Review – Transformers the Game

Before you get all doe-y eyed for the great video games that have come out in the past two months, and start swallowing the industry’s mandate that we can only have decent games around the pinnacle event of a religion that totally hates video games, lets take a minute and remember how fucking terrible the rest of 2007 was for video games. Starting with Transformers the Game.

Transformers the Movie was the cinematic equivalent of going to a space zoo and jumping into a pit of laser equipped alligators and beating them down with your cock. While on fire. While the Teen Girl Squad cheers you on. Transformers the Game is the video game equivalent of falling into the same crocodilian awesomeness, only to find your cock quickly chomped off. And you’re on fire. And you’re being cheered on by your ten-year old cousin – the ugly one.

Sadly, I belong to the most tormented group of gamers: those who still play licensed games. Most of you are too smart for this, and spare yourself the wonk-agony of shoddy control schemes, graphics so choppy your eyes bleed, and utter defilement of your beloved childhood heroes.

As much as I bitch about the Michael Jackson-ing the young zenstrabo took at the hands of Superman 64, I’m sure you have no sympathy because I haven’t learned my lesson. But I feel like I have some extenuation for believing that this game might actually have been fun. First, Traveler’s Tales is responsible for the best licensed game ever, Lego Star Wars. Second, this game, aside from putting long hair on the model of Shia LeBeouf to create the model of Megan Fox, looks absolutely spectabulous.

Why then, upon securing this property, would TT decide the most Tranformerly thing to do is send the Rapedecons on a mission to violently despoil my PS3 with this piece of trash? According to the game programmers, “Fuck you, that’s why.” This game isn’t just another example of the lazily slapped together crap we usually get out of licensed games, it’s a huge middle finger that transforms into a tea bagging ballsack.

Despite great source material, and actually looking pretty good on the PS3, this game goes all kinds of wrong. It features the licensed-game-mandated drunk camera and a “lock on” system that, although you might expect it to target an opponent or even a random object, locks squarely onto the middle of the screen at all times. This makes it as distractingly useless as a robot who transforms into a fucking microscope. On the plus side, Perceptor is not in the game.

Even more offensive are the missions. First up is stopping Decepticons from driving to Bernie Mac’s dealership to be bought by Spike before you. You can rocket launcher the shit out of them anywhere else in the city, but if they reach the dealership, it’s pee-your-pants-Bill-Paxton-game-over-man. Next you protect Jazz, who is apparently the Aquaman of the Autobots, while he makes his escape from the city. The city that the Autobots are supposed to be protecting. By staying in it. As you fight from checkpoint to checkpoint you get cut scenes of Retardamus Junior laying on the ground crying instead of just driving himself away. I guess that’s the closest this game comes to mirroring the movie – where he’s a limply rendered stereotype of the MTV2 generation who gets moonstomped and rag dolled by Megatron.

Deepening the rift between the movie story and this robo-fuckery, your next mission, as an Autobot, is to destroy the city to provide a distraction for the Autopussies to escape. Again, from the city you were probably needed in, since it’s flooded with Decepticons. This actually isn’t much different from any other time that you’re walking or driving around in the game since every time you imperceptibly scrape a building or car, it erupts in an explosion of fire. Actually that was pretty awesome, but not exactly cannon when I’m supposed to be the damn good guys.

After that, I must have taken the red pill, because reality unraveled from there. I swear at one point Spiderman transforms into a helicopter and shoots a web at Bumblebee. In the boss fight with Shockwave you can only hit him with a light post, because your missiles, bullets, and fists are stopped by his impenetrable shield – that wasn’t designed with an effective strategy for lamp posts. And yes, I wrote that sentence to hurt your mind as much as playing the mission did. My girlfriend put it best, as she walked in the door while I was playing this scene. Her reaction, after a minute of watching, went like this: blink —blink, furrowed brow. Then, “What the fuck is this shit?” My thoughts exactly.

A sandbox Transformers game should have put an end to my disposable spending because it’s all the video game I’d ever need. A Transformers Game review should be written entirely in onomatopoeia serving as the sound of explosions. Neither is the case here. For intentionally removing all awesomeness from the most basic source of awesome – giant fighting robots, I give this game zero Megan Fox boingly-doinglies out of a possible DD.