Transformers: Dark of the Moon

When Transformers: War for Cybertron came out last year, I was impressed by how well it was made. It wasn’t a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination but it was a game that truly embraced the universe it was based on. The overall gameplay was fun, if a bit repetitive and the world looked great – if a bit repetitive. The game also had a pretty good multiplayer system, both competitive and cooperative. When I saw that High Moon Studios was making Transformers: Dark of the Moon, I thought that the game could actually be an enjoyable experience. Transformers: Dark of the Moon doesn’t feel like getting the Transformers toy you wanted and ends up being a cheap duplicate. Gobots are not Transformers.

The story – hold on – okay, there really is not much of a story here. It doesn’t seem to follow the movie and it doesn’t really feel like the filler between the two movies. During the campaign you constantly switch between Transformer sides. The Transformers have there own missions and have a single objective for that mission. Autobots are trying to stop Decepticons from doing something that threatens the world. Were you expecting anything else? The game can also be beaten in less than seven hours and has 7 missions to speak of.

One would think that Dark of the Moon would play just like War for Cybertron. You would be wrong. While War for Cybertron had decent if not good level design, Dark of the Moon does not. The design of many levels is generic and boils down to throwing as many enemies as they can at you. There are some stealth and flying sections that break up the monotony but they are few a fleeting. Furthermore, every boss encounter consists of circle strafing around the target until his fat life bar reaches zero. Dark of the Moon makes driving feel incredibly awkward and loose. Players will constantly find themselves crashing into geometry because the levels are cramped. I feel this is probably because they change the original driving mode to what they call stealth mode.

Stealth mode is a hybrid mode, where you can fire weapons but have better maneuverability. The driving of Stealth mode is exactly how the driving should be for car mode but for some reason the developers didn’t feel that way. This works well, a little too well as you are incredibly over powered. During Stealth mode you have better weapons then robot mode and you also have unlimited ammo. The game designers even force you to only be a robot on several occasions, maybe so you won’t steam roll over your opponents. Enemy variety is sparse and the A.I are not very smart. However there are some moments where the game will throw in a bunch of robots who throw powerful grenades at you. I wish my grenade was powerful but I was given a micro waved potato to throw. Overall the game play just doesn’t meet the standards of War for Cybertron.

One of my biggest gripes about Dark of the Moon is its multiplayer. Fans of War for Cybertron will be disappointed in knowing that not only is there no horde mode or coop but the games competitive multiplayer feels unbalanced. The maps for multiplayer are almost completely stripped from campaign instead of being play tested. I was a huge fan of the multiplayer of the first but after playing two hours of this, I was incredibly bored.

The presentation of the game is hokey and sad. The cinematics in the game feel cheap and terrible. The Transformers puppet like animations coupled with a little FMV make the game slightly laughable. Dark of the Moon features a variety of locales but does not make them appealing or interesting. It just looks like they cut out a bunch of random environments from the Unreal Engine catalog. There is some occasional texture pop in but it isn’t nearly as frustrating as the loading in of new sections. Seriously! The loading in the game reminds me of how a person will constantly call your house when you’re having sex or something. The music also has a garage band feel to it and lack any powerful anthems or memorable tunes. The voice acting is decent but often will sound unenthusiastic. It’s as if the actors just wanted to go home.

Dark of the Moon sounds like a bad game. It’s not really that bad. It is better then a lot of other movie based games I have played (I know that isn’t saying much). Being in stealth mode and flying are still fun. It just isn’t as good and lacks the spirit of Transformers War for Cybertron. I just hope that the next Transformers game to come out of High Moon Studios isn’t rolled out and is instead nurtured.