Transformers: Making Things Explode

It's not a BAD game, I'll give you that.

Trouble is, it's not a great game either. 3 out of 5. That's basically 5 out of 10.

As you may know, movie-based games aren't usually much cop. The game generally relies on the movie shifting game boxes, not the quality of the game. It's the same here.

Let's start with the good points. You can play as Autobots and Decepticons. That's two stories. You can play as lots of different bots and cons. The computer animation is GREAT, with incredible detail for the robots, cut-scenes, and explosions. It's just great. You can break almost everything. Heck, even the pavement cracks under your feet.

Trouble is, the game doesn't last that long. If you push yourself you can complete it in a day, maybe two. And there's the special missions, 100 Energon Cubes per Chapter, little badge things, and unlockable content which adds a little longer. What IS this unlockable content? Most of it is still frames from the movie, the game, and the comics. Not really worth it.

There's plenty of happiness to be had from busting up a mostly destructible environment - and you can bust up almost everything. Trouble is, you shouldn't really be doing this unless you're pulling the Decepticon missions.

And the controls are freaking terrible. When you're in robot form you're fine, but as soon as you get into car mode you're slipping all over the place and crashing into everything unless you're driving at about 10mph. This is AWFUL in chase missions. Not to mention the traffic. There are real cars everywhere slamming into the side of you and it will make you wail on time-based missions. And EVERY FREAKING MISSION has a time limit. Or a number of enemies to kill in a time limit. Or a place to go in a time limit. Or somebody to chase down in a time limit. Well, it seems that way, anyway. Not that it's impossible. And not that time limits are a bad way to add challenge. But it makes the game AWFULLY repetitive. And the enemies are GREAT drivers, while you're slipping all over the place. Nobody ever crashes into them.

The most frustrating thing (well, for me) is that you can get stuck on EVERYTHING. In robot and car mode, you can get stuck on trees lying on the ground that logically a 20 foot robot should be able to step over. This is strange, what with other cars going flying like cardboard and bouncing like rubber. And sometimes you are the one to go flying with a touch.

You hardly use the guns at all since most of the time you can beat up enemy drones with a few melee attacks, or whacking them with a post or (for the bosses) throwing a car. And the guns don't seem to be much use on most of your enemies. Some of the enemies just block your bullets (how come they hurt me then?) but most of the time your guns are useless because the lock-on feature barely works. It sticks for a few seconds then falls off your target because you moved.

And with the slippy camera-based controls you often can't see what you're supposed to be hitting. Also you can just walk into a wall and start climbing it whether you want to or not.

The story of the game is specially written so that there's no spoilers to the movie. It's actually quite good. It's just so SHALLOW. FIND SAM. FIND THE ALLSPARK. CRUSH KILL DESTROY. THAT'S ABOUT IT.

The sound is like it's lifted straight from the movie, which would be great if it didn't loop and jump and repeat until you can't bear it. Music from one mission has a tendency to carry into the next - even if it doesn't suit at all.

All in all, the game is basically a 'pass it over' thing. Buy something else with your money. It could be a lot worse than it is, and there are indeed much worse games out there. It's great that they've got people from the movie (and old Hugo Weaving too) to voice it, it sounds good (at first), it looks really, really good... but it's just not a lot of fun.