Transformers: The Game

While the gameplay is somewhat shallow, and the racing elements sometimes frustrating, there is plenty to say about getting a Transformers game with high production value and an all-star voice team. Activision and Traveller’s Tales have brought the new movie to life with a decent beat-em-up title that doesn’t succumb to the movie tie-in curse.

Easy to control and jump into, the game itself suffers from missions schemes that are not out of the ordinary. The missions are of the ‘been-there-done-that’ variety.

In the end, Transformers delivers over-the-top action with wild abandon, and leaves most of the more complex elements of good gameplay behind coughing from the dust kicked up by a giant transforming war machine.

Transformers The Game is as underwhelming as Transformers The Movie. A lot of missed potential. Too bad.

I just hope in the next game they amp up the free roam capabilities and truly allow us to dive into the world of the robots from Cybertron.

Being in control of giant robots with the ability to nearly level an entire GTA-like city sounds like nothing but fun, but issues get in the way.

Transformers does have a few redeeming moments, like when you get to play as Scorponok, but there are just way too many long stretches of mediocrity for me to be able to recommend this one.

It’s about on par with all other movie licensed games: relatively short, decent graphics, decent gameplay, and not much value to it.

If you liked the movie and have a high tolerance for missed potential and repetitive, button-mashing gameplay, give Transformers: The Game a shot.

While new and veteran fans of the Transformers were thrilled with Bay's movie, the Activision game is a complete bust.

A big, loud, shallow action game that severely lacks in content.

The Game is the best twenty-dollar game you will ever pay sixty dollars for, and in this case you can rest assured that there really isn’t any “more than meets the eye.”

So, lame missions, filled, again, with arbitrary restrictions like time limits and invisible walls, meet a clunky camera and mindless wash/rinse/repeat combat that doesn’t require the suspension of disbelief, but the annihilation of it.

The 2004 videogame adaptation of the Transformers: Armada line from Atari (on PS2) was a Transformers game done right. It had better visuals, cooler incentives for moving between robot and vehicular forms, and boasted some of the best boss battles that year. But Activision's 2007 iteration doesn't live up to that standard. Its lack of depth and poor mission design ensures that.

Very similar to most Michael Bay films - graphically intense, but shallow in terms of character and story. Add to that boring combat and you have a game good for fans of the upcoming movie only, though not even Transformer fan in general.

The clunky controls, lousy storytelling and overall unappealing gameplay make it difficult to recommend this game because you’re better off watching the movie.

A lazy film tie-in, barely redeemed by some fan-pleasing extras. Only satisfies in brief flashes. [Sept 2007, p.70]

It's hard to recommend Transformers: The Movie on its own merits, but those looking to simply stomp around a city as Optimus Prime will have some fun with it.

Pure movie tie-in fodder.

This is the epitome a game that was quickly thrown together with the most basic and juvenile concepts videogaming has.

Ranging from moments that made me want to chuck the system out the window because of crushing boredom or infuriating rage, no part of this game demonstrates something that hasn't already been trounced by a better offering somewhere else.

There was limitless potential here, but it's wasted. Transformers: The Game should be a sleek, cutting-edge sports car; instead, it's an old beater whose driver's seat has a spring sticking out in exactly the wrong place.

The real tragedy here is that a simple attempt to emulate Atari's 2004 Transformers game would have made this movie tie-in an order of magnitude better. As is, those looking for a Transformers fix should scour the bargain bins for that classic, and leave this one on the shelf.

This, however, shamefully for a PS3 game, has all the grace of Honda's Asimo trying to climb a spiral staircase. [Sept 2007, p.104]

This is as impressive as a crippled chimp, and its heavy-handed gameplay is ruthlessly boring. [Issue#156, p.80]

To produce a technically sloppy title is one thing, but the game is horribly flawed from conception to execution in a way we haven't seen since, ulp, Driv3r. Marred by a remarkably vacuous combat system, the pathetic driving and undercooked flying elements merely underline what a thoroughly wasted opportunity this was.

As far as summer movie licensed video games go, Transformers is sadly one of the worst we've seen this year. While the movie stands, the video game most definitely falls.

From the poorly encoded and nonsensical cutscenes to the broken level design and loads of bugs, it's one big mess. [Sept 2007, p.83]