Wednesday, 29 January 2014

EAG 2014: Transformers First Impressions



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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