Post by CaptainSlayer on Jul 2, 2014 18:35:18 GMT -5
Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark is the first game featuring the shape shifting mechanical giants known as Transformers on current generation consoles. After over a week with the game, I'm forced to say that the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons isn't off to a great start.
Campaign
The first five minutes into this game are laughable. The dialogue is painful as Drift (pictured below) makes his obsession with 'honor' extremely obvious and constantly cries out about how guns are pathetic weapons with no 'honor' in using them... though you use them throughout his entire mission.
Apart from the lack of enthusiasm in the dialogue, the game also totes graphics it simply can't deliver on. While some of the cut scenes and minor parts of game play apply excellent lighting and rendering conditions, most of the game is bland with flat surfaces and lots and lots of gray. At least, that's how it is on the earth missions.
During my time with the game, I found myself enjoying the Cybertron missions. Listening to banter between Shockwave, Soundwave and Starscream while they scoured the surface of their dying planet to find the Dark Spark was not only humorous but among the best parts of game play throughout the game. A 'Star Fox'esque sequence while playing as Jetfire on Cybertron also provides some fun twitch inducing, shift and dodge moments. Though the moment that takes the cake in the campaign is easily playing as Grimlock and being able to literally eat Decepticon scum.
Though no section of the game was safe from minor and major bugs that broke immersion and caused frustration. One mission involves you playing as Soundwave and taking the life of a well known autobot. The fight starts out decent enough but during both of my plays on the level, this well known hero suddenly freezes in place and allows you to blast him to bits.
During one of the last Earth sections, you play as Bumblebee tasked with covering Drift with a sniper. On more than one occasion, the way points would lock in place and never activate. There is also an extremely annoying issue with being unable to switch weapons with the (Y) button. This seemed to happen the most when reloading but tended to take place almost all the time.
Another huge issue I noticed is that this game threw me back to the days of the Playstation 2 and original Xbox. During a mission, the game would suddenly stop and stamp a giant 'loading' insignia on the right side of my screen and take between one to five seconds to load before letting me resume my game.
Overall, the campaign didn't provide much for the old school transformers fans nor the newer crew like myself.
Escalation (Multiplayer)
Outside of the campaign there is only one other mode and it will be familiar to players of the High Moon studios games. Escalation takes a familiar setting of a small group of players (up to four) joining together and holding out against fifteen waves of bad guys.
The pros of this mode include the massive amount of characters you can choose from on both sides, 40+ to be exact (although 3 of the autobots are just different versions of Optimus Prime) and an awesome gun called the Throwback Pistol (also available in Campaign) that shoots bright pink lasers and provides classic Transformers sound effects including the original transforming sound.
Sadly, that's about where the awesome stops. The online mode features maps that are absolutely cluttered with machines you use to set up 'Gears of War' type defenses. After playing Escalation over five times, I'm still not sure what the hell half of the defenses even do, although Optimus or Megatron make damn sure to let you know when they're active, even going as far as to interrupt call outs of the wave starting or of a team mate going down.
The way the maps I have played are set up, the enemies all pour out of small choke points that you and your team mates can easily stand directly in front of and fire rockets, machine guns and heavy missles into the spawn, revoking the bots rights to leave. I'm not sure why the developers decided to put the impassable shield doors up but allow you to shoot through them.
The bots are also extremely strong when you're alone if they manage to get out, but they drop nothing for ammo and are easily killed. I spent my entire last game (which we made it to wave 13 before people dropped, more on that in a second) just spraying the scrapmaker (a giant minigun) into a hallway where the enemies constantly ran into the barrage of bullets. I racked up 130+ kills in about five minutes of play time.
Another issue is that the game seemed to be confused on which faction we were playing. Sometimes, my team will be all autobots and we would be versusing fellow autobots. It made for a confusing time due to the color of factions (red/blue Autobots - Puple Decepticons).
There is also an extreme lack of people playing the game. In fact, if I want to find a match with more than one other player, I have to set my region filter to Worldwide and even then I'm lucky to stay in a lobby. Communication is non-existant as I've had my mic in on nearly every match and haven't heard a peep excluding one fine fellow named "SeamedRabbit21" who had the voice of a four year old and stated clearly in the pre-game lobby "Mommy, I don't wanna' get Ice Cream." before then stating in a voice clearly field with tear seconds after the game started "Why are you giving them...", he left the match just as I heard his sad voice fading from the mic as he likely placed it and his controller on the floor before running off to confront his mother on her actions.
Unfortunately, I've never made it to Wave 15. The furthest I've hit is Wave 14. This isn't because of difficulty issues but rather because the host seems to drop 95% of the time and players like to simply leave at any time in the match. I've never made it past Wave 6 with all four team mates in the game.
Summary
So, in short, Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark is nothing more than a half finished product that was rushed to meet it's deadline to be side by side with the fourth film, Transformers: Age of Extinction. The game borrows a ton of assets from the High Moon Studios games but lacks the touch of the company.
While I loved both of High Moons games and Transformers: Dark of the Moon, this game hasn't been that great. I'm still playing it to clean up some achievements and I haven't dreaded my time with the game. But overall, it just doesn't live up to the standard the series has set for itself.
Rating
1.5/5
