Transfomers: Tatakai

By Spencer . September 28, 2005 . 1:31am

Purchase at Play-Asia

 

Purchase at Lik-Sang

 

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.

 

+ 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

 

Overall: Transfomers Toys are much more entertaining than this game. Fans spend your money on toys instead of this.

           

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