Transformers: Autobots Review (DS)

Having loved The Transformers since I was very young sometimes it’s pretty irritating hearing all the tweens talking about something you’ve loved so much longer than them. It must be some kind of psychological thing?

We all know now that Michael Bay’s “rebirth” of the Transformers was good. It wasn’t breathtaking like the original but it held its own. The fight scenes were incredible and Optimus looked cool. I’m still not sure why they changed Bumble Bee into a huge, menacing soldier but I guess I can deal with that for the time being.

With every big movie release spawning a video game, Transformers is no different. Such games usually draw a lot of attention (due to the success and popularity of the film) and therefore storm the video game charts for that very reason. It’s very rare that we get a good movie adaptation however and Transformers: Autobots is no different.

Transformers: Autobots you in charge of the Autobots as they take their civil war with the Decepticons to Earth. There is also a Decepticons edition of the game where the same story is told however you play as the evil guys.

Throughout the game you’ll take orders from Optimus Prime as the Autobots go out in search of the All Spark. The action is depicted through a number of short “story” missions although there isn’t really many of these. Most of the replay value comes from the fact that some missions are so hard they could take you weeks before you master them and as a whole the layout of the game is unrewarding and frustrating.

The controls don’t really aid the difficulty level either, without any simple method of aiming, strafing and with nowhere to hide, you’ll find yourself standing still shooting a line of lasers at your enemy as he does the same to you.

The gameplay is very basic and dull and this is reflected by the missions in which you’ll on the most part be destroying a number of objects in a set time limit.

Graphically the Transformers look particularly nice, resembling their movie counterparts to the very last polygon. The Earth on the other hand looks uninspired and quite simply bland due to a lack of variation. The same applies to the sound which is repetitive loops that constantly come and go throughout the game.

Some of the voice acting that has been squeezed into the game is impressive but there is not enough spontaneous dialogue from characters like the police so you end up hearing the same phrases every few minutes which grates a little.

In saying that the way the story is told is fantastic with cute little cut-scenes and plenty of lines of dialogue from the original voice actors.

There is a cool Wi-Fi mode tacked onto the game which sees you completing new mini-missions every day to get the highest score possible. All the Autobot scores are then pitted against the scores achieved by those with the Decepticon edition of the game and a winner is decided everyday.

While this is definitely an impressive feature it’s not enough to save Transformers from being dull, repetitive and bland.