Playstation's PSplus free games for the month program gets a lot off well-deserved stick (As of this writing April 2017's four free games for the PS4 are just this side of a war crime). Transformers: Devastation was the perfect free game for that service. It is a game I would have never thought of picking up and despite my criticisms below I did overall enjoy.
I certainly understand the defenders of this game. A peek at a message board or even the TV Tropes entry for this game will show a large amount of passionate worldbuilding surrounding the Transformers franchise from the cartoons and movies, to the novel and comic book adaptations, to the fan fiction, Wikipedias, toys and I am assuming an off-Broadway musical.
I certainly understand the appeal of nostalgia when it comes to a property like this. I loved a certain Scooby Doo platformer from last generation that let's face it I wouldn't have looked at twice if not for the branding. And the original Xbox sported not one but two Buffy the Vampire games that were certainly more fanservice than top quality third person adventure. (Why does Buffy die if she touches water again?)
I am not a Transformers fan. I am too old to have seen it during its original run and I have found the entire concept bizarre. I have found the sheer breadth of generations, universes, adaptations outright perplexing. The fact that the game has retained the original look of the cartoon with some of the original voices actors does not register with me. On the other hand, I am not about to commit seppuku due to the mishandling of Starscream's characterization.
Developer Platinum Games strengths are on full display here and the combat is overall a delight. It can take a while to get your groove on and it seemed a good hour before I gained access to the home base where I could upgrade weapons, create other upgrades, purchase additional moves and switch out my character. But once I was able to do these things the game was a delight. Outside of some bizarre top down, sections like a PG rated GTA 2 game and some unfortunate (though generous) platforming sessions, this game is a collection of third-person brawling and driving with the ability to switch between the two on the fly which allows one to do combos that simply never get old.
But good Lord is everything else a wreck. I actually like the cell shading graphics. They fit the retro theme and allow a butter smooth 60 frames a second. But the overall design lacks such imagination. You literally spend half the game in about twenty city blocks. All of which looks so identical to each other that you never get the sense of where in the city you are in though it is so amazingly small. It's like a cartoon version of Dragon Age 2. The rest of the time is spent in boring spaceship corridors, boring Cybertron corridors and empty space (that is supposed to be in well space) All the objects in the game look the same, all the enemies basically look the same and everything has this cheap cut and paste glow to it.
The overall game just feels cheap. It is also really really short. I don't mind short games but this one seemed to end somewhat suddenly. Replay value is there as the combat is fun but outside of that the challenge areas and different characters really don't mix it up enough.
As a free game on the PS4, it is perfect. Issues such as value and length fall by the wayside. But as an original $50 download
it really is less than meets the eye.
