Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Xbox 360)

Hasbro's Robots in Disguise can't hide the fact that their game's underwhelming.
6/29/2009 12:52 PM | 2 Comments | Page 2 of 2

The rest of the controls are a jumble, too. The right trigger has three different functions mapped to it, so you'll find yourself accidentally transforming when you want to fire a weapon. There's a different button for firing weapons, depending on whether you're in vehicle form or robot form. Some streamlining would have made the experience of playing the game a lot smoother.

The thing is, despite all of that, Revenge of the Fallen isn't an entirely terrible game. It's an improvement from its predecessor and I wanted to give it a "Try It" rating. I really did. But as I played it, I kept thinking, can't you get this stuff -- driving, combat, large-scale giant robot mayhem -- done better elsewhere? The once-intriguing action gets repetitive: track down enemies and blow them up, again and again. The big-boss fights feel kind of threatening, but as I said before, you have done this in more engaging ways elsewhere.

Worst of all, the core chromosome in the Transformers DNA -- the actual shape-changing -- just feels tacked on. The special attacks you can bring to bear while transforming from vehicle to robot feel ineffectual.

The game also looks deadly dull. The animations lack charm, the environments are awash in muddy shades. Even the aerial combat sequences fail to pop. For a game tethered to a Michael Bay movie, this feels like a particularly egregious sin. (Say what you want about Bay, but he knows how to tickle moviegoers' pupils.)

People always assume that movie tie-in games suck because the development teams don't have enough time to work on them before the release date. To me, the Revenge of the Fallen game represents something different: the frightening idea that, as Hollywood and big-deal corporate videogame companies cozy up to each other, the worst excesses of each medium will dominate. The distinction I'm trying to make is that, even with enough time, access and resources, the best we can hope for is a muddling mish-mash that approximates what a Hollywood studio thinks best serves their investment and what a videogame company thinks will make will make that studio happy. The singular experiences that players might want out of a Transformers game seem to be the least of those concerns. Revenge of the Fallen belongs in a junk heap.

This review was based on a retail copy of the Xbox 360 version of the game purchased by the reviewer.