 By Jeremy Azevedo
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Having not seen the movie on account of my personal boycott of any movie longer than two hours that has absolutely no business being that long, my response to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as a video game is not in any way influenced by the movie. |
I’m not sure if that fact helps or hinders my opinion of the game. But judging by what most of my friends though of the movie, I’m guessing it’s a good thing because I found myself spending a lot of time with the game despite it’s flaws.
Like the previous Transformers game from the first movie, Revenge of the Fallen gives you the choice to play as either an Autobot or a Decepticon. I always found the bad guys terribly much more interesting, so of course I went with the Decepticons. After a somewhat straightforward tutorial, I jumped into my first couple of missions with a thirst for Autobot blood that was soon tempered by the many unforeseen limitations of my Decepticon programming. My weapons kept overheating, my targeting was all over the place, and I couldn’t get the hang of doing advanced melee attacks to save my life. Seriously, hold down the right trigger, then hold down B, then let go of the trigger but keep holding B, and then hit the trigger again to keep driving… WTF? Too many buttons, man. Crazy talk.
Eventually I got my weapon systems online and upgraded, and began making headway in the game. I got good at sniping, but didn’t really figure out how to properly charge my secondary weapons for most of the game, on account of the fact that it takes like seven seconds to do so and that the audio cue comes about two seconds before the visual cue. I thought about quitting, but then I unlocked Starscream (for whom there was no jet-flight tutorial, btw), followed by Megatron, both of whom were significantly more awesome to play as than their lackeys. Although I will say this: I was very disappointed by the voice work! Everyone expect Megatron sounded exactly the same, lines were repeated, and even the volume was uneven. I understand that they decided against the classic Starscream voice in the movie but that was their mistake, and could have been corrected here.
After completing the game as a Decepticon I had a go at the Autobots, noticing right away that they were not only better voiced, but stronger. I don’t know if it was my imagination or if I had just gotten much better at the game, but the Autobots just seemed to be more agile and their weapons appear to do more damage than those of their evil adversaries. It’s a good thing too, because the Autobots have a couple of huge bosses to fight that the Decepticons don’t. The upgrades really started pouring in once I got the hang of the more advanced moves, although I must say that at the end of the day, the missions for both factions were nearly identical and I lost interest very quickly after the first few. But Megan Fox and Shia Labeouf’s voice-overs were worth a laugh, at least.
If you really love Transformers, there is enough fan service to keep you playing in the form of new characters, upgradeable powers, appropriate weaponry for each bot, unlockable cartoon episodes, pretty decent flying and driving control and a robust Autobot Vs. Decepticon multiplayer mode. Non-fans will probably not be impressed, however, as the game is admittedly plagued by sound and control issues, shitty voice acting, a dumb story, uneven difficulty and repetitiveness. My advice is to ask yourself how much you really like Transformers and proceed from there.
In conclusion, I award Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 7 out of 10 Unicorns Fighting a Robot Dolphin:
+ 1 if you really enjoy pretending to be Optimus Prime, whetther it be in a game, in real life, or even in bed if it comes right down to it.
-1 if you have a phobia about robots or whatever.
