Transformers: The Game Review

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And secondly, to reliably throw items at your intended target, you have to be incredibly precise. You can't just pick up and throw in one swift motion, but (fiddle fiddle) pick up (faddle faddle) lock on to your target (ngggh, I've targeted a flying bus!) and then throw it and hope that a) it doesn't get deflected off-course by another piece of random flying debris or b) it doesn't just arbitrarily miss your target even through it will appear to go right through them.

So, when you're not just mashing one single button in a flailing whirl of robotic limbs, you're waddling around cities and suburbs trying to find stray lamp-posts or trees to throw at the handful of enemies who have stupid, arbitrary blocking tactics. It's the most depressingly brain-dead use of the licence possible.

In a hapless attempt to make use of the robots' transforming abilities, we have the odd interlude where, for example, we have to perform high-speed checkpoint races, or engage in an exceptionally weak air combat section. Sometimes there's a flicker of potential when, say, you fly around Central Park in a jet fighter, or fly around a desert complex raining destruction down upon it. But in seconds you realise that despite the generally pretty game engine, the actual gameplay is so desperately undercooked that the tasks at hand are no more than sketched ideas that were never fully realised. That's the whole game in a nutshell, in fact.

Cars make rubbish weapons. They usually explode before/while you're throwing them Try trees. They're much better.

And because TT has spent so much time getting the art, animation and game engine up to scratch, the satisfying sense of destruction and chaos can fool you for a few seconds into believing that this is enjoyable, dumb fun. But it's not. It's just plain dumb. And even on a technical level there's plenty of cause for complaint. Sure, the robots look absolutely great, and you can't fault the animation or destructive effects used when they're smashed to pieces, but the engine used for the game is one of the most horribly unoptimised we've seen on the 360 to date.

It might add to the immersion to allow the gameworld to be absolutely torn apart by enemies and players alike, but, by God, it absolutely murders the frame-rate - to the extent that it becomes an intolerable slideshow towards the climax of both campaigns when things get extremely hectic. It's hardly surprising, either. You'll often see a dozen vehicles exploding simultaneously, while trees and miscellaneous debris gets swept up into the air by devastating attacks. It's a game that needs this degree of chaos, for sure, but not at the expense of actually being able to play it properly. I don't know about you, but playing a console game at less than ten frames a second with an extremely unhelpful (and often nauseating) camera system isn't my idea of fun - especially when I'm trying to line up the aforementioned fiddly throws.

To compound the catalogue of complaints against this truly awful game, it's full of unforgivable glitches and stupid bugs that point towards a rushed development cycle. For example, entire missions often have to be terminated because an enemy has become wedged in an item of scenery, or - in one memorable instance - two enemies were seen running continuously into the side of a building and were unable to join the battle. And these are by no means isolated incidents. Reading forums on the game highlighted a catalogue of issues. So not only is it poorly designed, it's hopelessly unoptimised and riddled with bugs and minor issues.

Nothing to see here

A strangely empty scene entirely unrepresentative of the game. Good work Mr screen shot taker!

So if that isn't enough to put you off, how about the fact that it only lasts about six hours, or that it doesn't have any multiplayer? You'll satisfy your obsessive compulsive urges if you're some kind of concept-art perv who enjoys traipsing around levels picking up all the glowing yellow boxes, but the rest of you can just save yourself the effort, because, trust us, absolutely nothing outside of the main missions is worth a second of your time.