The last few Transformers games have been surprisingly excellent. War for Cybertron was great, Dark of the Moon was alright and Fall of Cybertron is one of the best licensed games ever, this side of Batman: Arkham City.Rise of the Dark Spark is in a very tricky position. It is a movie tie in game. The story sees it combining the Micheal Bay and High Moon universes. It's the firstThe last few Transformers games have been surprisingly excellent. War for Cybertron was great, Dark of the Moon was alright and Fall of Cybertron is one of the best licensed games ever, this side of Batman: Arkham City.Rise of the Dark Spark is in a very tricky position. It is a movie tie in game. The story sees it combining the Micheal Bay and High Moon universes. It's the first Transformers game on new gen consoles. It is releasing after the superb Fall of Cybertron. It isn't developed by High Moon Studios. Frankly, you would be hard pressed to find a greater amount of problems. In the end, Dark Spark succumbs to the pressure, even if it does put up one hell of a fight to stay above the average bar it has so easily slunk into.
The gameplay of Dark Spark is probably the best part- so long as you stay in robot form. The characters all feel different and respond really well. They move fine and while I rarely dashed or ran, it's all there if you need it. What I mean is that the combat is simply outstanding. There is an amazingly diverse range of weapons, with each one having separate challenges, upgrades and unlockables. While they are all noticeably styled after real life forms of weapons (shotguns, assault rifle etc.), the heavy weapons are where things get really cool. There are guns that shoot blades, guns that shoot acid and even guns that allow you to mind control your foes. While the game is astoundingly hard (mostly due to poor design choices which we'll get to later), I always enjoyed trying out new weapons and taking out hordes of bad guys (so long as they were standard bots). The melee is rarely needed, but it usually results in an insta kill and Optimus Prime has a devastating spinning attack. Every character also has a special ability. Optimus has a useful shield, whereas Soundwave has two smaller bots inside of him that are only really used for story purposes. Then there's Drift- his dash blade attack looks cool, but sloppily functions and underperforms. While every character feels different, not every character has as much polish.
There are a lot of Transformers in the game, with 25 Autobots and 19 Decepticons. While the 14 mission campaign only gives you access to around 13 characters, you can unlock the others through Gear Boxes for use in the online Escalation mode. Gear Boxes can be earned through completing challenges and levelling up. Initially I loved digging into a new box. Getting cool rewards like new guns and characters feels great, but as I proceeded I began to grow tired of cycling through the unlocks. This is mainly due to the fact that you eventually start to get the same unlocks from the same boxes, with the random structure of these rewarding cases meaning that you could get 4 IronHides or 10 Neutron Assault Rifles. There are a lot of challenges and distinctions, which function across both single player and online. There are also collectibles, so there is room for a lot of replayability in your pursuit to unlock everything and reach level 25. However, the lack of substantial rewards means that you'll probably leave the game before you get what you were going for.
Story wise, the game varies. The Dark Spark is a great Macguffin and I absolutely loved some of the levels, such as Grimlock's. However, the joining of the two worlds is poorly explained and you only get to spend about 5/14 levels on Earth. With the other 9 being Cybertronian, it feels like a retread of the previous game and the boring villains and bland characterisation doesn't do much to differentiate it. While it isn't hugely convoluted, the plot is too over-the-top for it's own good. The graphics and sound certainly don't help. The bland and ugly Earth environments don't really make you feel like you're travelling the globe and most of Cybertron is spent indoors, rather than out in the mostly good looking spacious areas. The character models are fairly detailed, but for some reason the cutscenes look like they had a jar of vaseline smeared over them. The repetitive dialogue and score are also boring.
Escalation mode is one of the highlights oof the game, with some well structured co-op and entertaining level design. The gradual difficulty increases are also nice. There's plenty to do, but unfortunately it gets very familiar, a lot like the rest of the game. You always feel like you've been there and done that, which is fairly upsetting. The old saying 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' doesn't apply here, as Edge of Reality have created more problems.
In the end, Dark Spark has a lot of things hampering it. The fluctuating difficulty, horrible enemy AI and lack of diversity hurt. So does the bad checkpointing and repetitive gameplay. The ugly graphics, lack of key vehicle sections and bad sound design are nasty. While Escalation mode works well, the gameplay is fairly good and the amount of characters is great, the negatives mess with the positives so that Rise of the Dark Spark becomes average quickly.… Expand
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