I got some Autobot work done on the 360 version

Xbox 360
By this point, I had played the two other console versions available, so I was used to the gameplay and now I had a very familiar controller in my hand. Playing as Bumblebee in a daytime hub, I got a lot more accomplished in this version of the game. I was able to beat up a bunch of Decepticon drones, destroy some radio towers and generators that had been taken over by Decepticons, and toss around a giant hotdog. The drones mission was obviously combat-heavy, and I found the regular combat to be fun and it just felt right.

You know how in good action games, the combat clicks and it’s just really satisfying? That’s how this combat felt for me. This was not a Barricade vs. Bumblebee fight. The radio towers mission was similar to the one I had played as Starscream, but I was able to find all the towers and generators, even though I had to fight a bunch of drones to destroy them in peace. I have to say though, what was the most amusing was tearing it up on straightaways and jumping into a high-speed transformation. Oh yes, the transformations in this game (and I mean all versions) look and feel perfect. Speaking of looks, this may have just been me being more familiar with the 360, or a difference in how the systems were set up, or even the difference between a night level and a day level, but I though the 360 version (which was also the one that was demoed to us) looked somewhat better than the PS3 version.

One of the guys who was there to help us on the 360 demo actually happened to be the guy who created the achievements for the game. I was really interested in this bit about the 360 version, and he told me that about fifty percent of the achievements come through beating the game, and the others come from completing missions in certain ways (like using only melee attacks) and stuff like that. There’s one achievement that everyone will get in the first few minutes of the game. It’s called, “Transform and Roll Out.”

PSP
Unfortunately, there weren’t enough PSPs available by the time I was supposed to get to this version. That was really too bad though, and I should have tried harder to get one, because the guy that lead development by Savage on this platform was apparently the biggest Transformers fan at Activision. I did watch Adam play, and the graphics looked good and didn’t seem to have the camera issues that plague many PSP games. The targeting is cool because it’s over the shoulder and the way it played really reminded me of the Atari PS2 game from the Armada generation.

People from Activision were there to help anyone out anyone with questions

This is a PREVIEW not a review
Please bear in mind that we were playing these games in twenty minute segments, which partially explains things like the control issues I had in some cases. Another reason I was having more trouble than someone with a retail copy was that I was just jumping into any unlocked mission. I didn’t start a new game and go through the first few missions or a training mode, so of course the controls will feel weird for me when I have to use all at once without prior experience. Now, I did ask if the controls could be remapped, because the button for blocking and target locking would be easier for me to use if the were swapped. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to remap buttons in the retail version.

Remember also that we played very limited sections of the games, so I can’t comment on the variety of all the levels other than say there were at least search and destroy missions, race missions, combat missions, and boss missions. Stuff like the Barricade vs. Bumblebee fight I mentioned earlier may or may not be usual occurrences in the retail version.

One thing that I don’t expect to be improved that I was disappointed by was that not all of the cutscenes are like the opening cgi. Instead of using the in-game engine, or even clips from the movie, I feel like the cutscenes are a step backwards in cinematics with not so hot cgi and really awkward character animations. We’re talking uncanny valley animation on the humans. You know when a character’s movements are so exaggerated that it doesn’t look right? The cutscenes I saw with humans had that issue. It just seems weird to me that they wouldn’t go with the awesome game engine, and I think clips from the movie would have been less distracting than the cgi cutscenes that were in the version I played. Now, since this may not have been the final version, maybe those were just placeholders, so I’m waiting for a real review before passing judgement.

All that said, if you are a Transformers fan, you will like this game. If you’re more of a casual gamer, you would probably like this game too. Hardcore gamers who aren’t Transformers fans might be difficult to be won over by this game, but if you’re a hardcore gamer that isn’t a Transformers fan, why have you even read this? There are some flaws, but from what we saw, more effort and care went into this game than most licensed games. Transformers: The Game is very different than something like Bratz Babies or Ghost Rider.

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