The 80's throwbacks are way past their (Optimus) Prime
User Rating: 4 | Transformers: The Game PS3
Based on Micheal Bay's new movie version, the transformers have been sexed up and polished to mirror sheen. These blockbusting chrome warbots are complex, cool as hell, and unfortuantley deserve to be in a much better game. The robots in disguise arrive on earth looking for the allspark, the source of all robot life. Yeah, even Aibos. Transformers: The Game enables you to play through the events of the movie as either the noble autobots or the evil decepticons. There are a total of nine playable charecters across both factions, kicking off as either the classic chevy Bumblebee or the attack chopper blackout before gradually working up to the big boys, Optimus Prime and Megatron. Despite the apparent variety on offer- Driving! Flying! Walking! - the gameplay is basicly the same for both sides,featuring a great deal of chasing other vehicles, heading to waypoints on the map and either protecting or destroying as much of the lifeless levels as possible, depending on the colour of your badge. The missions are dull and the gameplay mechanics are shoddy. The drviving suffers from over sensitive handling, so even when your one of the human-friendly autobots you can't help but shunt other cars off the road and into buildings. You can use motion-sensing to drive and more logicaly fly, but either way it's unresponsive to the point of uselessness (something the game acknowledges as the default setting for sixaxis is off). Transformers seems particullary pleased with the impressive levels of destructibility it offers. Everything around you from cars and buses to schools and apartments can be levelled, burned and trampled to dust.But the problem is the destruction is far too easily achieved. Just standing in the middle of the road will make cars swerve to avoid you- and they'll crash into houses and shops, sparking a chain reaction that more often than not makes a street end up in ruins. It feels totally unearned, and the payoff is that you don't feel like an enormously powerful machine; rather that the world around you is flower-petal fragile and you can't help smashing it to bits even if you wanted to. Combat is equally rubbish. All the transformers' projectile weapons- rockets, mini-guns and missiles- are vastly underpowered, meaning the most exiting way to make your enimies go boom is to mele it up. But even then you r hand-to-hand options are vastly limited, with each bot given just one combo to supplement basic kicking and punching. One promosing feature is you can pick up just about anything you see- cars, trees, lamposts, bits of broken building- to use as a weapon, either a baseball like swish or a two-handed over the head crunch. Leaving aside the fact that tearing up the civilisation sort of runs counter to the Autobots' stated aims and objectives, what ruins this improvised violence is that the dreary drones you fight (actual transformers are saved for boss fights), are totally impervious to your blows. You'll junk dozens of the henchbots in seconds, only to run into one who flawlessly blocks every attack you make. The only way to get through his defences is lobbing bits of scenery at the stubborn sod, which takes ages and becomes tiresome very quickly. Even transforming- or 'converting' as control options bizarely call it- isn't right. Theres no trademark noise and you have to be standing on the floor for it to work - for some reason you can't run, jump and then transform which seems the proper way to do it. As a result switching forms feels clumsy and slow, especialy when your on a timed mission. What makes this lazy cash-in even harder to bear is it's amazing opening cut-scene, which shows rival bots doing graceful battle all over earth. Its like being shown images of a tender fillet mignion before being served up a can of spam. This operner stands as a bitter reminder of how it should of been done and highlighting all the games faults: the lack of depth in the fighting, the moronic bots, the lack of face offs between real charecters. Making even a borderline entertaing game about the transformers shouldn't be hard- they're inherently cool, as proved by by the mostly execelent PS2 Transformers devoloped by Melebourne house over THREE years ago. This, however, shamefully for a PS3 game has all the grace of Honda's Asimo trying to climb a spiral staircase. Don't buy it.
Sam Barley
