Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

1. Official Site
2. Platform: ps3
3. Publisher: Activision Blizzard
4. Developer: Luxoflux Studios
5. Release Date: 06/23/09
6. Genre: Action/Adventure

by Ron Burke

Is it Summer already?  Was it 112 degrees on Friday?  Check.  Has my green grass burned to a crispy golden brown?  Check.  Is there a Michael Bay movie rife with explosions, explosions, and more explosions headed to theaters this weekend?  Check.  It must be summer!  That means it’s time for the sequel to the blockbuster robot beat-em-up of 2007, this one entitled Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

The first game had some voice repetition, framerate issues, crazy physics, and controller-crushing timed missions to go along with its dynamite inclusion of Peter Cullen and Frank Welker.  It had an incredible sense of scale, as well as some top notch graphics.  The sequel brings back the powerful duo of Cullen and Welker, as well as other movie cast members Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox to handle voice work, but what improvements has this installment brought?  Will it plead for mercy, or is it made of sterner stuff?

Around the World

Just as in the first game, there is an Autobot and a Decepticon storyline to explore.  The game begins with your selected faction surrounding a large holographic globe.  This globe is where you’ll select your various missions.  After playing through a quick tutorial mission, you’ll unlock your first area.  The mission structure is very simple – destroy the enemy, escort friendlies, take out bosses, or destroy/defend structures.  While the missions are still timed, this time you are playing for medals.  Medals give you a certain amount of points that allow you to unlock the other missions.  Getting a gold in nearly every outing still unlocked the missions in a linear fashion, so the illusion of an open world structure is somewhat misleading.  After completing the main story missions, I still had three levels to go.  There is a reward for getting medals beyond the bonus Energon and bragging rights (your time is uploaded to the leaderboards) – you can access the level in ‘free roam’ mode.  I tried this a few times and failed to see the point – the arenas are fairly small, and without enemies, decidedly empty. 

Each character in the game has a set of stats as well as primary, secondary, and special attacks.  The stats are hit points, hit point regeneration, melee damage, ballistic damage, and vehicle speed.  There are additional stats you can upgrade, but for that you’ll need Energon.  Completing missions will give you a status update on how many enemies you vanquished, the shot percentages and accuracy for primary and secondary weapons, any special takedowns (e.g. an Ice Climber takedown is shooting somebody off of a building, for instance), any skill shots you may have performed, as well as any bonus objectives achieved.  Coupled with your overall time gives you a certain number of campaign points and Energon to spend.  Your team has eleven stats that you can upgrade including health, weapon cooldown speed, turbo cooldown, special ability cooldown, melee damage, and more.  Each has three tiers of upgrades, giving you the ability to build your team up as you see fit.  There are also 48 unlockables (24 for each side) in the game that can give you access to Generation 1 characters, original cartoons, unlock secondary missions, concept art, and more.  You’ll even use this system to unlock other characters that you can use in multiplayer.  This is, of course, in addition to the trophies in the game.

Wrastlin’ Robots!

The controls are cleaned up from the first title.  The thumbsticks control the movement and camera.  The X button handles jump, O lets you attach to and climb walls, and Square handles your melee attacks.  Holding the left trigger allows you to enter weapon mode, granting you melee firepower to unleash on your enemies.  Holding the right trigger keeps you in vehicle mode, but it is how you combine these things that makes the combat interesting.  Holding the right trigger and X, Square, or O, then releasing the trigger lets you do some advanced combination moves such as Bumblebee’s Ground Pound, or a high-powered melee attack.  Other characters, such as Breakaway, can use special weapons like sniper rifles or the ability to fly as a jet to take down their enemies.  Performing exceptionally well over a longer period will unlock the Overdrive power.  Overdrive makes everything you can do far more powerful – healing, shooting, remote detonation mines, whatever – it’ll just kick that much more butt, and you’ll also be invulnerable for a time. 

I do have to hit Luxoflux for the lack of subtitle options - it’s easy to implement and is so often forgotten.  On the other hand, I do have to commend them for a very comprehensive control adjustment system.  You can adjust the audio options individually, as well as changing your robot, driving, and flying controls individually and independently.  This is handy if you like inverted flight controls, but normal driving controls. 

Kill the Witwicky Kid Please

While we do get the fantastic voice work of Cullen and Welker, we get one of the most irritating voice acting inclusions I’ve heard in recent memory.  Mikaela is voiced by Megan Fox again, but her limited performance is phoned in at best.  On the other hand, I’d rather rub a cocktail of salt, sand, and ground glass into my eyes than hear Shia LaBeouf speak ever again.  Hearing “See those damage levels?  Those are the damage levels of a loser”, “INCOMING!!!”, and various other phrases constantly is simply painful.  Doing his best Jeff Goldblum impression, LaBeouf turns in the most spastic and uneven performance I’ve heard since Resident Evil’s Barry Burton remarked “Let’s hope this is not Chris’ blood…”

Unfortunately, the voice acting issues don’t end there.  When you complete a mission, your fellow Transformers will give you a bit of feedback on your performance.  These voice-overs are somewhat uneven as you’ll be chastised for not completing enough side missions or being accurate enough, and then told ‘Well done” in the next breath.  In addition, the game is prone to voice overlap.  During one segment, Ironhide talked over the entirety of a cutscene after defeating a boss.  He talked about how valuable I was, how they couldn’t afford to lose me, and how the boss I just defeated was a Decepticon like no other.  There wasn’t a single threat on the field left, but thanks for the sentiment, I think.  It’s somewhat ironic – the robots hand in very human performances, full of emotion and gravity, while the humans hand in the most flat and robotic performance they can muster. 

On the other hand, the music in the game does a great job of summoning old school feelings from the original series, while still mustering updated techno / rock beats to keep you rolling.

AI in Disguise

A quick hit of the start button reveals a large pool of stats.  I kept having this nagging feeling like something was a little ‘off’, but it wasn’t until I saw this stat screen that it dawned on me – my average mission completion time was 5 minutes and 45 seconds.  Essentially the issue is that the missions, all 23 of them, feel somewhat like small arena maps instead of a coherent and connected storyline.  For instance, when you trek off to the deserts of Egypt to complete a mission, you’ll still come back to the unnamed Autobot or Decepticon basecamp to discuss your results.  There just doesn’t feel like there is a great deal of continuity.  The game quickly begins to feel like a series of arena combat missions.  It seems that the changeover from developer Traveller’s Tales to Luxoflux didn’t do much to resolve the weakness of storyline. 

For the most part, the computer does a great job of controlling the various Transformers under its command.  They’ll use their vehicle modes to skitter away when you are kicking their tail, and they’ll take flight to take up flanking positions when appropriate.  Every once in a while your enemies will develop a bit of a one track mind.  In one instance I was fighting Constructicon Longhaul when he suddenly became obsessed with climbing a particular building.  I was able to stand in front of him and disrupt this thought with melee attacks.  Rather than fight back or change tactics, he just kept driving forward towards the building until he was destroyed.  It doesn’t happen often, but this wasn’t the only incident.

It isn’t all doom and gloom here – there is still a great deal of enjoyment to be had smashing metal robot skulls.  The combat is fast and furious, if a bit basic.  The combination of vehicle transformations, headshot sniping, missile launching, and steel-on-steel combat makes for some mindless unwinding fun.  The combinations vary from hammering X three times to combining vehicle transition to melee attacks.  For the most part, the simple melee and ranged weapons are enough to beat the game rather easily, so the incentive to do the more advanced attacks comes from unlocking the extra goodies.  

Beat up your robot friends!

The most fun I had with this title actually didn’t come from the single player campaigns, but the multiplayer.  The usual modes present themselves, deathmatch and team deathmatch, One Shall Stand (think VIP from CounterStrike), Control Points (capture and hold 5 control points, in order), but the one I had the most fun with was Battle for the Shards.  In Battle for the Shards, there are five chunks of the AllSpark scattered throughout the map.   Both sides battle it out, but have to carry it back to their base without transforming.  With only 8 players (4 on each side), that means that you cannot possibly defend all five shards simultaneously.  Serious strategy is required to defend the fragments while still taking down the runners from the other side. 

There are several characters unique to the multiplayer experience that you’ll unlock in addition to the characters in the single player game.  Aerialbot, Breakaway, Bumblee, Ironhide, Optimus Prime (and a powered-up variant), Protectobot, Ratchet, Grindor, Long Haul, Megatron (and his powered-up variant), Seeker, Sideways, and Starscream round out the roster of playable characters for the multiplayer modes.  Some characters are agile, hitting fast and then escaping in their vehicle form rather quickly.  Optimus Prime hits hard but is hardly what you’d call agile.  Starscream bolts across the map almost instantly, but suffers in melee range.  All of the characters seemed very well balanced, and the modes were surprisingly fun, despite the aforementioned small arena sizes.  Communication with your team is the only way to succeed. 

Autobots: transform and roll out!

There will be plenty of debate as to whether Michael Bay is systematically destroying every shred of our robot-fueled childhoods or not, but I do have to admit that this title is better than its predecessor.  While the free-roaming world doesn’t quite deliver on its promise, and the voice work may force me to commit murder, the multiplayer does deliver in spades.  The single player feels like multiplayer arenas with a bit of storyline tacked on, but it works in a somewhat disjointed way.  Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a title that almost works.  Perhaps the next title will take that final leap towards making a free-roaming Transformers world that all fans desire, but in the mean time, this isn’t a bad title – as far as movie tie-ins go. 

Gaming Trend Score

75

1. Graphics: 85
2. Audio: 60
3. Controls: 85
4. Gameplay: 75
5. Value/Replay: 70
6. OVERALL:75