Transformers: Decepticons

Rating Everyone Genre adventure Publisher Activision External Links Official Tranformers Website

“More than meets the eye.” This is just one of the many catchphrases that I so willingly let entertainment and advertising outlets drill into my impressionable little noggin growing up in the 80’s. These Saturday Morning Mantras, as I now call them, became my own personal set of rules to live by. More often then not when applied to the real world; however, they would fail me. Take for example this little gem from G.I. Joe: “knowing is half the battle.” Sure, knowing may be half the battle, but whether you know big Bruno T. Facepummeler is gunning for you once the final school bell rings will get you nowhere if your ride doesn’t show up for another half hour. So, needless to say I was a little hesitant when I heard of the most recent Nintendo DS addition to the Transformers video game library. Would I be failed yet again by these childhood words of wisdom or will this game reflect upon me the dogmatic teachings of its spiritual predecessor? Read on to find out…

Transformers: Decepticons for DS is one of the latest retro cartoon-to-movie-to-videogame adaptations. You take control of a no-name (well except the one you create) Decepticon combatant in the Allspark War that has made its way to Earth. In search of Megatron and the Allspark, you will come in contact with many Transformers mainstays such as Starscream, Bumblebee, and Barricade.

T:D’s overall style has a somewhat watered down Grand Theft Auto feel to it, spanning across several ‘sandboxes’ that take the form of the Qatar desert, the city of Tranquility, and the Hoover Dam. The missions set in these locales generally consist of causing havoc to the pitiful humans, smashing the crap out of the environment, or engaging in giant metal fisticuffs with your friendly neighborhood Autobots. Several missions do put you in control of the Decepticon headliners, but for the majority of the adventure you assume the role of the generic name-a-bot. The game even has a threat meter, reminiscent of GTA’s wanted meter, which builds in proportion to the destruction you do. At higher levels the humans bust out the big guns in a sad attempt to take you down, but just as you would think, it’s just too easy to get away.

Controls, I feel, are pretty spot on until you become surrounded by military or Autobot adversaries. It’s at this point that a better targeting system for ranged attacks would have been helpful. I was constantly finding myself facing the wrong way or switching targets. This game uses minimal implementation of the touch screen that, in my opinion, was pretty solid. Essentially it adds a few extra buttons to have at your disposal for transforming and scanning new vehicles.

It seems the developers may have been pressed a bit too much into keeping the sandbox feel and movie envisioned style in this game and unfortunately this is nowhere more evident in the graphics. Low polygon, clunky models plague both the environmental and “pedestrian” models as well as the giant robots that take center stage. At least there is no noticeable slowdown because of this.

If there’s one thing the Nintendo DS does oh-so-right it is online play. It’s that simple fact that truly facilitated my letdown when trying out the Battle for the Allspark online play. Instead of butting heads with other humans-in-robots-in-disguise, this mode consists of daily challenges that are played offline and further your faction’s efforts. The winning faction each day is assigned a part of the Allspark. How smashing stuff with a lightpole or collecting floating spheres gets me closer to that goal is beyond me.

Decepticons does do a few things right, though. For one, the voice acting is spot on which is rare, especially for a movie tie-in, let alone one on a handheld. When I heard Peter Cullen was on board to lend his voice to the movie reprising his role of Optimus Prime, to say I was psyched is an understatement. And to hear his voice in the game gave an otherwise generic looking sandbox game some extra credibility. The game is fun in short bursts aided somewhat by the basic RPG leveling elements and the growing transformable vehicle library which fed into the collector that I am.

Now back to the ultimate question: was Transformers: Decepticons more than meets the eye? Unfortunately no, on the surface I saw a handheld movie tie-in with potential and that pretty much what I got. Not great, not horrible, but an OK game with the kids in mind. But I guess “Transformers: pretty much the same that meets the eye” doesn’t have the same ring to it.