Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Shot down and piston.
This over-complexity blights the structure of the game as a whole. The scoring system is convoluted, relying on multiple bonus objectives, secondary missions, hidden icons, time limits, medals and challenge points to progress and climb up the leaderboards. Not only are these parallel requirements vaguely explained - little more than a splurge of menus numbers and stats, dumped in your lap at the beginning and end of each stage - but it's also almost entirely pointless.
It gives the illusion of a game with lots going on, but there's little substance behind the statistics. Earning a medal for each mission in each location, for example, opens up that map for free-roam play. Of course, the word "play" takes on a different meaning when you realise you've been rewarded with a completely empty level, devoid of enemies and collectibles. There's not even any traffic. It seems these eerie ghost towns are simply there to help you grind your way through the requirements for unlocking bonus content, such as using Bumblebee's turbo 100 times. Some of the extras are worthwhile, such as complete episodes of the original cartoon, but it's hard to see why anyone would want to go to any effort to earn the numerous galleries of concept art.
The game lasts only a few hours per campaign, yet somehow the relentless onslaught of disconnected noise and imagery manages to dilate time so that it feels three times as long - much like the movie, actually. The single-player route through Revenge of the Fallen spits you out at the end feeling punch-drunk, jetlagged and a little confused. You know you've just experienced something, but you probably couldn't explain what or why beyond the fact that lots of things exploded. Something to do with energy and pyramids and prophecies and did that robot really have a beard?
Where this game improves on its predecessor is the addition of a multiplayer mode. In any other game this basic offering wouldn't be notable, but the chance to four-on-four Transformer-tweaked variations on the expected flag capture and base-holding game types will certainly appeal to fans. A more ambitious game might have offered more than a handful of perfunctory maps, or offered a more nuanced distinction between unit types for a more strategic style of play, but small favours are better than no favours at all - you can pretend to be Optimus Prime and shoot your friend who's being Megatron. Yay.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is therefore the quintessential movie tie-in, a self-fulfilling prophecy of functional banality. On the surface it's brash, busy and superficially attractive, but underneath it's hollow, blatantly padded and more than a little monotonous. It's never much fun, but nor is it wonky enough to be terrible. It's simply there, a forgettable distraction. Some will doggedly plough through the whole thing in deference to their attachment to the source material or just to convince themselves that it was money well spent, but there's not much more on offer than that. The gaming equivalent of empty calories.