This is what you do to yourself when you are a fan of something so deeply, you put money towards something you know is going to be no good. Not on the off chance that it is, but on the off chance it’s fine, “enjoyable enough”.

Transformers: Earthspark - Expedition reaches that low bar.

TFEE is a third-person action adventure with small open-world hubs that you explore as Transformers poster child, Bumblebee.
To briefly explain for the non-transformers marks, Earthspark is the latest TV series which is based in a time after the long war between the Autobots and Decepticons.
In this series, Megatron is a friend of the Autobots and not the big bad villain. Some rebellious Decepticons still exist, either as criminals, having old grudges or whatever - none of that is really relevant to TFEE.
The big spin on things in Earthspark is that the new batch of Transformers this show adds are born on and from Earth, linked to the human protagonists. These are the Terrans.

Post-war Bumblebee, typically the scout and younger member of the crew is the one with seniority and teaches the Terrans everything they need to know about being a Transformer.
The villain of the series is a Dr Meridian also known as Mandroid who uses his smarts and Cybertronian tech for evil.
In TFEE he is believed to be defeated but is somehow about and going to cause some big destructive plan that can only be stopped by the hero Bumblebee collecting three cubes that are part of an Energon Activator from where Mandroid seems to be mining.

In even simpler terms, you play Bumblebee - a yellow robot who becomes a car and you search three different places for magical cubes.

The story is fine, it has some small twists and is written well enough.
I would say the dialogue is good but here are two caveats just to start.
First, the voice acting isn’t bad per-say but it’s based on an existing TV series and the characters do not have the same voice actors and worse still some don’t even sound remotely close to how they do in the show.
Optimus Prime for example sounds nothing like any version of the fatherly figure I am used to hearing, it was so off putting that it caused me to read faster to skip through dialogue as quickly as I could.
The second part is that there are repeated lines. Games used repeated grunts and phrases all the time but the repeated lines are sometimes ones that are particularly long and used again in different levels with large gaps between and it is very jarring - it’s one of many things that feel like this game was cutting as many corners as it could.

The game play is basic, the big positive is the form the game takes - although there is not enough of it.
Bumblebee can drive, jump around and fight enemies across the different small open worlds, finding collectibles, clearly out camps of enemies and doing small side missions for the Terrans who are dotted about each map.
It’s open world gaming boiled down to an early 00’s feel, which isn’t fantastic but is greatly enhanced by unlocking abilities in a Metroidvania style way and encouraging you to dive back for extras… or not. One thing TFEE does well is respect your time, the levels never feel too big, there aren’t hundreds of things to find and it is never too taxing to get to things you can see on the map as long as you have the unlocked abilities to get there.

As a skeleton, the hub leading to a few open worlds with similar missions that add some increasing complexity as you progress is a very good one. Sadly the skin and the insides are of a basic to sometimes rotting quality.

Within these worlds you are doing two main things, fighting and traversing.
Neither of these are offensively bad but they all feel very simple, stripped back and something you’d have expected as a budget game fifteen years ago.

The combat has punch and kick combos, you can unlock more as you progress.
Bumblebee can shoot to fill a stun bar on enemies to get attacks in easier and dodging along with a Witch-Time style upgrade makes you think for all of a nanosecond that this may be as fun to play as Platinum’s Transformers: Devastation.
It is not.
Combos can lock you into odd animations, the feedback from being hit to doing a special attack feels lacking and the special moves you can unlock add virtually nothing, the combos adding a little more than nothing but not enough.

Traversal mostly involves driving which is all done on the left stick, no driving controls or extra buttons outside of a nitro you gain later. It feels acceptable but never good or exciting, it does however feel preferable to the very floaty and imprecise jumping which thankfully the game doesn’t make you do too much of.
Transforming on one button is nice, and the metroidvania-like unlocks are good in their ideas but boring in execution.

A better, further developed game would see things like the one-button conversion be implemented directly into the combat alongside all the bonus abilities, not just the one.
Thankfully the game feels so light and simple that I never felt the combat became completely tedious but I could see many others not feeling the same way and I would totally understand.

Corners don’t feel cut simply in voice acting, combat and exploration.
The graphics are fine, it looks quite basic and I would say “early PS4” but by no means bad.
The sound however, the car hum is unsatisfying, the music outside of the opening menu is virtually non-existent and some of the sounds you have when doing what is meant to be a devastating special attack are pathetic.

Transformers: Earthspark - Expedition is a game with an obviously low budget, aimed at a younger audience with I can only assume the hopes that all is basic gameplay and cut corners won’t go noticed by the kid that just bloody loves them transforming robots.
It is hard for me to call the game terrible, it’s barely bad, really it is just poor - serviceable but lazy.
As a fan you will take things that are less-than if you love the franchise enough. I never once felt bad or annoyed playing the game but thinking about the fact I spent money on this rather than something else makes me regretful.
Looking back on my time with it, it was a fine distraction but to analyse any part of the game is to put it in a bad light.
If you love Transformers, maybe give this game a go but do not spend any “real amount” of money on it because you’ll kick yourself for doing so when there’s so many other much better games out there.