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The Lowdown
Pros: Transfomers and lots of them, the ability to transform, voice acting
Cons: Skewed difficulty, blocky graphics, boring cut scenes, horrible
gameplay, repetition, repetition repetition
 Purchase
at Play-Asia
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A true Transformers video game has never arrived on these
shores. Sure there have been Beast Wars games and the upcoming game that
stars the Transformers from Transformers: Armada, but there is no game
based on the original Transformers. The only game that comes close is a
Japanese Transfomers game for the NES, which was awful. Sadly, this game
isn't much better.Let's start with the good. If you're an old school
Transformers fan you'll be in heaven with the amount of Transformers
that are in this game. You'll see all your favorites like Optimus Prime
(Convoy), Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, Bumblebee (Bumble) and Jazz
(Meister). You'll even see other transformers like Galvatron, Rodimus
Prime, RC and Highwind and there are plenty more of playable
Transformers. Other Transformers that make appearances as common enemies
are Iron Hide, the constructicons and the Dinobots. On top of having all
these Transformers you can transform! This the first time ever in a
Transformers game you can drive around as Optimus Prime, shoot
Megatron's giant gun and turn into a stereo that shoots cassettes (yes
even Rampage is in the game) if you're Soundwave. While transforming is
cool, it's only a gimmick. You can only do two moves while transformed
and they require EP (energy points) to use them. Most of the moves are
pretty worthless too, transforming Jazz from a fighter to a car that can
only ram into enemies is pretty lame. There are times that it does have
use, for instance changing Starscream into a jet will allow you to evade
enemies. Sadly, its rare that transforming is actually useful.
Besides transforming your character has five other abilities you can
choose from. You can shoot enemies with your gun from far away. However,
these shots are slow and most enemies can strafe past them. You can
jump, even double jump, but that doesn't help too much. If you hit
both the punch and kick buttons together you'll unleash a special
ability that varies from character to character. Optimus Prime attacks
with his laser axes (the programmers spent an awful amount of time
watching the show to pick up this detail!), Megatron shoots a blast from
his shoulder cannon and Starscream shoots a blast from his two arm
cannons. The "special" move is rather powerful, but it also takes up EP,
a lot of EP so you'll be using it sparingly. For the most of the time
you'll be using your punching and kicking abilities. Each character has
one punching combo and one kicking combo. Note that every character,
even the enemies, have the same punching and kicking combo, which makes
seeing the combo over and over again tedious. After so much punching and
kicking you'll fill up a power bar with three levels. Once one level of
the bar is filled up you can hold down punch or kick and you'll unleash
an unblockable combo attack. If there are any other allies near by
they'll join in the combo, but this is only for cosmetic reasons. One
programming oversight about the combo attack is that it says "push
buttons" when you engage in it. However, on any standard enemy the combo
will instantly kill them if you mash buttons or not. How does that make
any sense?
That's not the only problem with the game. The greatest problem with
it is the sheer amount of repetition. Each stage is full of invisible
walls that disappear only after beating all the enemies in an area. This
forces you to fight all the enemies with the boring combat system.
Another problem with this system is that you'll be fighting the same
transformers over and over again. Even if you've just defeated a
particular transformer they may respawn, which is just plain stupid. You
don't feel like you've accomplished anything by destroying the enemies.
Screen to screen of doing the same thing again and again is really
boring. Another problem with the battle system is that the difficulty is
highly skewed. They'll shoot faster than you and keep moving back so
they're hard to hit, the enemies will even slide underneath your blasts,
which is something you can't do. The normal difficulty can be next to
impossible if you get surrounded and your two selected partners choose
not to help you. Your allies don't seem to do much either they normally
spend their time running up to an enemy or hiding in the back shooting
with a blaster.
Add in boring gameplay with some bland graphics and you've got a real
loser. The background graphics are endless planes of brown dirt or
metallic floor. As stated above you'll be fighting the same sprites over
and over again. The game could use some graphical variety to make it
more bearable. The transformers do look pretty cool and have fluid
transforming effects but the polygons are jagged and pale in comparison
to the upcoming Transformers game designed by Atari. The music is just
as repetitive. The same 2 minute song loops over and over again. All of
this shows a lack of polish in the game.
The only thing that is left is the story, which is somewhat amusing.
The story combines the story of Optimus Prime settling down on Earth
with the story about Galvatron and Unicron from Transformers: The Movie.
With the magic of time travel the story seems to work out. The story is
fully animated using the in game engine and has voice acting to go along
with it. Each of the cut scenes are long and long with out reason. A lot
of the dialogue is overly verbose and full of filler lines. This makes
watching the story a chore of its own. While it is interesting, you'll
feel like screaming get to the point already.
Another question that has no obvious answer is why isn't there any
two player support? There are three characters on screen, at least two
of them could be player controlled, but there is no option for this.
Having an extra player around would have alleviated some of the boredom
of the game, it might have even made it a little fun to play. Transformers Tatakai disappoints on many levels, while the game
originally looked cool in the limited screen shots floating around the
net, it ultimately became another poor licensed game.
Import Friendly?
One neat feature is there is an option for English dialogue and the
English voice acting is quite good. All of the menus are in English, too
so you won't have a hard time understanding this game.
US Bound?
A US release is highly unlikely since Atari has the Transfomers
license. Unless they choose to bring this game over, which is highly
unlikely since it's both bad and Atari doesn't bring Japanese games
over.
Overall
Transfomers Toys are much more entertaining than this game. Fans spend
your money on toys instead of this.
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