Transformers, had a bit of a resurgence a few years back when Michael Bay released the first of his high budget film adaptions of the franchise. Recently however, its popularity seems to have dipped somewhat, which made me a bit surprised at the release of Transformers: Devastation, a hack and slash game, made by Platinum Games. If there is anyone you want handling a hack and slash adaption of any franchise, there are much worse options that Platinum with their pedigree over the years.
The first think you’ll notice when booting up the game is the art style. There is a huge throw back here from old Transformer cartoon series’. It’ll be a big nostalgia hit for long-time fans of the robots in disguise seeing their favourite autobots and decepticons brought to life in comic book goodness on their home consoles. You are the autobots, trying to stop Megatron’s plot to turn the Earth into a new metal planet, a fairly straightforward stop the bad guy affair.
Positively, the art style and animations are absolutely fantastic, it’s like playing a TV cartoon with a controller, so the developers can be given a lot of praise for the presentation here. There is also RPG elements in play, along with a looting system which allows for some deviation from hack and slash throughout. However, with this blend of different game genres, it does come across as a game that is slightly confused as to what audience it is targeting.
Let me just go through a few options at a target audience. It could be a younger crowd, the art style would certainly suit that, as would the fairly simple control scheme. However, a seemingly sharp difficulty spike early in the game it may well turn off children from continuing with it. There is also the matter of being able to level up your character and swap out weapons in different slots on multiple characters. While this isn’t a particularly in depth system, it may well be lost on younger gamers who just want to shoot and punch things. Now let’s say they are trying to appealing to an older generation, who maybe grew up as fans of Transformers. Personally I feel that while the obvious appeal of the graphics is there, the fighting system is a bit too simplistic and at times (particularly with the dodging) not responsive enough. There also isn’t a huge amount of depth if you’re looking for the RPG systems, and the story is very much bog standard ‘bad guy wants to take over the world’. So it just seems to be stuck in a strange middle ground of confusion.
Along with the main story, there is side missions to complete in the form of challenge maps dotted across the game world, but I felt no real need to work my way through these. The game gets repetitive after a while, with the same button combinations and attacks making enemy encounters become stale. There is some driving and platforming sections which breaks up the game’s fighting, and some of which are well thought out, but once introduced to them once, they do vary very little.
The game deserves some plaudits then, unsurprisingly Platinum have managed to create a smooth hack and slash experience, but with little depth smoothness only goes so far. There is probably enough here for long time Transformers fans to enjoy, but with a campaign only lasting around 6 hours, it’s probably only worth picking up in a sale down the line. A lot of potential is let down by a lack of depth and a seeming lack of direction with regard to target audience.
**Thank you to XCN for the opportunity to review this game**