Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is like the majority of other movie based games. It has potential and it could have been something very cool, however, it was just made as a tie in for the movie, nothing more. The entire game is bland and uninspired. It feels like the developers came up with an idea one day and decided that was all they needed so they just used variations of that idea throughout the game. The majority of the time you will fight in this generic city while you are trying to complete your mission. A lot of times the mission is as simple as kill everyone from the opposing side. Once you do that, the mission is considered a success and it is over. I had some missions take me around three minutes to do (or shorter!) because that was literally all there was to it. Every once in a while they would throw something else at you such as an escort mission or maybe you would have to defend or destroy a building, depending on whether you were playing as an Autobot or a Decepticon.

The campaign is split up into two parts, the Autobots and the Decepticons. I originally chose the Autobots and went through the campaign with them and then afterwards went through it again with the Decepticons. The missions were pretty much the same as I went through the campaign a second time as the Decepticons except that it was from their point of view. So if I had to prevent the Decepticons from destroying a building as an Autobot then that means I would now be trying to destroy that same building as a Decepticon while the Autobots are trying to stop me. While it is cool to see and experience something from two different perspectives the game is so repetitive and bland that it doesn’t really matter all that much. The story is a bit nonsensical as there aren’t any cinematics to help guide it along. In between missions you will have your group hanging out at your headquarters talking about the past mission or what they are going to do in the upcoming mission but it doesn’t serve as any type of story. Additionally in the missions you have your main objective and your secondary objectives. If you choose not to go after the secondary objectives than you have to continually hear how you aren’t doing things right and that you need to stop being lazy.

The dialogue in the game makes absolutely no sense. One second you will have Optimus Prime telling you that you should try harder and get the secondary objectives and the very next second he will be saying how pleased he is with the progress that is being made and he congratulates you. This got to be annoying very quickly as it almost seems like the developers didn’t know what they wanted to do so they just threw everything in there and hoped for the best. Then there was the issue of being able to select a Transformer for a mission, at least that’s what they want you to think. Many times I would go to pick a Transformer for an upcoming mission only to have all of them locked instead of one. If they wanted us to use one for a mission, why even give us a choice? Simply start the mission with that one Autobot/Decepticon. There were a few times where you could pick from a couple different ones, however, it would have been a lot better if you could have played the game the way you wanted to and picked whichever one you wanted to play.

Once you began your missions you quickly realize that they also screwed up the controls. The game is basically a third person shooter and you use the left trigger to aim and the right trigger to fire just like most other shooters. The problem comes with the fact that you also have to hold the right trigger down to transform into a vehicle. Once you are a vehicle you have to continue to hold the right trigger down to accelerate while firing is switched to the “X” button. To go back to your standard form you simply let go of the right trigger. It makes absolutely no sense at all. When will developers start giving us the option to map the controls ourselves? That way when a game comes out with a screwed up control system we can fix it ourselves and it wouldn’t be an issue. There were numerous occasions where I tried to fire quickly at an enemy only to have my Transformer go into his “transforming” animation instead of shoot at the enemy because both actions were on the same button. That of course leaves you wide open to attack for the few seconds that it takes to get back to your standard form and in a big firefight it could be the difference between life and death in the game. There is somewhat of an auto target system in the game to help you lock onto enemies, however, even that doesn’t work very well.

Fortunately, Transformers is a very short game. If you go through the campaign twice to experience both sides you will probably be done in under 10 hours. If you are trying to completely rush through the game and not do anything except what is absolutely required you can probably finish even quicker than that. There are some multiplayer components as well such as death match, team death match, capture the flag, control points and more. This might add a little more replayability to the title, however, that is going to depend on whether Transformers garners a community that will consistently play the game. If you have some young children who are in to Transformers then they will probably have a blast being able to control these giant robots. Additionally I could also see really big Transformers fans getting a kick out of playing this title. Just be sure to rent this title before you buy it so you know what you are getting in to. As for everyone else just spend this time catching up on some of your older games before we have more games than we know what to do with this fall.

Score: 6/10

Originally posted on Totally Gaming Network