringe-inducing than trying to enjoy a game where you play as a hideous exoskeleton robot.

While that's a lot of fanboy whining, there's a lot to dislike about the game otherwise. Your protagonist is always silent, even for characters that voicework was provided for in other scenes, and I desperately wanted something to attach myself to the robot on screen, just a simple "affirmative" or "on my way" would do the trick. The game does feature some nice destructible environments, but also ball-busting difficulty out of nowhere on certain missions, usually due to the game's sad choice of making your weapons into pea-shooters that will not fire straight unless you use your lock-on skill, which is locked to the speed and angle your camera can turn - not the direction your arm could aim. Driving (and flying, which has no altitude, pitch or yaw control, so basically driving without roads) is a mess top to bottom.

The most frustrating thing about this game by far is that it could have been that Hulk: Ultimate Destruction or Chronicles of Riddick that ends up being one of those "WTF" titles on your shelf that people laugh at when they come over and you get to lord your "Diamond-Finding Rough-Searching Skillz" over them as you explain why this tie-in was a blast.



Graphics: Everything is very, very pretty, when it's not totally pitch-black because there's no gamma control to lighten up things when you're indoors or after dark. 4.

Sound: Things crash and explode with appropriate booming resonance, but there's a startling lack of voice acting, especially since they clearly had people do voice work for the characters you control in the game. 2.

Controls: Abysmal. Getting to do the things that make this game fun are a chore. 1.

Tilt: There's a lot to like in the potential of this game, but in the end it falls flat. 2.

Overall (not an average): 2.