As the film Transformers Dark of the Moon rakes in billions while killing brain cells and inducing 3D related seizures at the cinema, gamers have the opportunity to play as Transformers once again in the game adaptation of the film.  While the game casts you in the metallic shoes of several iconic characters, a repetitive structure and ludicrously short campaign make this a title strictly for the die hard Transformer fans.

I’m thirty two which means I was the right age for the golden age of Transformers. Naturally I had the toys, a Jazz being my first during a hospital stay for a circumcision, I read the comics (UK and US versions and their insanely complicated canon), I watched the original animated movie about three hundred times, and I lived and breathed the never ending war of the Autobots and Decepticons. And like all fans I felt the recent films missed the point in a big way. Likewise the game adaptations have promised a lot and not quite met the mark. So having lowered expectations for Transformers Dark of the Moon helps with a game that feels like it's on the right track for part of the journey but also misses the point; while the game looks and feels okay for the very short time you play it, there’s never a moment when it lifts away from being a paint by numbers cash in of the movie.

Bumblebee will always be a VW Bug to me, just like Ted Bundy drove... you know that's kinda creepy actually

Like so many movie games before it Dark of the Moon grasps at relevancy by casting itself as a ‘prequel’ or ‘bridging’ title falling between the last and most recent movies. The Decepticons are in hiding and Optimus Prime has his troops out hunting for them and every once in a while someone mentions the moon.

The game looks pretty nice with the manically complicated movie Transformers rendered in digestible detail. Transformations and other animations look good and the sound, especially the amusing dialogue, is spot on with the film actors (many, such as Optimus’s voice Peter Cullen, the original cartoon voice actors) lending their voices to the Transformers. One gripe is the iconic Transformer sound bite, the transformation noise, seems dull and muted in this Transformers game when it should always be loud and proud.

In hover tank mode you're almost unstoppable

Initially you get to play as an Autobot in each level, Bumblebee, Ironside and Mirage, then as several Decepticon’s, Soundwave, Starscream and Megatron, and then finally the big daddy, Optimus Prime himself, in the last level; which is unfortunately only a lengthy boss battle. Getting to try on the individual characters is good fun, especially for cool characters like Mirage and Soundwave who don’t get a lot of exposure in the film otherwise. Each character has unique weapons and abilities tailor made for the levels they are involved in. Unfortunately, unique powers or not, each of these levels plays out in more or less the same way, with a series of battles against the same generic Autobot’s and Decepticon’s capped off with either a boss battle or timed race to the end. All but one of the levels involve a Transformer who turns into a car, yes even Soundwave turns into a car, and the Afterburner homage Starscream level, definitely the high point of the whole game, is over in moments. The single player game is lacking in challenge and can be completed in a lazy six hours.

Fun fact, Lazerbeak was the leader of the Decepticons briefly in the comics, they took order from a casette tape!

The basic controls are decent with the developers, High Moon, wisely aping their own far superior game Transformers War for Cybertron. When transformed your character takes on the oddly named ‘stealth mode’, odd because you’re a hovering vehicle bristling with weapons than can swiftly strafe around enemies, not very stealthy. This mode is rather over powered and lets you destroy almost all enemies with ease. Pulling the Left trigger changes you again into a true vehicle mode but the driving controls feel backwards with the right stick used for steering and the left for reversing when you crash, which is often. Even weirder, the two flying sections, one with Soundwave’s assistant Lazerbeak and one with Starscream, don’t have inverted controls, like every other flying game in history, so pulling back to climb causes you to nose dive into the ground.

Take that generic non canon Decepticon of indeterminate identity!

The multiplayer also feels like a half finished effort, with less modes than War For Cybertron and no coop play at all. There has been some effort made with Call of Duty style classes and perks, but overall the slow pace and dull weapons do not make for a gripping multiplayer experience. You also get to play as Decepticon super badass Shockwave, and Autobot heavy Warpath, hinting that perhaps these characters have their own unfinished single player levels on the cutting room floor some where. The core problem with multiplayer is that there’s way too much focus on shooting and the ability to turn into various vehicles is almost completely neglected, if some hybrid objective gametype had been included that had players racing between checkpoints as vehicles and then defending certain points as robots, well that would have been something to write home about. Sadly the modes available are all dishwater deathmatch types. Plus finding people to actually play with can be a bit of a problem as well.

Ironside, the Jason Statham of Autobots, get's a few surprisingly witty one liners

It was wise of the money holders behind Transformers to recruit High Moon Studios for their latest Transformers game. They’re a studio that clearly knows how to make a fun licensed Transformers game and they’ve turned in what’s definitely the best of the three Transformers movie games. But it feels like they weren’t given the time or the opportunity to develop the license and expand on the ideas of War for Cybertron. Instead we get a title that feels like a Live Arcade or PSN download title; or maybe an expansion pack for War for Cybertron to cash in on the film, but definitely not a retail priced game. As a movie tie in title, it's off a pretty standard, definitely the best of the Transformers movie games, but as a title taken on it's own merits it comes up lacking in too many areas. Only a really hardcore Transformer fan could appreciate Dark of the Moon at face value. For the rest of us it’s just another movie game.