I beat the game yesterday and now I'm gonna run through it on hard mode and start playing the missions. I didn't fuck around enough with the weapons but the Cryo Sword and the gatling missiles were my best friends with OP. I love the game tip to toe and I don't mind the short factor, I'm still green on combos anyway, I know i can do better. Gonna spending a lot of time with it,hoping for some dlc or a sequel.
Excellent game in every possible way, I'm hooked!
I've been wanting to get into them Dynasty Warrior Gundam games, any thoughts on the series?
If you've ever played a Dynasty Warriors game, then you've played
Dynasty Warriors Gundam. They are in no way technical fighters like
Transformers: Devastation. They won't satisfy you if you are looking for a challenge, but if you are a fan of
Gundam there's a lot of fan service in them. If you're going to get one, go with
Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn.
As for
Transformers: Devastation, I finished it a couple of days ago and I enjoyed it. Thought it was challenging, well balanced and had a good combat engine and great control. Bringing back Peter Cullen and Frank Welker to play Optimus Prime and Megatron gives the game exactly the heart and soul it needed. It looks spectacular, with dynamic animation and a cel shaded sheen that perfectly recreates the G1 era's aesthetics. It has interesting loot and crafting systems that unfortunately suffer a bit from the type of ''grindification' that you usually see in Bandai Namco games. The platforming is workmanlike but nothing too spectacular, and like Ninja Theory's soft reboot of
Devil May Cry, the sequences seem designed to mix up the gameplay and offer something different but it bores more often than it thrills.
On the negative side, there isn't a whole lot of enemy or environment variety, the collectibles aren't exactly enticing enough to get you to chase them, character variety is limited, no ability to play as the Decepticons and despite looking and sounding like the G1 era in most respects, they get a number of things wrong. For example, Megatron transforms into a tank and not a gun. Megatron transforming into a tank isn't a bad thing, and I think it's actually more practical and logical than transforming into a gun, but
that's not what he transformed into in the old cartoon.
There are other strange inaccuracies as well, such as melee scrums with faceless 'Decepticon minions', which totally goes against the grain of
Transformers to begin with. I am no
Transformers-o-phile. There are other things that capture my geek hard with greater ferocity, but one of the old show's most magnetic aspects was seeing which Autobots and which Decepticons would appear in the episodes. There was always the potential for dream match ups that we thought about all the time and hoped to see. Every single Autobot and every single Decepticon was a unique individual. There were no disposable minions (unless you count the Insecticons) so including them in this game just so you have foot soldiers to dispose of doesn't feel right to me. They should have just had you defeat recognizable enemies over and over again, only to see them make last second getaways or fall to the ground defeated as they do in the boss battles with foes such as the Constructicons, Blitzwing, Starscream and Thundercracker. Finally, having many of these 'minions' transform into cars is not correct. Later in the series, some Decepticons did take on the appearance of automobiles, but we all know that one of the defining traits of the bad guys is that they didn't transform into the same things as the good guys. So having them do that doesn't just feel wrong, it feels lazy.
Also, they don't use any of the old music from the show, including the legendary theme song. This last part is particularly puzzling, because nothing 'feels' like G1
Transformers as much as hearing that original theme song. Making a game that is supposed to recapture the G1 era's mystique and leaving out such an integral part of it just feels wrong to me.
We can say 'they did a good enough job', and the game is overall very well made, but this is clearly a game designed with the older fan's sensibilities and affections in mind, and not going whole hog somehow feels off. It makes me wonder if they couldn't get the rights to everything and if that's the case it comes down to money, which is really depressing when you consider that this game was made to recreate a bygone era in geek culture and its cynical bones are showing through its nostalgic skin.
Personally, despite being a fun play with a good, twitch based combat engine, I would recommend this only as a rental or a budget title. It's not worth $50 in my opinion.
