Review: Transformers: Dark of the Moon (360)

Many gamers tend to bristle when the concept of games as art is questioned. With so many incredible experiences coming out every year, and the increasing audience for the medium, it seems like a foregone conclusion. Then one has the misfortune of playing a game like Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Getting past the grammatically infuriating title is difficult enough, but once you begin you realize how difficult it is to develop a good game, and how incredibly easy it is to put out a bad one and wreck our entire argument.

As evident by the title, the game is loosely based around the movie. You begin the game as various Autobots, trying to ascertain the evil plans of the Decepticons. The early levels consist of a different Autobot blasting through waves of Decepticons in a locked area and then moving on to the next open area. You can change between “Stealth Mode,” which is really your vehicle form with an obscene amount of guns and far more damage resistance, and your robot form. In Stealth Mode you can press the left trigger to complete your vehicle transformation, ditching your guns and becoming just the vehicle you are modeled after. This leads to the occasional extended driving portions that are, at best generic, and more often than not awful. Midway through the game, you switch to the Decepticon side, trying to undo all the work you did in the beginning chapters. The concept of playing as Starscream, Soundwave, and the rest is certainly gripping, but playing against the heroes is a tough concept to sell, and it ends up making the story even less accessible. Playing through as the bad guys only offers new weapons, leaving the same sad level concepts.

Dark of the Moon’s levels continually disappoint in both scale and concept. The attempts at making you feel like a giant power-house never translate well. Random objects will pop up to try and give you the feeling of being a massive robot, but they tend to be laughable, instead making you feel like the guy in the Godzilla suit trashing toy trains and cardboard buildings. The sparse levels also make it impossible to take effective cover, and the cities feel lifeless and flat. Each level tries to incorporate platforming, which is just as bad as it sounds. Hopping around while trying to scale burned out buildings or jumping from rock formation to rock formation in order to avoid lava doesn’t work when you’re a 5-story tall Transformer. There is also the occasional attempt at adding puzzles to help ease the boredom of the hallway/big room/hallway level design, but they are so basic it is almost insulting. Most of them feel like rehashes from V-Smile games, and serve simply as comic relief.

Thankfully, multiplayer makes a comeback this time around, which provides the most compelling aspect of Dark of the Moon. The shifting techniques that were used as an excuse to extend the single player levels with long driving sequences add a dimension to muliplayer that you won’t see in any other game. Transforming lets you create unusual strategies, while driving off a ledge, transforming into robot form and getting the drop on your opponent can feel more like directing a film than playing a game. Support classes are removed this time around, so those that enjoyed that aspect are sure to be disappointed, but I still found the most fun to be had through online matches.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the perfect example of a game without focus. It can’t seem to decide if it wants to be a driving game or a third person shooter, and the mix of other gameplay elements seems forced and tacked on. It seems to think that the more video game genres it tries to shoe-horn in, the better the game will be. The constant shift between what Transformer you control gives you a new arsenal in robot mode every level, which can be fun or frustrating, depending on how well you like the new set, but the near invulnerability of Stealth Mode, along with never needing to reload your weapons, gives you little reason to ever switch to robot form. Dark of the Moon is the perfect example of why games need to have a focus to succeed. Instead of being a new take on the franchise like its predecessor, War for Cybertron, Dark of the Moon feels rushed and lazy, removing most of the fun in favor of a quick tie in with the film’s release. Next time you’re trying to prove that games can be art, make sure you keep Transformers: Dark of the Moon well hidden.