First Impressions: Transformers
Well as a major fan of rail shooters, I look at any
arcade game of interest which comes within that genre and this game was just up
my street. However when I walked up to the machine I had a bit of a Rambo feel
about this game which is not good, anyway
I tried I anyway and here is what I got.
The first thing about this game is that it has a lot,
and I mean a lot of gimmicks. They range from shooting quick time
events, pointing the gun in a specific direction and even
pressing the credit button at intervals during a cut scene. There are a lot of
times where this is integrated into the game and the problem is that it all
feels quite lazy. The game tends to use these mechanics at infrequent times
which not only make them difficult to judge but incredibly hard to react to.
This is a very easy way of losing credits and to be honest, it’s
not anything new that has not been done before in a Rail shooter. A little
Ghost Squad there, a little Time Crisis here, a little House of the Dead there
but it never really adds anything. They end up being more of a chore on game play
and only bring the game down to the point where it was kind of uncomfortable
playing.
The actual gameplay itself is kind of lackluster outside of gimmicks really, tends to be very stale with lots of auto firing
when not waiting for cut scenes to end. There is no focus on precision, more
spray action except for the few times where you need to hit a boss’ weak spot
and that’s really it. The game uses a life bar scheme which seems to be a new
thing of Rail Shooters in the modern day, and it’s one that also abuses it too.
It is never really clear how much an attack will take of your bar. Sometimes
it’s a third, other times it’s half and on the rare occasion it’s a sixth or an
eighth. Life you recover from the other player continuing or at the end of the
level is rarely enough to actually absorb an attack.
Other than the usual ‘enemy begins an attack before
the camera spans towards them’ scheme this game is quite simple and is quite
easy. However what this game lacks is focus and fun. It seems like it’s a
little bit of a to obvious of a cash in on the movie. The best thing about this game
is the cut scene animations which are very well done, Optimus Prime, Megatron,
Bumble Bee, Star Scream and the rest of the crew look amazing but there really
is not much more than that.
Best I can say is play this once if you really have
nothing better to put a credit in, and even then be hesitant to do it.
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