Transformers: The Game

aka: Transformers le jeu, Transformers: Centrum Zabawy
Moby ID: 28833
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Based on the 2007 movie, Transformers: The Game puts players in the role of either the Autobot or Decepticon factions in an attempt to find the AllSpark, the artifact which gave life to their race. The Autobots intend to protect it for good, while the Decepticons desire its power for evil. The two factions fought their battle on the planet Cybertron, but in an ultimate attempt to protect it, the Autobots hurled the AllSpark into space where it remained hidden on Earth. When the Decepticons discover the location, they want to finish the war on Earth.

Set in a 3D sandbox environment with possibilities to interact and destroy the environment, players can choose between the two teams, each with different story-based goals. These are set on different locations, with primary and secondary quests. The storyline for the heroic Autobots follows the plot and events of the original movie. The storyline for the villainous Decepticons, however, allows the robots to destroy both the planet and more aggressively bring an end to their foes. Players can choose characters such as Optimus Prime or Bumblebee from the list of selectable Autobots, or Megatron and Starscream from the Decepticons.

Shown from a third-person perspective, the robots can switch between a robot and a vehicle/aircraft form, jump, block, dive underground, roll, dodge, use various weapons, and climb buildings. Special actions can be unlocked through the skill tracker. By performing long slides or jumps, symbols in the tracker will light up and provide extras.

Along the way, various collectibles can be found, ranging from promo images and artwork, to playable versions of the original "Generation 1" characters. The general gameplay is identical across the different platforms, but certain features are tied to specific versions.

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436 People (393 developers, 43 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 54% (based on 66 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.4 out of 5 (based on 51 ratings with 2 reviews)

Autobots, Transform and run away!

The Good
Let's be honest here. There's nothing better than being Optimus Prime, blowing up a Decepticon and saving mankind. Although chocolate cake would go down nicely right about now, especially with the current sour taste left in my mouth, mainly due to the lack of sweet, sweet action that this little title provides.

There are a few bright spots that I'll attempt to pick through and provide here, though I do warn you they are few and far between. Might as well start with the visual presentation, which in all reality is the best representation of the Transformers so far within a video game setting. All the eye candy you would expect is here, whether it's destroying a building via fist or missile, flying around the open air while taking down jets, or simply driving across the open highway and enjoying the view.

Yeah ... I'm being sarcastic. Sure, there's some decent pixels floating in and out, and the Transformers themselves are detailed enough, but due to the many problems that plague the game (which I'll mention below), any eye candy Activision were hoping to provide were lost within the myriad of boring levels. The transformation animation is only cool after the first few, after that you kinda forget all about how good it originally might have been.

The only other possible positive I can bring to the table having played the game would be the audio experience. There's plenty of loud bangs, Autobot chatter, etc, and the musical score provides a little added excitement to the action sequences, and believe me it needs all the help it can get.

There's a handful of extras to run through during the game, but finding all the hidden items won't take up too much of your brain power, and just about all the content you'll find can be found on the net just as easily, which is a shame. Still, the G1 characters add something, I guess.

The Bad
Now, on to the bad parts. Where, indeed, should I begin...

Once you get over that initial 'cool, I'm Optimus' stage, everything goes downhill quickly. You'll soon discover, as I did (very quickly, too), that the game resorts to either blowing stuff up or chasing someone down. In truth, that's what Transformers is all about anyway, but that doesn't make an entertaining gaming experience, and that's the case right here. Each mission just repeats a similar adventure to the last, just in either a different location or a different enemy objective. Same dog, different hairstyle. Sure, perhaps the same could be said about Call of Duty or Gears of War, but at least they make things interesting, in a number of ways the development team failed to consider.

Each level has to be 'found' by running to a certain point on the map. Yes, you can explore the surrounds and find the hidden items and challenges (kinda pointless though, under the circumstances), but it all becomes another boring way of providing some kind of open ended gameplay. Copying the Spider-Man way of thinking, since this is an Activision title, doesn't always work.

The characters themselves all play out much the same way, too. Despite the fact that they all have their own strengths within the comic book and movie franchise, they all seem to be clones of each other here, attacking with melee weapons or shooting from a distance. It would have been a far greater experience if, say, one character could heal another, or use a radar jamming system ... anything like that, really, would have done better than what's provided.

I did, though, have more fun blowing things up as a Decepticon, which is a good and bad thing. Good that at least there's something fun to do here, and bad since the Autobots should be the characters people want to play, not the evil ones. Okay, okay, maybe I'm being too 'nice' about my gaming habits, but seriously, running around as Optimus? Who wouldn't want to do that?!

Activision really missed the boat, too, by not providing a multiplayer option, or any online modes. Fighting with a friend and co-operating in taking down enemies would have done wonders to this games' lastability, among other things. And without any extra content to download, or online leaderboards to consider, the game itself comes and goes amazingly quickly ... unless you get bored with it half way through and change discs to something more appealing.

That's the thing that got me, in the end. How can a game developer, with so much content to work with, come up with something so boring? The logical answer, the one that comes up far too often in movie to video game translations, is that they simply didn't have the time to delve deeper.

Feature films are shot, edited and scored within two to three years, on average. Video games, at least the good ones, have a development cycle of two years or more. However, when dealing with a movie license, developers normally come on board a third or half way through the movie's development, leaving them with less than two years to have a finished product. That, of course, leaves us with far too many games based on movies that fall flat time and again, while development houses pick up the cash from consumers who hope, more often than know, if the game is worth the effort and buy it on the off chance that this time someones done the job.

The Bottom Line
It's a shame, really. Just a little more imagination and this game could have really taken off. Instead, I'm left to ponder what could have been. The amount of times I was left frustrated by the games poor design, it really did get to a point where I stopped despite really wanting to see if it improved over time, simply because it's just that bad. I didn't want to admit it at first, it looked really good from the opening sequence. But it quickly became clear how slow and poor Prime has become in his 'older' age.

I'd say stay well clear, but if you really want to give this a try (for one reason or another), the Xbox Cybertron Edition will no doubt be found at a cheap price at your local store.

At least the movie was good.

Xbox 360 · by Kartanym (12418) · 2008

More than meets the eye?

The Good
Finally the chance to play a modern version of Transformers and also being able to play as Decepticons no less. The idea of flying around as Starscream or Blackout and destroying the military out to stop you or playing as Barricade and tearing the suburban streets up is a blast. Playing the as the Autobots is just as much a blast, even though you are discouraged destroying anything but Deceptions in your path, there really is no punishment to it.

The ability to destroy anything is very fun, firing missiles into the sides of buildings, picking up and throwing various items, such as cars and buses and even using lamp posts as baseball bats, even picking up the Transformers you fight and throwing them into buildings and even explodeable objects, sending them flying through the air. One cool little thing I really like is when you are traveling at high speeds with Bumblebee or Barricade, you can transform in mid-run and slide across the ground in robot form like Starscream did in the movie.

The Bad
There is a lot not to like about this game, the graphics are ok, standard to a rush movie-to-game title, some glitches are easily noticeable and collision detection is a problem sometimes, almost like you are hitting an invisible walls sometimes.

Even though the back of the cover says you can play an army of Transformers, it is far from the fact. You can play as Optimus, Bumblebee, Ironhide and Jazz, but for some odd reason you can't play Ratchet. Likewise, on the Deception side you can't play as Bonecrusher or Brawl, two of the biggest and destructive ones out there, besides Megatron and Starscream. They're are a horde of "drone" Transformers roaming around, but it seems like they were put in the game only for Hasbro to have any excuse to make more toys.

With only five sections of the games to play, it seems very limited, you can only play that Transformer assigned to that area, so you won't be able to play Starscream on another level besides the second military base. You can play other Transformers on different missions in that level, letting you roam around and collect energon cubes to unlock bonuses. However, once you complete the chapter, you can no longer roam that area with the second Transformer, example: on the SOCCENT Military Base, you can play as Blackout, on a mission you can play as Scorpinok, after you finish the mission you can roam around the area, but once you finish the chapter and come back later, you can play his mission again, but afterwards reverts back to Blackout, so collecting all the energon cubes at that time is crucial.

The plot of the game follows the movie, somewhat, even though they use Shia Lebouf and Megan Fox's voice, they have very cheesy voice acting and instead of using movie clips of the movie, they made their own CG clips that have different variations of the movie, but also in some explain others the movie didn't cover.

The bonus items you can unlock isn't worth getting excited over, mostly it is artwork, stills from the movies and trailers. However, one thing that is interesting is that you can unlock G1 characters for Optimus, Megatron, Jazz and Starscream, however playing them in a game is strangely weird, almost like playing and 8-bit Mario in Mario Galaxy.

The Bottom Line
This is an OK game, but another rush job to be put out to promote the movie and slap a $50-$60 price tag. If you have a son, nephew or cousin, they'll have hours of fun with it, but I wouldn't pay no more than $20 for it, which is it's going price now. But, for the die-hard Transformers fans or those who can't remember Transformers and was caught up in the buzz for the blockbuster movie (like me), then pass on it.

PlayStation 2 · by Big John WV (26954) · 2008

Trivia

In the US the Windows version is only available at the Target chain of stores.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Guy Chapman.

Windows added by Jeanne.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, Sciere, n][rvana, Starbuck the Third, Karsa Orlong.

Game added June 27, 2007. Last modified March 16, 2024.