Video game reviews: Transformers (Wii)

From the block buster hit Transformers: The Movie, Activision brings Transformers: The Game to the Nintendo Wii, as well as other platforms. A war rages on earth between the Autobots and Decepticons, a battle between good and evil. Allowing you the gamer to decide which side you wish to fight for. Which ever side you swear your allegiance to you be put into essentially an open world. Where you can roam the surrounding area or accept mission objectives. Do not mistake Transformers version of a free roaming environment with the likes of Grand Theft Auto. Your progression through out the game is extremely linear. You will be assigned one new mission upon completion of the previous one. Although, most of the surrounding environment is interactive, allowing you pick and hurl items around. There is little satisfaction to be had with terrorizing the local inhabitants.

This all fails in comparison with the weak control system of the game. Transformers is a third person shooter using the analog stick on your nunchuck moves you bot around,

and the IR is used to aim. This is where most of my grumbling comes from in this game. Often, if an enemy is behind you it will take sometime before you will be able to turn a full 180 degrees and return fire. A major problem for a game brings plenty and fast action.

Transformers also proved to be a very shallow game. Missions eventually become boring and repetitive, shoot this blow up that. All without ever really changing how you have to play the game. A few things like bonus content or trying to find 100 energon cubes, provides a little more depth to the game. However, with the problems in controls and a lack luster story line, the same old recover the “Allspark” “protect the world” theme. I could only imagine why anyone would want to play this game other than to just beat it and be done with it.

Game Play Score: 6/10

Controls ruin what could have been a very enjoyable game. IR controls are very sluggish in responding to movement

Graphics Score: 7/10

The game looks pretty good in 480p with 16:9 wide-screen. Cinematic look great and the open worlds look pretty decent.

Audio Score: 6/10

Boring music from the movie and no use of the Wii Remote speaker makes the audio experience a dud.

Creativity/Innovation Score: 5/10

Transformers makes little use of the Wii controls. Waggle to throw a punch, point to shoot. both feel unresponsive and have been done better by other games.

Replay Value Score: 5/10

Bonus content, pictures and images of old transformers, does not make up for a lousy battles/missions that become boring and repetitive real fast.

Final Score: 5/10

A playable and passable game but I would not recommended it to anyone other than those die hard fans of the Transformers series.

Video games reviews: Transformers: The Game (Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, PS3)

Video games reviews: Transformers: The Game (Wii)

From the block buster hit Transformers: The Movie, Activision brings Transformers: The Game to the Nintendo Wii, as well as other platforms. A war rages on earth between the Autobots and Decepticons, a battle between good and evil. Allowing you the gamer to decide which side you wish to fight for. Which ever side you swear your allegiance to you be put into essentially an open world. Where you can roam the surrounding area or accept mission objectives. Do not mistake Transformers version of a free roaming environment with the likes of Grand Theft Auto. Your progression through out the game is extremely linear. You will be assigned one new mission upon completion of the previous one. Although, most of the surrounding environment is interactive, allowing you pick and hurl items around. There is little satisfaction to be had with terrorizing the local inhabitants.

This all fails in comparison with the weak control system of the game. Transformers is a third person shooter using the analog stick on your nunchuck moves you bot around,

and the IR is used to aim. This is where most of my grumbling comes from in this game. Often, if an enemy is behind you it will take sometime before you will be able to turn a full 180 degrees and return fire. A major problem for a game brings plenty and fast action.

Transformers also proved to be a very shallow game. Missions eventually become boring and repetitive, shoot this blow up that. All without ever really changing how you have to play the game. A few things like bonus content or trying to find 100 energon cubes, provides a little more depth to the game. However, with the problems in controls and a lack luster story line, the same old recover the “Allspark” “protect the world” theme. I could only imagine why anyone would want to play this game other than to just beat it and be done with it.

Game Play Score: 6/10

Controls ruin what could have been a very enjoyable game. IR controls are very sluggish in responding to movement

Graphics Score: 7/10

The game looks pretty good in 480p with 16:9 wide-screen. Cinematic look great and the open worlds look pretty decent.

Audio Score: 6/10

Boring music from the movie and no use of the Wii Remote speaker makes the audio experience a dud.

Creativity/Innovation Score: 5/10

Transformers makes little use of the Wii controls. Waggle to throw a punch, point to shoot. both feel unresponsive and have been done better by other games.

Replay Value Score: 5/10

Bonus content, pictures and images of old transformers, does not make up for a lousy battles/missions that become boring and repetitive real fast.

Final Score: 5/10

A playable and passable game but I would not recommended it to anyone other than those die hard fans of the Transformers series.

Video games reviews: Transformers: The Game (Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, PS3) – Part 2

You know when an incredibly hyped-up film like Transformers is released there’s going to be a heck of a lot of side merchandise following it – and so the release of this game on the Xbox 360 wasn’t really a surprise to me.

-Synopsis-

The synopsis for the game will probably appeal to anyone with a destructive side and a tendency to want to root for the bad guys – you can either play a campaign as the Autobots, the goody-goody robots trying to protect Sam, the film’s protagonist (the game contains major spoilers so I would watch the film first if you haven’t already) or as the Decepticons, the evil robots hellbent on seemingly blowing everything up. Add in a few…extremely…deep…yet.. .painfully…

overpronounced…voices like someone out of CSI and you’ve got your game.

-Gameplay-

You start off with a nice little intro that clears everything up. Instantly you’ll be hit with the graphics – excellent. You then choose which side you’ll be playing on, and then it shows you the controls for that Transformer. One thing I like about this is it actually lets you read these controls before you progress, rather than just hoping you’ve got some kind of photographic memory and can take it in in 5 seconds, which is nice of them.

If you play as the Autobots you start off play as Bumblebee but will also get to play as Optimus Prime and a few others. You basically are just given the missions of destroying Decepticons, which starts to wear thin after a while. Sometimes game play is broken up with something a bit different like a car chase, but otherwise its all a bit ’same-y’. You have a map in the bottom right hand corner which is clear and easy to read and you also can pick up power-ups like life and ’secrets’ of which there are 100 scattered all over the game (for each character, I believe). At the beginning of each chapter you get a cut screen which tells you your mission.

During the game you are given a ‘rating’ – as an Autobot you are expected to kill enemies and not destroy things – although this is hard to help as everything acts like it’s made out of polystyrene. The more you act good, you are given a heroic rating. The opposite, a destructive rating.

Of course, when you play as the Decepticons you try and do the opposite – cause as much destruction as possible. Your first task is simply to completely DESTROY an air base. Great fun, but quite difficult, actually.

Although the game seems quite simple on paper its actually quite tricky – your time