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The tradition of movies spurring dodgy video game spin-offs is almost as old as the video gaming industry itself.
ET the Extra-Terrestrial video game only sold 1.5 million copies of the four million made in 1983, and Atari reportedly dumped excess stock in a landfill site in New Mexico. James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies was another disaster and was shelved for five years.
Easy money can be made with spin-offs, though, and the Transformers idea has all the right ingredients to make an astonishing game. We had hoped for a combination of the superb Midtown Madness driving game and the sci-fi walking excellence of Mechwarrior.
Indeed, it starts interestingly enough, with you taking control of a Transformer and fighting robot after robot, then transforming into a car to speed away. But herein lies the problem – the cars handle terribly. The environment is dreadful as well, resembling a cheap imitation of Grand Theft Auto 3 and lacking detail. And, just like in Microsoft’s Midtown Madness, you can’t kill pedestrians, no matter how hard you run over them.
There are only three fighting moves and two types of weapon, which makes the game rather repetitive. You can pick up objects throughout the game to throw or batter robots with, but this aspect is inconsistent; for example, you can pick up some trees, but not others.
Some sections of the game require you simply to drive from one point to another before you get a rushed cut-scene with little or no character development, while bonus features you unlock are trailers of the movie, which is another sign that it has been rushed into production.
Overall, this is yet another movie spin-off to be given a wide berth.
See also:
The Master Chief makes it to the desktop at last, but was it worth the wait? 29 Jun 2007
Brian attempts to bring a bit of fun to cricket games on the PS2 11 Jun 2007All Action & Adventure Games Tags: Game
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