Transformers the Game: Worth the price of admission? That remains to be seen...
Putting aside my bias of how awesome the Transformers truly are, I must step back and take a long hard look at the facts...The Transformers game is one of those, as I refer to them, Chex Mixes...Yes, thats right, as in the bag of Chex mix...Its got tasty bits of Chex cereal, and then theres the nasty plain old bread "stick" bits...
The game, plays out to the movie, in great detail at that...the voice acting, top notch, yet a bit overdone at times, and I noticed (at least on the PC version), that many time the voiced mission objectives would repeattwo or three times, right in a row. Needless to say, it seemed a bit annoying to hear the same thing repeating, unless the Autobots and Decepticons picked up a nasty stutter on their way here...
The controls, while obviously built around a console format, worked well, mapping all the important keys close by on the keyboard. The menus, also screamed console-format. I am not going to complain, seeing this game was cross platformed to no less than 6 consoles.
The gameplay itself was your usual smash and stomp, wash, rinse and repeat...Get to point X and kick the crap outta X generators. The nice touch is the Robot/Vehicle switch, that can be performed anytime during gameplay...switching from car to robot and back to car...granted transforming into a building-sized robot in public tends to garner unwanted attention from the local law enforcement. The story is linear, with the exception of "cube collection" Scattered across the "open" game world are little golden cubes, that you can pick up....granting you access to "sub missions", which are little pointless minigames, that can be found throughout the world....i.e. pound 20 drones in 2:00, go from point A to point B in 1:00, and upon completion, you are granted a Bonus Feature, ala Movie trailer, Picture....
"Open" world gives you access to randomly see the sights, destroy some playgrounds, climb onto the roof of the police station...which would have been nice to do, if not for the annoying reminders of your mission objectives...recurring so frequently, you just go do the missions, just to get the game to shut the hell up..."Optimus, the a meteor at the park, we ought to check it out" three secounds go by..."Prime, meteor, Park "....five seconds go by..."Hey, Optimus, are you ignoring me...Park, BIG METEOR...come on..." STFU, im trying to look cool jumping roof to roof DAMMIT!
Another painful console feature, the Checkpoint Save...ARGH!...chapters play out with several different mission objective...complete most of them and fail the last one, guess what Bub? Take it from the top and try again...Easily the most annoying feature ever...and yes, I am jaded.
I, myself, enjoyed the game, for what it is, though its not gonna have a long life on anyones hard drive...it was a fun little diversion, if not for a bit...
Bottom Line:
Unless you are a hardcore Transformers fan, download the demo...and try it