Jul 14 2007
Flight of the Bumblebee
I’ve finally gotten the Transformers Movie game loaded on my PC, and I have to admit that I’m fairly underwhelmed. The graphics are very good, although the backgrounds seem to have a hazy “early morning” look to them. The character models are amazingly detailed, even the “drone” characters. Boss battles are incredibly cool. However, this game is essentially a console port, and therefore has its own limitations, which almost killed it for me.
Controlling your character in vehicle mode is almost pointless. I was wondering if vehicular control would improve if I bought a game pad, but I decided against it. Each character behaves a little differently behind the wheel, with Bumblebee careening wildly at any speed while Ironhide turns like a battleship. It’s much less frustrating to run around in robot mode (which allows you to look around you, while vehicle mode has you staring straight ahead), but you move like a snail — no running for robots!
Tasks are always the same. It’s “get to this point before time runs out” or “follow that thing and kill it before it gets to where it’s going”. I’m used to elaborate quests that take hours or days to complete. If you can’t complete this one simple task, just try again. There are no power ups to make me drive faster or with more control, and I can’t level up and try again later, since there are no RPG elements here. Just try again later, better luck next time.
Your progress is only saved when you finish a goal. Some goals are impossible, like when you have to flee a fireball coming down a tunnel towards you, but your car is uncontrollable and you also have debris falling into your path (and if that doesn’t spin you into the wall, then it brings you to a complete stop). Made it past the fireball? Good, now do it five more times before you can save again!
Once I’ve played through the main storyline, I’ll go back and try to enjoy myself a little. You can hang out in some areas, enjoying the scenery or collecting glowing cubes that open bonus content, and there are ramps all over for jumping. That may be more fun than constantly racing the clock to get from point A to point B. Am I being too critical of a $20 game? Maybe. I’d be really aggravated if I paid $60 to play this one on the XBox 360.
Meta-Tags:
Bumblebee, Transformers, Transformers Movie, Video Games
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