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From what I have played so far (the first Chapter with Bumblebee) I can easily see the games strengths and weaknesses for the PS2.

Control: Button configuration looks complex at first but when it comes down it, its pretty simple to control. Driving is easy to get used to and comes in handy when you need to get somewhere fast. Flying Transformers like Blackout may be a bit weirder to control at first when in flight, but otherwise isn't too difficult to get the hang of. Overall, controlling your Transformer is not that hard at all.

For some, fighting might feel too hack and slash and too simple. You have a main gun, a powerful gun or launcher, your melee attack, and a ground pound that sends a powerful shock wave. Pressing your melee button more than once results in a combo, but otherwise there isn't too much variety in your fighting.


Graphics: Probably the strongest point of the game. The environment isn't too boring and has a lot of interactive parts that you can either smash to bits or pick up and toss. The terrain itself is pretty well done. The Transformers themselves of course are just incredible. Switching from bot to vehicle is done so well! Its pretty fun to just see it go back and forth.

Also the cut scenes are done very well. Now if only there weren't so many....or at least they could have combined some so that your game play wasn't constantly interrupted.


Difficulty: The game....is pretty easy so far. I dunno how its gonna be like facing off against someone like Megatron, but so far my first boss fight with Barricade was easy once i knew how to get his guard down. Also the drones (if thats what they are called) are pretty easy to take down. Really, its just two classes of enemy Transformers: Boss and Drone with the boss of course being a major movie character. If you ever played Fight for the Allspark on the game's official site, you will defiantly recognize the drone characters like the forklift or the cement truck. Also, whenever you are in robot form and or causing a lot of destruction, you will get cops on your tail who will shoot at you. After a while and more destruction you will get helicopters that shoot missiles. After that, you get tanks on your butt. My next guess is the go nuclear and Bumblebee is blasted to kingdom come in a mushroom cloud. But seriously, I wish my enemies were a bit of a better match. I didn't think it would take much to take down someone like Barricade down so easily. Hopefully my next boss fight won't be so easy.


Loading: There is a fair amount of loading (which is practically trademark of Sony Playstation games since the beginning of time) but luckily it is very brief. And usually it will either tell you controls or what your current mission is (which by the time you read it is usually done loading).


Destruction: There is a crap-load of it. I do not know what you CAN'T destroy is the game. Just walking around as Bumblebee and your own footsteps make massive potholes from hell! Buildings? No prob. You can punch em, kick em, throw a bus at em, shoot at em, stomp on it. Just about anything can be picked up and tossed around. I often find myself destroying stuff without knowing it.

Submissions/Sidequests: I dunno about you...but it took me a pretty damn long time trying find those glowing cubes. Why are there so many? They are almost pointless other than opening up bonus content. And when you get having 95 or more in your possession, it will drive you nuts looking all around the whole damn city for five or less glowing cubes. I wish they at least popped on the map, but that would make them even further useless.

As for submissions, they aren't too bad. They are really just minigames and aren't too hard to beat. They could use more variety or difficulty.

Also, there are certain sort of skill points you can try to achieve like throwing, speed, and jump. They are not very hard to achieve at all. Once you do master those as well as all the side stuff and get all 100 cubes, I think you unlock the G1 skin for that character.


Overall: I like the game, but it may fall short for some. Visually its spectacular, but could have used more work on its game design. Really, it could have used some more difficulty at the very least.

If it were up to me, this game should and would have been more like Stars Wars Battle Front II. For one, it would have had a lot of individual character stats, strengths, and weaknesses, as well as a variety of difficulty. I liked the idea of how varied the weaponry and attacks were on the game site (Battle for the Allspark) and i honestly had hoped to see that in this game and it should have been in this game, but that didn't happen. But then again, this game did what it was intended to do [which was follow the movie plot.] Who knows, if they did a knock off with a free ranged story, it could reach its maximum potential.

So when it comes down to it, I think the fact that the game was built so close to the movie it is limited on reaching its full potential. But thats the major flaw of most movie games. But just to keep on the bright side, you have a lot of characters to work with, you get to really destroy a lot of stuff, the graphics are just awesome, and you gots lots of space to roam. Its an easy game, but it is still pretty fun to play and watch. For those who want something with very high difficulty level try another game, but otherwise go on ahead and check this one out.

Glad to hear you enjoy the PS2 version. That is the console version I will be getting too.
I have heard a lot of other people complaining about the missions all being time-limited, but you make no mention of that.
Are the missions time-limited on the PS2?

The time-limit missions drive me insane... that and the camera is screwy every once in a while.

I was shocked when a certain Decep made an appearance...

So far Blackout is definitely my favorite character to play as, love those blades.

yeah hate thos time limits megarton is hard if you dont know what your doing i am a little dissapointed in teh game though ive notice i couldnt play as ratchet, or bonecrusher in teh game freanzy i could understand woulodnt do much of anything but leaving out ratchet, and bonecrusjer in the game i wanted to play as.

i dont think you can play as them in the pc, ps3, or 360 versions it didnt say that the players guide i would have really like if the gave you the option like they did in transformers armada after you beat the game aubotbot or decepticon side they let you choose who you want to play as later in free roam all i get is optimus, and bumble mostly.

if i want to play as jazz or inrohide again i have to battle brawl, or starscream again in armada you could choose which you want to plays hotshot, prime, redalert, before you go out on a mission that was a little dssspointing in my half.

Glad to hear the all out destructivness and the graphics are present on the PS2 version. It was from TT and having played Lego SW 1 and 2, I wasnt expecting a too difficult or long game, but a damn good fun one with a ton of unlockables. Glad to see I wont be dissapointed (though a long game and a challenging game are better). Now I just have to wait 21 days for the game to come out here. And 28 days for teh movie. Thanks for the review.

Okay, what I said about difficulty? I was proven wrong today. After advancing into the next two levels, both Drones, Bosses, and missions got much more difficult. I was pleased to not only take Jazz out for a test ride, but Iron Hide AND Optimus Prime himself in one level! Also I am glad to see that the individual Autobots have their own way of fighting (like Iron Hide shot down a missile that sends out a huge shock wave instead of a a standard ground pound). The Drones themselves got to be larger and much harder to take down. I am very surprised to find that someone big like Iron Hide was getting his ass handed to him by a tow truck! Even more fun was the boss fight with Optimus Prime against an old school Decepticon: Shockwave. He attacks in both an artillery gun and robot mode but also flies to the next area in his helicopter mode. Needless to say, he proved to be a greater match than Barricade. If anything, the tow truck Drone was about as hard if not harder to take down than Barricade!

Oh yeah, and when it comes to time limits, it varies. Some missions give you a time limit, and the difficulty will vary. Sometimes it can be pretty easy, but later on I found myself either failing or barely making it.

As for the next chapter, things get harder. I actually keep failing trying to survive while the Allspark adjusts itself. Megatron is pretty damn hard with just one arm...i hate to see what'll happen once Frosty the Snowbot thaws out.

For unlockables, You get a lot (i mean over 150) pictures ranging from character profiles to G1 characters, and comic book covers. There are also a few movies to unlock and if I am correct the G1 skins for your characters.

I know some critics may have been harsh on the game and some anti-movie TF fans will be merciless, but i really think this is a pretty fun game. I mean...I just love playing a Transformer! Its just so damn fun to roam around either save the day from destruction or BE the destruction. Of course the game has its flaws and could use some more content, but its not enough to turn me down from playing it! I definitly recommend giving this game a test drive.

Okay, I've got the PS2 version now too and I'm really loving it.

I started with the D'cons, and I've not yet completed all the missions in the first area.

Let me take a moment to explain how the game actually operates, since this was not made clear to me in any of the reviews I read here.

The gameplay is divided into two parts. There are missions, and there is free-roaming between missions.

The loading screen before the game begins shows a diagram of the controls, and as soon as the game starts you're free to use them all. No restricted tutorial here.

The game starts in what I'll call free-roaming mode.
You're blackout, and you've got starscream encouraging you through the communications to go and show the army a proper decepticon welcome. There's a glowing green marker indicating where you should be heading for.

I however chose not to immediately race over to the marker and start 'welcoming' the army base. I chose something else.
That is, I chose to transform and run around blowing stuff up.
The desert area is not infinite, and if you wander outside the edge of it you are presented with an on-screen warning and countdown to being reset to the mission area. You don't die or fail in any way for leaving the area, you just get sent back in. The area is quite large though, so this isn't much of a problem.

After pausing the game and navigating to the right in the pause menu you are presented with a summary of the collectables. There are 5 grey D'con logos to be found, 100 yellow cubes, 4 challenges and 3 skills to demonstrate.

The first of these that I collected was one of the skill achievements. Destruction.
As soon as I started destroying stuff, a destruction meter formed of five logos appeared at the top of the screen. As my rampage continued, the meter filled. When it was full, I was informed that I had unlocked bonus content.
Now on the collectables summary one of the three skills was completed.
There was another skill for throwing things very far. This was kind of tricky since the throwing physics is not the same as that of real life. In reality, to throw something as far as possible you should aim at an angle of 45 degrees. However, in the game, aiming as high as possible yeilds the greatest distance when throwing.

The yellow cubes are scattered all over the landscape and are relatively easy to find. There are 100 of them though, so it takes a while, and I had to spend quite a while searching in helicopter mode to find the last 5 that I had missed.

The grey logos are again scattered throughout the landscape, but since they're grey and there are only five of them, they really don't stand out and are much harder to find. I found all 100 cubes, but only 1 logo so far.

The challenges are represented by larger cubes again scattered throughout the area. Upon reaching one you are presented with a summary of the challenge (destroy lots of stuff or push all the drones out of the ring or a couple of others) and the number of yellow cubes you must have collected before you are allowed to attempt it.

Those are all the collectables and activities available to you in free-roaming in the first D'con area (And probably the same system applies to all areas).

So at the start of the game you can either start looking for and completing those things, or you can do as starscream says and go to the green marker.

Upon reaching the green marker you're given a short cutscene and then a loading screen with a mission brief.
Some missions are time limited and some aren't.
Upon completing a mission you're returned to free-roaming mode as whichever character you were in the mission.
This means that when you do a mission that lets you play as Scorponok instead of Blackout, you get to be Scorponok in free-roaming afterwards.

In free-roaming you're always got Starscream in your ear telling you to go to the next mission, which is always marked with a green marker.
Previous mission are also marked, with yellow markers and you're free to go and re-play them as much as you want.
However, replaying a mission does not change your free-roaming character. So if you just did a Scorponok mission and you want to be Blackout again in free-roaming, going back and re-playing the first mission won't turn you back into him. You'll have to continue with the new missions until you get to one that makes you be him again.
I don't know how character switching is handled once you've completed all the missions in an area since I haven't done that yet, but I expect you will be allowed to choose your character from the ones that have mission in that area.


That concludes my explanation of gameplay. Now I'll get to the complaining.

The camera controls are annoying.
Right analog stick moves the camera. That's good.
There is an invert Y-Axis option. That's good.
There is no invert X-Axis option. That's neutral.
Pushing the stick right makes the camera move left around the character to give you a view of what is to the right. That's fine if you're playing a FPS, but for Third Person action that's the wrong way around. Coupled with the lack of an invert X option this is really quite a problem. I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually, but it would be nice to have the option of changing it to what I'm used to using in other games such as Okami and Legend of Zelda games.

When flying as a helicopter, the left stick controls your movement back and forward, left and right, while the right stick lets you turn left and right and pitch up and down. That's fine, except that there is no elevation control.
If you want to fly higher up, you have to look up and fly forward.
If you look down and fly forward you get closer to the ground.
This makes it hard to keep your altitude while trying to shoot targets on the ground.
I'm fairly sure that going backwards when facing up or down has the same effect on your altitude as going forward does. This seems somewhat counter-intuative too.

Those are my only complaints. Everything else is awesome!
Some people complained about not being able to transform while jumping. It's true, you can't, but I don't really find this to be a problem. Sure it would be a cool thing to be able to do, but it doesn't really bother me or have any negative impact on the gameplay as far as I've seen.
Of course, I haven't played any of the Autobot campaign, or any more of the D'con campaign that just the desert area, so I can't comment on the car driving controls.


For me, this is the best PS2 Transformers game.
There's something very satisfying about stomping around as a giant robot and blowing stuff up. Being able to transform into a helicopter and zoom around makes it even better!

Armada was quite good, but I had no connection to the series, the gameplay became boring after a while, you could only play as Autobots, and only 3 of them at that. There was no flying, just driving and walking.

Tataki was bad. It was cool that it was G1, but the gameplay was so poor. The script and voice acting was funny though.

So the free roaming/mission bits are basically the same format as GTA. Good. I like that format.

As for the camera, you swing the stick right and the guy looks right. Whats confusing about that? It would be confusing the other way around. But I guess if there are games you play that get you used to that, it would be difficult.

HURRY UP AND GET HERE JULY 20TH!! I WANT MY TF CARNAGE FIX! ARMARDA JUST DOESN'T GIVE THE DESTRUCTION FACTOR THIS SOUNDS LIKE IT HAS!!

I love the game, for the most part. I have beat it already but I am having fun free roaming and collecting all the goodies. My two complaints are the camera and the camera. If they would fix that I would have no problem. But as far as movie based games this is second. ( First is spider-man 2)

I've just watched footage of the first con mission on PS2 on youtube. Why do we have to wait another month for this?? GRR!!