Let's continue with some more informations about the Transformers franchise from our friend Kim. Here is everything interesting between 2007 and 2010.

2007 was the release of the first Transformers Life Action game, carrying the title ‘Transformers: The Game’. The standard edition was available on PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. However, in my eyes, it was the games on the DS that had the most interesting gameplay of them all, as they were very heavily inspired on the GTA franchise. The PSP edition was also not bad for its time, however it did not work at all with the already present story of the franchise…

Compared to the DS version of the game, there were also GTA elements on the console versions of the game, but noticeably less. Furthermore, there was an Autobot and a Decepticon release of the game on the Nintendo DS, which not only made the main characters of the two sides available to the player, but also offered an individual story-mode that was different, depending on which version of the two the player was playing. This meant that there was either an Autobot or a Decepticon Campaign that could be played.

In 2008 there was a Nintendo exclusive release of a Transformers game. This game was none other than the Lost Vikings clone called ‘Transformers Animated’. Why similar to Lost Vikings? Well, the player controls Optimus Prime, Bulkhead and Bumblebee at the same time and each characters has one or multiple abilities that are unique to said character. Additionally, those abilities had to be used together to solve difficult puzzles and reach the end. The game itself is very intriguing and worth a look, sadly however rather short…

2009 was the release of ‘Transformers Revenge of the Fallen’, whose console versions, Xbox360, PS3 and PC, were the better version. Not to forget, this was the first Transformers game that featured Online multiplayer. This game was produced by Luxoflux and coincidentally, this studio is, according to my sources, the same as the Australian company called Melbourne House. Unfortunately, the game was not perfect, because the player was always put under pressure by a timer that was part of the missions. In my opinion this was rather sad, as it made it impossible to explore the whole map and take time to enjoy it.

Also, the multiplayer had a lot of bad sides to it, one being that the respawn point remained the same each time that a player was defeated… On the Nintendo DS there were once again an Autobot and a Decepticon version that got released. Sadly, this time they were badly produced, and I had to give up on both of them. PS2 and PSP versions were sadly also not very special. I did play them for a little while, but after noticing that the game played in the bird-perspective I decided to stop, which led me to never touch them again afterwards…

2010 was then an interesting year for Transformers fans, as after 6 years of wait there was another Blockbuster title with the name ‘transformers War for Cybertron’. Produced was the game by High Moon Studios and published was it as always by Activision, who got the Transformers game license from Hasbro since an earlier game release in 2007. The game itself was extraordinary, not only because Peter Cullen spoke the voice of Optimus Prime, but also because it was created with the already loved Unreal 3 graphic engine and because it featured multiplayer system, for its time, cool multiplayer options.

One mode for example screamed Gears of War 2, and was a very similar horde mode called ‘Escalation mode’, that was probably inspired by Gears of War 2’s horde mode. Nonetheless, the game had even more to offer, that being the fact that one could play the game as up to 3 players in a coop mode that was either an Autobot or Decepticon campaign. Sadly however, no game is perfect and so even this game had its problems, one major example being that it was impossible to reinforce on the right side.

The Nintendo DS games were surprisingly well made and here there were again both an Autobot and a Decepticon version. Additionally, one was able to play exclusive ‘War for Cybertron’ characters that were never released on the console versions of the game.

The Wii game was some type of Time Crisis clone version of the game, that tried to aim more towards a kid audience.

Naturally there's more to read.

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