The year is 1984. You are Hasbro and you want to sell kids toys to a modern American audience for as cheap as possible. So what you do is buy up a ton of Japanese transforming toys (like Diaclone, Microchangers and Macross to name a few) and dub over a cartoon of them all fighting in an epic battle for the future of Earth to act as a 30 minute advert for your toys. Transformers Generation 1 was born and it created a lasting image in peoples minds that burns bright to this day.

It goes without saying that the Transformers franchise is very broad nowadays (between the comics, RID 2015, Combiner Wars, ‘G1’ and everything in-between) but the games have always been a point of contention. The movie games have usually been terrible and the last ‘good’ mainline game (for me) was the PlayStation 2’s ‘Transformers’ game based on the Armada sub-line.

The War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron games by High Moon Studios were amazing but took a very unique aesthetic of their own (being set in a universe timeline where the Autobots and Decepticons had never been to Earth) so many of the vehicle modes were very unique and alien looking, which doesn’t lie very well with people who prefer the boxy and ‘vintage’ look of the 80’s toys and cartoons. This brings us to the new game: Transformers Devastation, which hopes to bring back some of the magic of the original cartoon and deliver it in a very modern and high-octane package.

Made by Platinum Games, the company behind the likes of Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising:Revengeance. These are guys who certainly know how to make a good fighting game and the team also admit to being huge Transformers fans.

Transformers is a very good game. Not perfect, but they got the core concepts down which was:

1. Look like the old cartoon and

2. Be able to kick everyone’s ass as fluidly as possible.

Graphics

The game delivers incredibly here. The way they got the lighting to work on characters is just amazing, it just feels like the 86′ movie or maybe the Call of the Primitives TV show. Everything deforms well on the models and even going back and forth through transformations is deliciously smooth. The levels you play in have a somewhat toned down appearance which is totally appropriate as it keeps the screen (and no doubt memory on the system) from getting too cluttered. There are plenty of random cars, trees and debris everywhere which you can smash up for credits or throw at your enemies. Cutscenes seem to be rendered in-engine which is nice as it helps keep immersion going as you progress to dismantle Megatron’s latest nefarious scheme.

What I thought was extremely interesting was even though the main characters all had their ‘G1’ look (perhaps directly influenced by their masterpiece toy designs – collector’s editions of the classic toys with incredible possibility, complexity and cringe worthy price tags) The change in pace comes from the ‘Combiner’ characters (like the mighty Devastator used on all the packaging and promotions) who are based on their respective Combiner Wars designs (the most modern toy line to come out of Transformers to date), but the thing is they fit extremely well! The design’s, although more modern looking than the main characters still fit very well into the aesthetic of the game, which the designers should definitely be applauded for. Interestingly Megatron looks like his old self but turns into a modern Tank incarnation rather than a tiny pistol, I wonder why…

Gameplay

The combat is just sheer awesome. Controlling one of five characters (Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Wheeljack, Sideswipe and Grimlock), you can hack, slash, punch, shoot and explode your way through the forces of Megatron’s army. It is incredibly fluid in action and when you are surrounded by multiple foes, simply tilting the movement stick in various directions causes your character to lay the smack down in immersive 3 dimensional combat.

There is also a surprising amount of different weapons you can equip at any time, all giving the various characters very different combat potentials. The various swords and punching gloves are very fun weapons to use as they allow your characters as much speed as possible when laying down the pain. The ‘heavy’ weapons such as the hammer proved quite frustrating, especially in late game when you could be surrounded by ten plus foes destroying you before you can even start a combo. Every character even has their own ‘signature’ weapons (such as Optimus’s Axe from the 86′ movie) and these even had their own unique movesets. Platinum Games is great at making fast-action games where you can’t just mash the buttons like say Dynasty Warriors. You need patience to unleash the most powerful combo’s in your arsenal.

There is also a large variety of ranged weapons for your character to utilise, going from simple pistols (or duel wield versions), rocket and grenade launchers, machine guns, laser cannons, sniper rifles and fusion cannons to name a few. At first except for activating hidden items you may think these guns are a bit useless, it’s not till late game you realise the potential of being able to chip away at obscenely difficult opponents who one-shot you in annoyingly cheap manners. You can carry up to 4 weapons and I found a sniper was always at hand to give me a long-range breather from the madness.

The main combat problem I found was with the character I was most excited about: Grimlock. Maybe I just didn’t give enough time to adapt to a different play style but I felt fighting with him was clunky. Getting effective combo string’s was very difficult compared to other offerings, this mostly hinged on the fact that his alt. mode (a giant fire breathing robot dinosaur) is supposed to be used in combat just as much as his robot mode and many of his combos leads to him being fired inbetween his two modes without warning, causing everything to stop while you try and figure out what’s going on while the unforgiving AI gets a chance to ruin your health bar. Bumblebee was the complete opposite of this, and considering he’s a character I personally have no attachment to he ended up being by far the most fun character to control, especially with his sheer speed and sass.

All characters have a special move and an ultimate move for you to discover the best uses for. Using Bumblebee as an example; his special move uses his small size to slide under his foes and trip them up. It’s great because it fits so seamlessly even when unleashing huge combo’s, it feels like a natural extension of your moveset. His ultimate fires off a load of grenades in front of himself, hitting everything for a ton of damage. I feel there wasn’t quite enough variation between the different characters ultimate moves, they were all just an AoE attack of some variation.

The transforming gimmick was well implemented all things considered. In your vehicle form you can move considerably faster than in robot form, useful for traversing large patches of empty level. The game even aggressively fits transforming into the actual combat, making your character seamlessly switch from speeding roadster into uppercut-throwing super robot into truck-first piledriver, smashing some poor foes face into the ground then end up with you grinding your tires into their torso. For something that could have just been an annoying overhang, the transforming in Transformers is one of the most pleasurable parts of the game. Even moving about was well thought out. Little touches like Optimus’s truck form blasting out little rocket thrusters to act as a jump in vehicle form was amusing.

Audio

I am in two minds about the audio. On one hand it sounds nicely modern and fits in well with Platinum Games other offerings, but it has the problem that it falls slightly flat compared to the monumental soundtrack of Metal Gear Rising and how the music in that game crafted itself around the combat. In here it literally begs for some cheesy 80’s hair rock like the 86 movie’s theme track, at least in the intro screen. I bring this up as the graphics make such a love letter to the old style that this just feels slightly off. It isn’t all bad though, with the boss battle music being a particular highlight with how brutal and epic it sounds.

One of the key aspects of promotion for this game is a lot of the original voice cast from the Generation 1 cartoon return to bring life to their old characters. Notably Peter Cullen seemed inevitable (he is as much Optimus’s voice as Mark Hamill is regarded the animated Joker’s), but old guards such as Dan Bilzarian and Frank Welker to name a few reprise their roles in the Autobot and Decepticon ranks. What impresses me is the voices feel ‘right’ in their reprised roles. Peter Cullen delivers a more noble Optimus Prime compared to the gruff face-ripping Optimus seen in the Michael Bay movies and Bumblebee sounds like the ‘young Autobot’ that he really should be. All the main guys are represented and sound nearly perfect.

Conclusion

Transformers Devastation does a great job at fulfilling what you could possibly want out of this game. You get to play as great looking, iconic characters fighting it out with a modern combat mechanic that even the latest fighting games would be proud of. It all works so well that it was gutting that there is a particular part of the game that almost deliberately tries to ruin the immersion. Each time you go to the games hub, it painfully slogs through telling you about every weapon you collected during gameplay (which will always be many) then it forces you through numerous sub-menus to change your loadout and give various upgrades to characters. It was just so mind-numbingly slow compared to the carnage you face in game that I really wish it could have had another pass or two to streamline it further and let you get back to the important stuff (like punching Megatron in the face). The game also wasn’t without its bugs; I fell through the floor while going through a door and fell into a blue void of death in the second chapter (bad beta-testers!). Even stranger I had had a bizarre bug somewhere near the end of the game. I noticed the difficulty had ramped up considerably! I know developers like to increase the odd’s near the end but it was just ridiculous. What had happened was the game had somehow swapped to the hardest difficulty level for no apparent reason. After finally realising this, it was easy enough to fix but it comes at the cost of having to repeat the entire chapter again and when you were on the second last boss this was even more annoying.

The initial area was a total bummer. You end up having to traverse the exact same city over 3 times during the early chapters, even the layout of the secrets barely change. The game then goes into similar looking corridors leading into similar looking arena’s to fight the bosses in. Level design overall was a bit lacking.

Overall though even with these flaws the game is just so fun, which is hard for a lot of games these days to live up to. It had a decent story that allowed a nice flow to the gameplay, lots of nostalgic foes to fight against and an epic sense of scale when the big set pieces come into play. There are lots of collectables to find in the game and they unlock nice pictures and other goodies for you to look through after playing.

I would definitely recommend this game to anyone and not just Transformers fans.

The game is out now for Xbox One.