Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

Transformers: The Movie is just days away.  It has been 20 years since the Transformers have been truly mainstream, but pop culture phenomenon like vehicles that can transform into giant robots doesn’t just fade away.  In conjunction with the upcoming movie by the same name, Activision and Traveller’s Tales have teamed up to build Transformers: The Game. 

The storyline is simple – war between the giant robot races has spread to Earth.  A device called the Allspark has reached our planet.  The Allspark is the item that gives the Autobots and Decepticons life, so naturally both sides have a vested interest in obtaining it.  The Autobots, wishing to protect the Allspark and reduce any collateral damage against the human race, chose automobile forms so that they may co-mingle with the humans, acting as shepherds and guardians.  The Decepticons have chosen forms more suited to war but also remain disguised in the shadows until the time to strike is perfect.  Every vehicle is a potential friend, every vehicle is a potential foe – we are not ready for this war.

To make you a little more ready for the war, here are the minimum specs for Transformers: The Game.

- 3D hardware accelerator card required 100% DirectX® 9.0c-compliant 64MB
video card and drivers*
- Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista
- Pentium® 4 2.0GHz or Athlon® 2.0GHz or higher processor
- 256MB of RAM (1GB for Windows® Vista)
- 4 GB of uncompressed hard disk space (plus 300 MB for the Windows(R)
swap file and 1MB free for saved games)
- DirectX 9.0c (Included)
- 100% DirectX 9.0c-compliant true 16-bit sound card and drivers
- 100% Windows XP-compatible mouse, keyboard and drivers
- 100% Windows XP-compatible quad speed DVD-ROM drive (600 K/sec sustained
transfer rate)
- All NVIDIA® GeForce® 4 Ti 4200 64MB and better chipsets
- All ATI® Radeon® 8500 64MB and better chipsets
- 100% Windows XP-compatible gamepad (optional) (Game controller with 10
or more buttons and dual analog sticks required)

* Important Note: Some 3D accelerator cards with the chipsets listed here
may not be compatible with the 3D acceleration features utilized by
Transformers(TM): The Game. Please refer to your hardware manufacturer for 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatibility.  This game uses the SSE instruction set to optimize performance. Please make sure your CPU supports it.

I tested this game on three machines to provide a wide array of performance comparisons:

Test Setup 1:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core (2.5Ghz)
2GB of RAM
eVGA GeForce 8800 GTX
Windows Vista

Test Setup 2:
Dell XPS M170 Laptop
Intel Centrino Pentium M 2Ghz
2GB of RAM
GeForce Go 6800 GT
Windows XP

Test Setup 3:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2Ghz)
2GB of RAM
eVGA GeForce 6600 GT
Windows XP

Transformers: The Game kicks off with a fantastic intro by CGI powerhouse Blur Studios.  Giving us all an early look of how awesome the visuals in the movie can be, the intro gives a quick overview of how we come to be in the middle of the struggle between the Autobots and Decepticons.  A simply top notch effort and well worth watching twice.

Before you start most missions you’ll get to see some of the great in-game models in the form of a quick cutscene.  Since all of the models were provided by ILM to Traveller’s Tales to create the in-game characters, you can be sure that there is an incredible level of detail.  Nowhere is this more apparent than when in robot form.  You can see the mechanics of how they would reassemble into a car, with wheel wells acting as arm and leg armor, fenders and doors acting as counterbalance wings in the rear.  Traveller’s Tales does a great job with bringing the new look of our old favorites back to life.

As I mentioned above, I tested Transformers: The Game against 3 machines to show a wide range of performance levels.  Test Setup 1 was unshakable at the max resolution of 1680x1050 with 8x AA and light bloom off.  The lines were clean and there were no jagged edges to be seen at any time.  Given the level of detail, this was impressive.  The only hitch I saw here was a minor bit of pop-in at the edge of my field of view made more noticeable by the sharpening of the rest of the game details. 

On Test Setup 2 my processor was 2Ghz – the minimum spec for the game.  The video card was more than powerful enough to handle the game with the advanced textures turned on and at maximum resolution.  The game seemed to be more dependent on the video card than the processor. 

Test Setup 3 is fairly close to the minimum requirements.  Traveller’s Tales did a good job making a playable game at the minimum specs that doesn’t have to look like a Playstation 2 title.  While there were some minor hits in framerate at higher resolutions with the advanced textures turned on and AA disasbled, I found that sweet spot seemed to be 1024x768 with the advanced textures turned off.  While it wasn’t quite as clean as Test Setup 1, the difference between the two was actually not as far apart as you might expect.  For comparison, Tomb Raider Legends was a complete texture replacement when the advanced textures were disabled, but Transformers: The Game doesn’t look like very many of the textures were replaced at all, leaving the robot textures looking sharp and untouched.

Michael Bay is good at a few things with car crashes and recruiting good musical composers being at the top of that list.  Traveller’s Tales was paying attention, putting together a score as good as anything Mr. Bay could cook up.  The music is rock and electronic fare, swelling when the action is at its apex, but remaining in the background when it should be.  While there is no Stan Bush “The Touch” in the soundtrack, I’m sure you’ll get by. 

As good as the music is, the sound effects and voice work are where the heavy lifting gets done.  As you probably already know, Peter Cullen and Frank Welker reprise their roles as Optimus Prime and Megatron.  Those two Generation One voice legends are joined by members of the film cast including Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, and Keith David.   All of them turn in solid performances with each adding nicely to the overall production value. 

As great as the sound and voice work is, there is one area that sticks out like a broken thumb.  While you are free to roam through the city taking missions at your leisure, expect the leader of both sides to constantly remind you of what you should be doing.  They’ll repeat the same orders ad infinitum until you actually go and accomplish the goal. 

Obviously there are two options for controls – using the mouse or plugging in an Xbox 360 controller.  When using the Xbox 360 controller, you’ll find that the game is pretty simple to control. You’ll use the left analog to handle movement and steering, and you’ll use the right analog to rotate the camera.  The left and right trigger blocks and fires your light weapon.  Right bumper fires your heavy weapon with the left bumper locking onto your target.  You can unleash your melee attacks with the X button, while A and B makes you jump and pick up items, respectively.  The Y button rounds out the controller scheme by allowing you to transform. 

Without using an auxiliary control scheme you will be using the mouse as camera controls with the standard W, A, S, D layout handling movement.  The left and right mouse button fires the light and heavy weapons, with E and Q handling melee and picking things up.

The controls and camera are pretty well behaved, handling the beat-em-up action pretty well.  The area where the controls are somewhat deficient however are the driving mechanics.  While it isn’t enough to break the system, driving does feel a little more ‘slidey’ than it should.  This on-ice feeling is exacerbated by nitro, so getting used to driving may take a little bit.  This, of course, makes some of the timed driving missions a bit more difficult than they have to be.

We might be beating a dead horse with this one, but the overall physics of the game are rather inconsistent as well.  Why is this being mentioned in the control section?  Well, put simply, sometimes debris can cause you to fail a mission as you simply cannot get your wheels back under you due to debris bouncing around or falling on top of you.  Nowhere is this more apparent than a mid-mission in the Autobot campaign.  You are asked to navigate some tunnels at high speed as it collapses around you, but the debris won’t scatter like you’d expect if you hit it with a vehicle at high speed – instead it jams up underneath your vehicle and you begin to slide around on it, often turning yourself into the oncoming fireball.  Given that this section is also timed, it can make for a frustrating mission. 

The game starts off by delivering on its initial promise – you will choose your side.  Although you can just as easily bounce back and forth in the mission structure by playing one side and then the other, most people will chose their favorite side, either Autobot or Decepticon, and start the campaign mode. Flint Dille, best known as the writer of the Transformers animated series, penned both storylines to tie into the movie, although we won’t know how well until the movie is released. The first mission for the Autobot side starts just prior to the story from the movie as Bumblebee is ordered by Autobot Leader Optimus Prime to do a bit of recon in the suburbs to try to determine where the Allspark has been hidden.  Hastily scanning a ’75 Chevy Camaro, Bumblebee is free to roam the entirety of the suburb hub of the game.  There is only one mission when you begin the game, but you are free to roam the city before you move the story forward.  You can collect Energon cubes (there are 100 in each area) which allow you to do optional side missions called “Skills”.  Most of the side missions are pretty simple in theory – hunt down and destroy a few Decepticon vehicles, or race for time.

Obviously Traveller’s Tales can’t kill off major characters at a whim and at every other turn, so several new characters were made for the game.  Hasbro liked these characters so much that they actually made them into toys!  You’ll face off against them as well as a great many drones throughout the game, giving the feeling that you are able to dish out some real combat without making the mistake of killing off major characters that could destroy somebody’s childhood memories of their favorite characters….sniffle…I’m not bitter!

There is one thing that irritates many players that does make an appearance fairly early in both campaigns – timed missions.  In the second mission of the Autobot and Decepticon campaign you’ll be asked to race against your enemies to reach a used car lot before the other side does.  This isn’t a huge deal except that the enemies tend to split up, meaning that if you don’t destroy them fast enough you’ll instantly lose.  You don’t lose any ground by failing to complete a mission though; you can simply drive back to the green mission start area and retry it.  Some of the missions are particularly punishing so you might be stuck for a little bit.

I should mention that many of the missions feel the same.  It seems that there are rescue missions, race missions, chase/fight/chase missions, and timed objective-smash missions.  Unfortunately there is no telling what you’ll have thrown at you to make those missions more ‘interesting’.  At one point you’ll take one Autobot against two Decepticon flyers three times your size, while also battling against drones that are twice your size.  Most players probably won’t take more than 2 to 3 attempts to close out any particular chapter, but less skilled players may find more resistance.

Overall, the gameplay is essentially beat-em-up with timed racing.  The sooner you come to grips with this fact and just enjoy the ultra-huge robot action the better off you’ll be. 

There are several sets of bonus content to unlock in each hub of the game.  One example could be the Heroic bonus which you achieve by destroying your enemies in rapid succession.  As you progress through this unlock goal, an icon representing your chosen side will pop up on the top of your screen.  Filling all 5 will immediately unlock the bonus content at the main menu.  These objectives take a little bit of skill, but nothing over the top.   You’ll also unlock additional bonus content by completing the chapters of the game.  To help you with some of the harder heroic objectives, you are allowed to go back and play any of the previously played missions.  In addition to all of that, there are also 5 symbols that represent your side that you can collect throughout the game level.  Each of these represents additional content.  Needless to say, for any true Transformers fan, discovering each and every one of these is a very high priority - it is how you’ll unlock the playable G1 characters. 

In addition to the 5 G1 characters you can also unlock 7 movies including the official trailers from the film.  There are also 158 pieces of artwork from the film, animated series, comic, and the animated movie.  While it will take you roughly 4 hours to beat the game on one side and another 4 to complete the other, but it’ll take you a great deal longer to unlock all of the available bonus content.

One thing that weighs heavily into the value category for this game is the fact that you can get it for half of the price of the PS3 or Xbox 360 versions.  If you have an Xbox 360 controller and the rig to run it, the PC version gives you better AA options, higher resolutions, and the same gameplay. 

Transformers fans have gone without a movie for over 20 years.  They have gone without a good game for almost as long. While the gameplay is somewhat shallow, and the racing elements sometimes frustrating, there is plenty to say about getting a Transformers game with high production value and an all-star voice team. Activision and Traveller’s Tales have brought the new movie to life with a decent beat-em-up title that doesn’t succumb to the movie tie-in curse.

Gaming Trend Score

84

1. Graphics: 90
2. Audio: 90
3. Controls: 75
4. Gameplay: 80
5. Value/Replay: 90
6. OVERALL:84