Transformers [PS2]

Transformers, from the ingenious Aussies behind Grand Prix Challenge (upon which this game is based, technologically), is an incredibly solid, well presented action title with few flaws, however unavoidable they may be.

One million years ago, the Mini-Cons, a lost race of Transformers... And that's the entire story. Ha! The joke is apparently on us. The first tear to shed should be for this total and complete lack of plot. Whichever executive thought it appropriate to save cash by hiring an old baboon to flesh out Transformers' storyline should be flogged with a whip made of enchanted shards of glass. Because of his terrible decision, an infrequent amount of stutter, and a touch of redundancy, this is a game that will excite and mystifyingly bore. We blame Megatron.

It's impossible to tell why Megatron, evil tyrant extraordinaire, halted his genocidal war against the Autobots on Cybertron (a war he appeared to be on the brink of indisputably winning) to pursue a lost race of million-year-old Transformers forgotten in the depths of space and time. Yup, one million years ago the Mini-Cons were lost. From what we've managed to decipher from this baffling game, Mini-Cons are a sort of mentally handicapped Transformer incapable of speaking or operating machinery. They're the Transformers destined to live a sad life of servitude, expanding the capabilities of those stronger Transformers that "rescue" them (read enslave).

The Mini-Cons somehow wound up on Earth and are of some sort of importance. Perhaps they fled Cybertron's pro-slavery government? Whatever the reason behind their departure, there's exactly zero way of knowing their significance in this interstellar war. The game follows three heroic Autobots who seek to use Mini-Cons to marginally expand their own power before the Decepticons can do the same. Using Mini-Cons to establish new attacks or improve old one's is a terrific way of building the useable library of abilities a player has without arbitrarily assigning jumping attack #2 to gamers once level three is completed. But, this implementation fails to make any sort of sense when placed within the context of the game, other than granting the working-class Autobots another excuse to continue warring with the militaristic Decepticons on foreign ground. Most of this assumes you're not a devote follower of the current Armada line of fiction seen on television -- if you are and know what the hell is going on, good for you. If not, enjoy the awesome cutscenes that look cool but say nothing.

So what if there's no real point to the story? At least there are Decepticlones, an easy way of supplying endless waves of cannon fodder for politically correct PS2 players to slaughter remorselessly. Yay! Lets kill Mutant Tree Nazis because no one has a problem with killing Mutant Tree Nazis. The soulless drones of Transformers are just that, but those boss characters and the protagonists of the game also appear more robotic than needed. There's no frantic combat chatter, and all conversations come during non-interactive cutscenes or mission status updates. This makes action devoid of any real impact or urgency or flavor. Music only worsens the mood by drowning out stereotypical laser blasts with monotonous, anti-climatic mixes of rehashed Re-Boot themed cartoon-techno and the occasional rock song (some being noticeable throwbacks to the aged movie). Musical choice is confounding because tracks spread throughout the menu system and dotted across the length of the game are sometimes fantastic (the load-out score being our particular favorite).

It may be hard to swallow, but even without adrenaline pumping tunes, the screams of "Die Decepti-creeps" and "Eat this, Auto...dicks" the game still manages to actually improve upon the seemingly repetitious action it establishes in the first level. Escalating difficulty, more powerful enemies, more lethal weapons, more useful upgrades, and intricately designed latter levels couple with an assortment of amazing "wow" moments to create an undeniably fun shooter.