I managed to snag a copy of this guy from a friend, since he somehow managed to accidentally snag two copies of this game. Anyway, being a game based on a movie, I knew it was going to be bad (low ratings from reviews also helped me to get that opinion...), and I started it up... and yup, it was pretty bad. However, as I played, I did eventually enjoy it for what it is, a ton of flaws, yet, maybe coz it's Transformers, maybe it's coz of the mindless game play, but I don't regret playing it.
First off, the controls are frankly, horrible. The worse offender has to be the transformation button, where you have to hold it down to transform into vehicle mode and accelerate. To make matters worse, you need to hold down another button to activate your weapons, and then press the transformation button to shoot. The end result? I found myself occasionally transforming into vehicle mode when I wanted to shoot, just because I pressed the transformation button a fraction earlier than the weapon activation button. Needless to say, this is very very VERY annoying. Once I got passed and accepted this, everything else was pretty good.
There are two campaigns, Autobot and Decepticons, and to be frank, I don't find them to be that much different. Each campaign has 23 missions, and they are quite repetitive. Basically, two main types, one, destroy all enemy robots (most of the missions is this) and second, destroy certain targets. Occasionally, you will fight a boss, one of the characters that actually has a name (most enemies are just drones). It's a fairly easy game to play and finish (although I haven't tried Expert difficulty), you can finish one campaign in around five to ten hours, but you'll spend another two hours or so just trying to unlock stuff to get the trophies (or achievements for the Xbox 360 version). Almost all of the Autobot and Decepticon campaign missions overlap, and I found it lazy for the developers to use the same (limited) cutscenes for both versions.
The story is almost non-existent, if you haven't seen the movie, you probably won't understand what is going on. Even so, I found it depressing and even ironic that you need to see a movie that doesn't have much plot in itself, to understand this game. It was really dull when you finish a mission and then have these same four (or five) robots talking in a room, and this is basically the story. No cutscenes whatsoever, disappointing. The music was okay, but when it stops and starts again, it's really jarring and you notice it, a lot, if it continuously looped, it wouldn't have been so much of a problem.
All in all, not as terrible as some other movie based games. Don't really recommend it, but I did enjoy my time on it. The controls takes some getting used it, and there's no denying that this is a very flawed, bland, and repetitive game.
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