Expectations have a powerful effect on most of our live’s events and this is especially apparent when consuming any media including playing video games.
I went into playing this title with little more than curiosity and a love for the franchise as positives.
I don’t recall hearing of this title, especially not in any sort of cult status like some other Transformers titles have kept.
Sometimes you just have to take a gamble and when a game is a couple of quid second hand it’s not particularly high stakes.

Transformers Animated: The Game (TFA:TG) is by no means a hidden gem but is a surprisingly decent quality “cash in” that has some good ideas that gives you enough time to pause and wonder “is this actually good?”.

In TFA:TG the game is split into a couple of sections, the majority is 2D puzzle platforming where you play as not one but three of the heroic Autobots that are the protagonists of the cartoon; Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and my favourite Bulkhead.

These three take up three weight-class style roles with abilities to match.
Bumblebee being the fast cheeky lad he is can jump, wall bounce and use his stinger weapon to turn on electrical generators.
Bulkhead is the big lad who lumbers along but can smash down doors and push heavy objects onto pressure points.
Optimus sits between but has his own traversal mechanic as well as stylus guided axe throwing to hit switches and enemies.

What these things create is a situation where you need to get the team to the goal but each of them must use their abilities to guide themselves and each other through the levels.
It’s an innovative take on the genre and for me hit a good level of difficulty where as soon as it felt it might be getting too complex, pulling away from me, a moment later it would all start folding together.

The other sections are race/chase segments where it’s in the classic third person perspective and you’re chasing enemies, avoiding traffic and even sometimes Transforming to be able to attack enemy drones. The first of these felt the worst as the targeting felt too precise and fiddly but later on these were nice breaks in the game.

These two game modes are also wrapped in a package with lovely voice acting, short cinematics and screenshots taken from the cartoon to tell the story along the way.

Unfortunately whilst all of this is an interesting and fairly unique package for a tie-in game it seems the budget for using things straight for the cartoon has taken away from much elsewhere.
Many of the things in the game feel a little clunky, the guided axe and wrecking ball is fun to use but there’s some strange start up to the animations which mean they don’t always go off and you are probably continuing to be shot.
Speaking of being shot, the combat is by far the worst part of the game - there is an attack and block but it usually consists of running up to an enemy and tapping the button until they explode with very little oomph in feedback.
Bumblebee’s stinger, which shoots out electricity if used as a weapon, has full 360 degree aim but is harder to line up in some situations than you’d imagine and again the feedback is less of a thing based on feeling the attack and more of an interference, a short wait for something to happen on screen.

Before I move on from the not-so-great feel of the characters I must also mention that your Transformers do not Transform in the puzzle platforming segments, the majority of the game, and while I get that may be IP specific it is a disappointment. I would’ve just liked to turn into a car and move forwards at the very least, especially when controlling Bulkhead to be the third bot to hit the finish line in painstakingly slow speeds.

The other issue which to me feels based on budget is the level variety.
The chase levels look all the same and the side scrolling parts have about two distinct flavours - there’s a lot of drone factories.
Having a small variety of level themes does mean that when new elements are added they are extra clear and the small variety that does exist fits with the cartoon, but just a couple more would have made the whole game feel dramatically more interesting.

Lastly on the variety complaints and one that is unfortunately not helped but loving the franchise is the enemies.
Many of the Decepticons, the baddies of this story, appear in the cutscenes but you see only two of them in game. Generic enemies are drones and there’s barely a handful of variations of them either.

As far as expectations go though, this game over delivered but I was expecting some barely playable crap.
Instead I was served up some fairly unique ideas that interested me long enough into seeing the game through to the end.
I took the gamble with not just money but time and I feel like I broke even.
At the very least it’s a game that makes your DS do the transforming noises when you open and close it and that alone is something I’d be tempted to give 5 stars.

game's alright ig, nothing rlly special



other than that it's based on one heckin kino show lets fucking gooo