Reviewed: July 5, 2007
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud

Publisher
Activision

Developer
Traveller’s Tales

Released: June 26, 2007
Genre: Action
Players: 1

4
8
6
5
5.8

Supported Features:

Transformers: The Game is the story of the two warring factions of robots that can transform themselves to look and take on the aspects of things they come into contact with. Both factions of Transformers have been searching for the Allspark that gave life to all the robots on Cybertron and is now on earth. You get to bring life to either side of this fight as you search for the Allspark playing as the many variations of Transformers.

Transformers: The Game has two main paths for a campaign, you get to play as the Autobots or Decepticons for a short campaign with each faction. During the campaign you will play as several different characters with their own attacks and defenses but most boil down to two types of firing weapons and a few melee attacks. Throughout the entire game you use these melee attack combinations in a button mashing fest to destroy the other sides robots or in the Decepticons campaign to just wreck havoc on the humans.

Each mission starts with a short cut scene and then your given your objecticves, usually just beat several robots and get to the next stage or level. Your map in the corner is nice for getting to your next destination but getting there is half the battle. The ground vehicles are terrible to drive easily but the air vehicles are simplistic in comparison.

The story is a great one but there is all the hallmarks of a movie licensed game that plague this type of endeavor; short campaign, quickly designed, and lack of a cohesive story. Transformers: The Game follows closely along with the movie where both factions search earth for the Allspark. The missions are basically a fight to get from one spot to another with mostly small grunt Transformers in your way or an occasional boss battle with a few stronger Transformers.

The same few combination attacks are used throughout the seemingly endless fighting that it does get very repetitive and fighting looses the spark of fun. Most of the missions are a fight against the minions of the other side intermixed with a chase to get to the next fight scene. In the game you are given fighting zones that you cannot leave or you have to race to get to before a timer runs out or you fail the level and start over.

Getting knocked out of the zone is not bad as you can just get up and run to the area but when you have to race to the next fight zone using the vehicle your transformer turns into it can be a hectic time. The transformer ground vehicles handle terribly like their on ice and often you run into buildings and other vehicles racing to get to the next zone before the timer runs out.

Throughout Transformers you have the biggest problem just seeing where you're going and getting the camera positioned so you are looking where you want. Many of the games problems all stem from the simple issue of having too much control over the camera so your robot goes off in the wrong direction or you're looking through objects instead of getting a good view of what your robot is seeing.

The missions all end up being one long drawn out fight beating the other robots and some fights against humans in their various forms of air and ground assault like jets, helicopters, tanks and police cars. The fighting will boil down to destroying a lot of stuff but this does look very good with the great graphics.

The general graphics and overall well made textures could have been the hallmark of an excellent game but they did not complete the games other components to create an overall well made product. The bloom effects, explosions and general 480p resolution turned out very well. The Wii version of the game looks very good and about the best I have seen on the console system so far.

Cut scenes in the game look excellent and have that quality of being nice enough to watch several times, they are that good in some of the scenes. They took a good amount of time to make this part of the game right and could have done better with the rest.

The effects and background sounds were pretty good with decent and believable sounding additions to the explosions and other parts. The noises added to the transformers changing forms sounded very realistic but the voice acting sounded kind of forced.

Transformers: The Game is fun to play but the Wii version is plagued with the control issues and having to grunt and spin your way through the whole campaign can be fun and frustrating at the same time. Replaying the campaign would get to be tiring but there is something to be said for being able to cruise down a street and suddenly transform into a 20 foot tall robot and beat the snot out of the cops when they converge on you.