The Transformers are back in over-the-top brawler action with comic book inspired art to create a Transformers game like none other.
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metal gear rising but transformers, no stealth and no hot ninjas and politicians trying to kill you
Fun combat. Transformers, what more do you want?
Shame we never got a sequel
Shame we never got a sequel
Transformers: A Hidden Gem in Disguise.
How I came to discover this is really funny since I just came across a video where Sonic Frontiers’s boss theme songs played in other final bosses where I saw Break through it All playing in the space fight between Optimus Prime vs Megatron. The action combat looked really cool, so it came to surprise me that Platinum Games actually worked on it and they work on a lot of licensed games. Finally playing it for myself and man it does not disappoint.
This game looks really pretty, adopting the comics art style with some gorgeous cel-shading, really selling the feeling of playing a comic book with how faithful the characters look to the original cartoon. I say this but I don’t actually know much about the Transformers franchise besides the Michael Bay movies and Transformers Animated by Derrick J Wyatt, but I’d say this is a welcome addition to more Transformers media. Though very simple, the narrative serves well to platform the cool action gameplay with a surprisingly interesting narrative idea of conflict between Optimus Prime and Megatron’s ideal for Cybertron. It’s actually quite compelling to hear their dialogue on Optimus believing to adapt with humans on Earth while Megatron wants to claim the world for Cybertronians. Reminds me a lot of Xavier and Magneto’s conflict with how Mutants should live though very contextually different. This story really isn’t complex enough that I wouldn’t fault anyone to just outright skip the cutscenes, but I appreciate that they still wrote something worth telling for a video game showing the passion the team must have for this project.
Why anyone would play this though is for its very simple combat scheme being only relegated to 2 buttons with a dodge mechanic in its shoulder button. This sounds incredibly simple, but somehow the game manages to really flesh this out with the different types of damage and projectiles creating an interesting challenge in maneuvering over fights. Not to mention, it just looks cool as hell since the combat always looks very active yet clear. However, sometimes the camera can get annoying with it being completely manual to control which makes it difficult for certain sequences if an object is blocking the character you’re controlling. Speaking of which, the game itself lets you play as five different characters for the main campaign and they all feel very unique despite having the same loadouts and weapons, with characters like Bumblebee being agile or someone heavy but a good damage dealer like the Dinobot dude. Biggest issue to all this is just the fact that the bosses get really damage spongy on normal and above, while the AI becomes a tad too easy on lower difficulties meaning that there might not be a sweet spot for many players.
Platinum Games really put they’re all into making the game as fun as they could make it. Despite being a licensed game, this could easily be put into competition with a lot of action hack-and-slash games with how robust the overall experience is. It's a short game though, so I’d best recommend it if you just want a quick game to enjoy some Transformers action without anything too complex, story or gameplay wise. I assume this game is for kids after all, but nonetheless definitely made with respect to both the audience and the franchise its using in mind.
How I came to discover this is really funny since I just came across a video where Sonic Frontiers’s boss theme songs played in other final bosses where I saw Break through it All playing in the space fight between Optimus Prime vs Megatron. The action combat looked really cool, so it came to surprise me that Platinum Games actually worked on it and they work on a lot of licensed games. Finally playing it for myself and man it does not disappoint.
This game looks really pretty, adopting the comics art style with some gorgeous cel-shading, really selling the feeling of playing a comic book with how faithful the characters look to the original cartoon. I say this but I don’t actually know much about the Transformers franchise besides the Michael Bay movies and Transformers Animated by Derrick J Wyatt, but I’d say this is a welcome addition to more Transformers media. Though very simple, the narrative serves well to platform the cool action gameplay with a surprisingly interesting narrative idea of conflict between Optimus Prime and Megatron’s ideal for Cybertron. It’s actually quite compelling to hear their dialogue on Optimus believing to adapt with humans on Earth while Megatron wants to claim the world for Cybertronians. Reminds me a lot of Xavier and Magneto’s conflict with how Mutants should live though very contextually different. This story really isn’t complex enough that I wouldn’t fault anyone to just outright skip the cutscenes, but I appreciate that they still wrote something worth telling for a video game showing the passion the team must have for this project.
Why anyone would play this though is for its very simple combat scheme being only relegated to 2 buttons with a dodge mechanic in its shoulder button. This sounds incredibly simple, but somehow the game manages to really flesh this out with the different types of damage and projectiles creating an interesting challenge in maneuvering over fights. Not to mention, it just looks cool as hell since the combat always looks very active yet clear. However, sometimes the camera can get annoying with it being completely manual to control which makes it difficult for certain sequences if an object is blocking the character you’re controlling. Speaking of which, the game itself lets you play as five different characters for the main campaign and they all feel very unique despite having the same loadouts and weapons, with characters like Bumblebee being agile or someone heavy but a good damage dealer like the Dinobot dude. Biggest issue to all this is just the fact that the bosses get really damage spongy on normal and above, while the AI becomes a tad too easy on lower difficulties meaning that there might not be a sweet spot for many players.
Platinum Games really put they’re all into making the game as fun as they could make it. Despite being a licensed game, this could easily be put into competition with a lot of action hack-and-slash games with how robust the overall experience is. It's a short game though, so I’d best recommend it if you just want a quick game to enjoy some Transformers action without anything too complex, story or gameplay wise. I assume this game is for kids after all, but nonetheless definitely made with respect to both the audience and the franchise its using in mind.
This game would've deserved a 5 star if not for the rather-awkward-at-times camera and the bosses being reused during the later levels. But damn, the combat, the music, even the charming stupid story and damn the final boss, this is a really good game.
Fun and short, one of platinum's hidden gems that deserves to be available in digital stores again.
Weak combat mechanics and repetitive level design bogged down even further by looter-shooter grinding mechanics.
If you start Commander (the highest default difficulty) vanilla, you will sit there and hack away at the early bosses for five minutes straight just doing the same combo dozens of times to remove a couple pixels from the health bar at a time. So then you grind and do all the looter shooter bullshit like leveling up a million different stats (for every character no less), farming weapons, grinding weapon upgrades, grinding TECH upgrades, and also farming consumable items. Now, after all that grinding, you can basically one-shot everything everything in the game while also having endless consumables that you can spam to double damage output, halve damage taken, revive you upon death, or restore your energy.
The actual combat consists of lock-on ranged attacks as well as spamming either parry into basic combo or vehicle rush attack into basic combo, with generous timing windows and near-constant i-frame uptime. Even the SS-ranks never require anything more than this as they don't cap points from repeatedly spamming moves.
It's probably the most unbalanced game I've ever seen. Really poor design for an action game, and the looter-shooter mechanics are just compensating for the extremely simplistic combat system and uninspired bossfights. Because the actual design and mechanics aren't interesting or well designed enough to actually encourage replay value (like an arcade game would for example), they resort to meta systems of mindless skinner-box grinding.
If you start Commander (the highest default difficulty) vanilla, you will sit there and hack away at the early bosses for five minutes straight just doing the same combo dozens of times to remove a couple pixels from the health bar at a time. So then you grind and do all the looter shooter bullshit like leveling up a million different stats (for every character no less), farming weapons, grinding weapon upgrades, grinding TECH upgrades, and also farming consumable items. Now, after all that grinding, you can basically one-shot everything everything in the game while also having endless consumables that you can spam to double damage output, halve damage taken, revive you upon death, or restore your energy.
The actual combat consists of lock-on ranged attacks as well as spamming either parry into basic combo or vehicle rush attack into basic combo, with generous timing windows and near-constant i-frame uptime. Even the SS-ranks never require anything more than this as they don't cap points from repeatedly spamming moves.
It's probably the most unbalanced game I've ever seen. Really poor design for an action game, and the looter-shooter mechanics are just compensating for the extremely simplistic combat system and uninspired bossfights. Because the actual design and mechanics aren't interesting or well designed enough to actually encourage replay value (like an arcade game would for example), they resort to meta systems of mindless skinner-box grinding.