The film was epic. Possible review coming later so the less said about that the better.
On the back of every even mildly successful film there is a game franchise lurking, ready to strike unsuspecting parents in the wallet to the cries of "but look daddy, its got Wall-e on the front like the film that kept me quiet for nearly 2 hours!"
It would seem the development team, made of Beenox, Luxoflux and Vicarious Vision, amongst others, have managed to pull a gem from the arse of Activision that isn't covered in the stinking shite of another Spiderman franchise game or the putrid blood-the-colour-of-money of another way to make America look like massive dick-waving super-soldiers of the Western Front.
I like this game, as with reviewing stuff myself i get to have my opinions broadcast to the world and you can't do anything about it.....unless i get moved to China. In which case the only people reading my rantings about the latest State made game, "Communism Chang Takes His One Child To Pay Respects To Mao," mandatory in all households, will be the censor office.
The game is 3rd person balance between hack and slash, shoot 'em up and to an extent driver. All three aspects are balanced well and the fluidity between them is key to the enjoyment factor, something severely lacking from some games these days *cough Sims 3 cough* Luckily this has been done exceptionally well, and looks good as well. For example to transform to vehicle mode the player must hold R2. This then acts as the accelerator with L2 as handbrake and L1 as brake. The right pad then alters to accommodate vehicle action buttons; X is now for Boost not jump and Square to fire vehicle weapons, with triangle and circle remaining the same as when in walker mode. To transform back simple release the R2 button. Doing this in conjunction with several other buttons adds an attack, AOE attack or jump to the transformation. This is done, as i have said, exceptionally well, both in physics and aesthetics.
The melee is based around 4 principles. Mashing square to pull of simple 3 hit combos, holding square to charge a directable attack and using vehicle mode to either impact one foe or AOE several. Whilst most of the combat focuses on ranged weapons this aspect is still necessary and can, with some of the larger characters, be an effective way of dispatching enemies. However it feels like the development team did the bare minimum necessary to get by and focused more on the ranged combat. Understandable, but disappointing.
Ranged weapons and special abilities are the same on both sides near enough, just allocated differently. For example Breakaway, the Autobot flyer, is equipped with a sniper rifle (one of my favorite weapons in the game) The Decepticons have Sideways, the sexual Audi R8 model, who also has a sniper rifle but different secondary and special weapon. Ironhide and Grindor can both deploy auto-turrets as their special weapons and Ratchet and Longhaul both act as team medics. This is cheap, but has been done to ensure online multiplayer teams are balanced and all slot requirements filled.
Vehicle handling is adequate. Flyers move too slow, even with boost, to avoid much flak. Fast ground vehicles such as Bumblebee and Sideways are useless to manoeuvre at speed whilst Longhaul and Ironhide are too slow to escape when health is low. This is design, and not design flaw, i just find it irritating.
During the two campaigns, Autobots and Decepticons, the player is tasked with several side missions in order to loosely follow the film plot. These missions are just repeated but from the other side's perspective for the opposite campaign; in one Autobot mission Ironhide was tasked to defend a power station and TV tower from a numbered Decepticon force, in the Decepticon campaign Starscream is attempting to destroy both targets with a respawning amount of Autobots AND kill Optimus Prime.
The upgrade and unlock system is standard concept art, multi player skins but with the added bonus of 6 original full length episodes of Transformers for completing 6 different achievements available. I thought this a nice touch for the die-hard Transformer fans.
See, i own a ps3, and fellow owners will understand the draw of trophies. They are WHY i play the same game 3 times through back to back, for a chance at that Platinum Trophy *slobbers* Transformers has plenty of trophies, most of which however can be achieved by just finishing both campaigns or with a short stint playing online. The online community seems to consit of me and 3 kids from Germany at the moment, matches are always 1v1 and its a rare occasion to actually find someone online, but then the game has only been out about a month. What is it with Germans and servers? COD4, COD5, BFH, Transformers they all have angry German players on them!
Overall i paid £24 for a brand new PS3 game that has lasted me nearly 2 weeks of pretty much solid play, for a normal socialite that equates to about a month and a bit of casual gaming. I think good value for money. Suggest only for fans of the films however, as it is based solely around the thrill of being both a truck and leader of a team of interplanetary transforming robots......or in Ironhide's case being a Ford and a douche.
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