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In most of the missions, the fact that the characters are Transformers is cosmetic at best. Alt-modes generally aren't very useful in battle, and I'd go so far as to say that most of them actively hinder you. The tanks were especially disappointing, because you'd expect a tank to be awesome in a fight but what you actually get is a mode that's slower and less agile than a robot with a slower rate of fire and a gun that's harder to hit anything with. Aside from the two flyer levels, the only times I transformed in the game were when I needed to get somewhere fast and when I ran out of ammo for my robot-mode guns half-way through a fight.
The Seeker level and the Aerialbot level were exceptions to this. The Seeker level was a bit clunky because you had big chunks where you were pretty much forced to play in one mode or another, but you definitely needed to use both modes to get through. The Aerialbot level was great, I thought, and I found myself transforming all the time to change my angle of attack on the Decepticons or attack on the ground while my AI wingmen were attacking in the sky and vice versa. In my opinion that's what a Transformers game is supposed to be like, and the ground levels offered few scenarios where there was any advantage at all to using your alt-mode.
I didn't much like the selection of weapons, either. It's your standard shooter kit, basically...an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher, a grenade launcher, etc. Everything is given Transformery names, like a null ray or an ion cannon, but regardless of what they're called most of them are just a standard firearm with little sci-fi properties. It's especially galling because most of the Transformers who appear in the game are supposed to have unique weapons to call their own. Megatron gets his fusion cannon and Starscream has a null ray in name only (it's a sniper rifle, apparently...), but Sideswipe's flares, Air Raid's torque rifle, Silverbolt's lightning gun, Ironhide's chemical sprayer, Brawl's sonic cannon, Thundercracker's sonic booms and Breakdown's vibration generator (which would have been a great area-effect weapon when surrounded
) are nowhere to be found. Most galling of all, Soundwave wears his shoulder cannon throughout the entire game but it doesn't actually do anything, Warpath has a giant cannon on his chest that he can't actually use unless he transforms and Megatron's fusion cannon becomes a generic tank gun in alt-mode. None of these unique weapons would be especially difficult to implement, and between the generic weapons and the lack of alt-mode utility the characters all play very much the same (except for the flyers, who are different than the groundpounders but all basically the same as each other). And that touches on another big complaint, which is the lack of replay value. Since all the characters play pretty much the same, there's no real reason to go back and replay any of the levels once you've beaten them. Originally I was set to complain that I couldn't use the unlockable or DLC characters in single-player mode (or palate swaps of existing characters, like Red Alert from Sideswipe or Cliffjumper from Bumblebee), but I'm indifferent to it now because playing as Jazz or Dead End won't bring any new experiences that I wouldn't get playing as Sideswipe or Breakdown.
I wasn't impressed by the boss fights either, as far too many of them relied on the stereotypical pattern of "avoid a sequence of attacks, then shoot the enemy in his big red, highlighted weak spot while he recharges". Once or twice would have been OK, but even the fights with Omega Supreme and Trypticon relied exclusively on that trope. More fights against actual characters, like the Starscream and Soundwave battles, would have been a nice reprieve. In fact, it would have been great to see more recognizable characters full-stop, even just as mini-bosses or in charge of a team of drones. The variety of enemies was pretty slim, and it would have been nice to have, say, Mirage or Spinister show up in command of a team of cloakers, or Onslaught leading a wave of brutes and tanks, or Blaster hanging out in the Autobot comms hub when you show up to reactivate it, or Prowl among the prisoners they spring from Kaon. There are so many Transformers out there that it just feels wrong to have a dozen named characters moving among thousands upon thousands of identical drones.
The voice acting threw me a bit too, but mostly because they cast the real Optimus Prime alongside a bunch of soundalikes and ex-Power Rangers.
That's not to say that it wasn't fun, because I did enjoy it well enough for what it was. In fact, above and beyond all of these complaints, my biggest gripe is that it wasn't long enough. But it just didn't feel very "Transformery" to me. Does that make sense?
