His Review with Ian

As the summer of movie/game tie ins keeps on trucking, it’s good to know the standard is getting higher. We’ve got a new first place! Dark of the Moon step right up to claim your prize.

The premise is a little loose. Humanity is left thinking the Decepticons have fled the earth whilst Optimus Prime seeks out and eradicates any last remaining evil doers. However all doesn’t quite go to plan and so the age old battle of good vs evil takes place. For those who know their Transformers chronology, this cracking third person shooter is set two years after the events of the Revenge of the Fallen film whilst acting as a prologue to the 3D film out now earlier this week.

The intro was stunningly cinematic and set the game up nicely with numerous worldwide locations on offer, including a bit of jungle boogie in South America, a Siberian military facility as well as a Detroit cityscape. It looked beautiful and believable and it played beautifully and believably. The cryogenic freezing in Siberia was a particularly great touch, demonstrating the thought and detail which has gone into each aspect of the game.

You get to play as a different character on every level. That’s 7 characters in the single player Campaign mode and there are four in multiplayer. Handy if you don’t like one particular character or find the controls cumbersome as it’s not long till you change over. However, it kind of worked against the game, as I actually liked the characters. So much so, I would have liked to experience each of the levels with different characters. How many times have you wanted to play as a baddie, thinking they always get better weapons, armour and vehicles etc? Well now you can thanks to the talented folks at High Moon Studios (who developed last years brilliant Transformers: War for Cybertron non film tie in). You can take control of Optimus Prime and Megatron as well as some fan favourites like Soundwave, Laserbeak and Bumblebee! The character design is accurate and filmic in its attention to detail for fans, but if this is your first foray into the world of Transformers, you’ll find them likeable as well, with Ironhide in particular demonstrating neat touches of humour as he tries not to wreak havoc in Detroit city.

One of the best new features is Stealth Force mode. For those of you who aren’t bot enough to make it in the melee action sequences and rack up the high scores, you’re able to be half vehicle/half bot with the arsenal of the robot mode and the agility of the vehicle mode at your disposal, which makes you pretty indestructible. I thought the driving mechanics were brilliant, especially in the cars, although when Starscream started attacking Stratosphere it did take a while to work out how to lock on and destroy those pesky Autobots.

My major gripe, out of all the positives, is that the single player campaign game is over before it’s begun. It took just 6hrs to complete, but it is packed full with inventive ideas, creative mechanics and potentially great game play. It has a decent multiplayer with three different modes; something similar to capture the flag in which you take over certain points on a map whilst defending others (the soundtrack does get a trifle repetitive here, “We’re capturing A, we’re losing B, we’ve captured C” sounding like an audition for a mechanical tribute band to Brian Blessed) as well as a giant deathmatch in both single player and team co-op.

I can pretty much guarantee the game will be better than film, so avoid the cinema until you’ve played some high quality transformative video game action.

Her Review with Tracey

There’s a movie out, here’s the game to prove it. If you are a massive Transformers Fan, you’ll probably like this game. I liked it. I wanted to love it but just didn’t quite get the same level of satisfaction that Ian did from it, although I was really happy that there wasn’t a whiff of pudgy Shia La Beouf in it.

When I was 6 years old, Transformers dominated my playground. I could sing the cartoon theme tune word for word, I even had an Optimus Prime toy that had holographic stickers on his arms and yes, it did take at least 10 mins to actually change him from a precariously stood up robot to truck. It was cool for both boys and girls and Shia Lo Boof hadn’t even been born. A few years later and I’m not quite the fan I once was but was quite looking forward to pretending to be an Autobot once again. Sadly, at only 6 hours long, the experience was very short lived. Okay so, maybe High Moon Studios had less than a year to make it in order to meet the release date of the film, as is often the way with movie tie ins so perhaps it was wrong of me to expect brilliance here but it’s rather sad that it doesn’t quite pack the same triumphant punch of Transformers: War for Cybertron. There are glimpses of a genuinely exciting and engaging fast paced third person shooter featuring great combat blended with strategy as you swap between being a vehicle or humanoid but so often Dark of the Moon feels a little shallow and rushed in places, resulting in an average, easy and undemanding experience.

Stealth mode gives you the advantage as you take less damage and dish more out. You’re part robot, part vehicle that can move in any direction. Hit one button and you’re all super car with throbbing engine, drifting and accelerating through Aztec jungles, shanty towns and city landscapes. Hit another button and you’re standing tall, smashing your metal knuckles into enemy faces. Sounds exciting but each element just has a certain something lacking that makes the whole affair feel blandly Shia No Beef.

Super cars are great but your destination is usually through such a linear and narrow course, you never get to really put your foot down or stretch out which is even more annoying when driving against the clock in certain missions. Having said that, driving is always the easier option as you bang out some serious firepower and take less damage than when you’re in humanoid form. Aside from having to interact with doors or disarm satellites/bombs or the fact that you can get whopping scores if you melee, there’s very little reason or impetus to ever transform from being a car. There’s a small section where you’re invisible, creeping through the jungle past your enemies but why would you want to do that – you’re a massive powerful robot? Another section and you’re in the ravaged city centre of Detroit but you’re under strict instruction not to cause any unnecessary damage. Okay fine, you’re helping the puny humans out but the ground doesn’t even shake when you land even though you’re a massive powerful robot!!! All the fun that you think might come with being a Transformer is muted.

Despite the variety, I felt the levels had very little depth to them whilst the story is thinner and shorter than Shia Bo Leef but it does have pockets of humour and acts well as a prologue to the events seen in the latest movie. There was never much threat or challenge but it’s not all doom and despair as the attention to detail of the Autobots and Decepticons characters is excellent whilst the transition from robot to machine is slick. There’s a decent multiplayer option too that has more opportunity to witness everything big, loud, explosive and entertaining that we’ve come to expect from Transformers. Overall, there’s not really more than meets the eye but Transformers, robots in disguise are still cool. Did I mention Shia La Peouf does not appear in the game?

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is out now for Xbox360, Wii, DS, 3DS and PS3.