Easily the most ambitious third party DS game to date!
PRESENTATION: 8/10
- The overall presentation for Transformers: Autobots is well above average for a third-party DS game. Right away you have great cover art on the box. Unfortunately when you open the box up you will see a very thin instruction booklet which is in black and white. That isn't the only bad thing about this games presentation. The map you can access on the touch screen is too small to see exactly what street you are on. Turn on the game and you will see a very snazzy menu complete with music that reminds you of the old cartoon. And as a perfect mood setter, the game starts off with a great CG opening narated by Optimus Prime himself.
STORY: 10/10
- The story is layed out nicely throughout the game. There are some spoilers to the movie but not many really. If anything this game is the perfect precurser to the movie if you don't feel like reading the official Prequel Novel or Prequel Comics (both are great). GRAPHICS: 8/10
- These graphics are some of the nicest and most ambitious of any third-party DS game. I will just start out by saying that there are several free roaming places for you to roam around as much as you want. Basically think of GTA or Spiderman 2 and 3 for the consoles. This game is very much like those games. There is a lot of blockiness and pixels to be seen but everything looks great when you aren't right up against something. The Transformers themselves are the nicest looking things in the game along with their Transformations. The Autobots that you will see in the movie have the nicest Transformation animations, while the cars that your character transforms into will have slightly less detailed animations. And you would think with all of this that there would be slowdown. Well there isn't! Not even with several things happening at once. Did I mention the game starts off with a pretty long CG opening?
GAMEPLAY: 8/10
- You control a rookie Autobot for most of the game that will not be in the movie. Throughout the game you will learn how to fire your weapons, mele attacks, transforming, and to scan other vehicles and aircraft. For every Decepticon you defeat you gain points that will eventually allow you to level up. Leveling up increases your strength and unlocks mele attacks and better firepower. The controls for the most part are great. You can transform standing still, while running, or while falling off a building for a nice effect. The handling of the cars varies upon which car you are transformed into. The school bus for example will be slow, and so will the robot. You will be using the D pad to move about both on the ground and in the air. Flying is also very easy to do. Upon reaching a certain level you will even be able to climb on top of any bulding. Much like the recent Spider-Man games for the consoles you will be able to freely roam the cities, or you can go to the green dot on your map to receive a mission from one of your Autobot friends. Many of the missions are time based, and I will warn you, they can be challenging and frusterating at times. The biggest problem with the gameplay in this game is the lockon system. It automatically locks on a target for you and the only way to change the target is to look at who you want to shoot. And while you can change the camera from left to right you cannot look up, which makes it hard to shoot some planes. Many times you will find yourself having to climb a building so that you can see a plane that is attacking you. Another small problem is that the hand to hand mele attacks are slow and it really doesn't make much sense to use them. It is better to just keep your distance and fire away at your foes. Other than that, the gameplay in this game is excellent, and fun which is the most important thing. The game takes about how long you would think a game with this much in it would take. But with all of the audio, huge cities, and great graphics I am surprised they have more than 2 missions in the whole thing!
AUDIO: 10/10
- And the award for Best Audio in a DS game goes to....Yup you heard me correctly. A third party actually took their time and implemented voice work into a DS game! ALL of the dialogue in this game is from the voice actors in the actual film. There will be dialogue between the autobots at the start of almost every mission, and you will also hear your enemies talking to eachother and you. Things like a cop car saying "There is a giant..uh..robot doing some damage downtown!". Also Bumblebee, one of the main Transformers in the game and the movie cannot talk. He instead uses songs, and speeches over the radio to convey what he is trying to say (Megatron crushed his audio device a long time ago in a battle on Cybertron, their home world). You will even hear that in this game!
REPLAY VALUE: 9/10
- Once you complete the game you can still try to scan every possible vehicle in the game in any of the handful of free roaming worlds. Once you are done for that you can take this game online via the Nintendo Wifi Connection and download missions that you can complete to get unlockable content. When you download these missions you can go back online once you have completed them to upload your scores which will aid your side (Autobot or Decepticon) in the online war called the Allspark Wars. Then of course if you get bored with that you have the option to trade this game for the Decepticons version of the game which features a completely different story, as well as different vehicles, characters, and worlds to roam!
I highly reccommend this game to any Transformers fan, as well as any fan of action games. You will not be dissapointed. I also encourage everyone to go see Transformers in theaters on July 4th. If this game is any indication it will be amazing. Please go see it in the theater, and do not pirate the movie. You should support this movie so that it will make enough money for a sequel to be greenlit, which in turn means more Transformers games! Enjoy the game and let me know how Transformers: Decepticons is!