Customer Reviews

Transformers Animated

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was given this game as a gift, from a friend who knows my great love for the Transformers franchise, stemming all the way back to the original 1980's episodes.

Unfortunately, the game has been very disappointing. The gameplay itself is simple for adult gamers, and, in places, very tedious. Moving all three autobots through the same course one after another is a great single-level gimmick, but wears very thin very quickly. Especially when two out of three Autobots aren't even able to jump, and instead, you end up having to jump one to the elevator switch, power it up, move the other two to the elevator, power down, move the first back, move the second two to the next elevator... over and over again. It's just as fun as it sounds.

You also get the impression that the levels and gameplay were designed as a template, and, when they figured out that they had the Transformers franchise, they filled in the blanks. Optimus Prime was made to throw the axe (what?), Bumblebee to shoot the ranged weapon, and Bulkhead to break things. The three main characters don't even transform inside the levels! Add in some cutscenes with a ridiculously thin and peripherally transformery plot, and bam, you can have a game which can be sold to people who see the Transformers logo. The best part is that with 20 minutes of re-coding, some different graphics, and a few new cutscenes, you could have a bad "Iron Man" game, or a bad "Cars 2" game.

Overall, it has little to suggest that they were building this to innovate or to find interesting ways to use the franchise and characters, but instead, it feels like they created a game sufficient to say that they'd created a game at minimal cost.

Truthfully, I don't even think the game will be of much value even to Transformers fanboys. The voice-actors aren't the actual actors from any of the movies or original series (and aren't even imitating them well). The characters themselves don't look like themselves (in either the Original or the Michael Bay models) and it seems to rely heavily on Transformers not found elsewhere in the series. The one redeeming quality: When you open or close the DS, it plays the "Transform" sound effect. That got a massive grin out of me.

So, in short, if you have a very young child who likes the Transformers, they may enjoy this game, and not see the formulaic and simple nature of it. Even then, it's not an action game by any stretch of the imagination. However, if you're old enough to be looking at product reviews on Amazon, you're probably too old for this, and you'll want to look elsewhere.

(Author's note: OK, apparently there's a new Transformers series that I'm not familiar with that this is based on. So, I maintain that this game has little to do with the oldschool Transformers franchise, but the game, is, apparently, OK with canon. )

This game is So much fun for my son(6). He love Transfomers. And he love this game.