Not much more than meets the eye.

PlatinumGames started running into a bit of a wall in the mid-2010s. When exactly they started to become less consistent in the quality of their releases is still an unresolved topic of discussion, but the line I've heard floating around the most is "when they started making all of those licensed games". I've asked a few friends which game marks the start of this era, and every single one of them said it was The Legend of Korra. The irony is that, two years prior, Platinum put out Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which was actually their first licensed game. But, for most of the people I've talked to, it doesn't seem to register like one. "Licensed game" is a four-letter word. If you actually enjoy a licensed game, you have to preface that statement with a disclaimer that this is actually one of the good ones, unlike all of those other licensed games.

Transformers: Devastation is fine. Not "fine for a licensed game", but fine. It's still a step down from their best work, but it's fine.

It's certainly a strange game in Platinum's catalog. It's a mish-mash of a lot of elements of their previous games; an Anarchy Reigns not in terms of casting, but in tone and mechanics. You've got your Metal Gear Rising menus and musical riffs, your Bayonetta witch time, your Vanquish shooting, your shitty gimmick levels that interrupt the core gameplay, the whole nine yards. This hardly sounds like a terrible idea on paper, but the devil is in the execution. The music mostly sounds like the generic Metal Gear Rising grunt combat themes, without any of the explosiveness or punch that the vocal boss tracks of that game brought; enemies barely ever get put into hitstun, meaning when you're meant to be putting the hurt on in your Bayonetta witch time, you have to be ready with another dodge because your enemy is completely able to act out of your combo at all times; Vanquish already kind of sucked, and the highest level of gunplay on offer here is to fish for headshots to get easy SS ranks. Transformers: Devastation is a jack of all trades and a master of none. I'd much sooner suggest playing the games that make up its constituent parts.

But it's still fine! It's just not great, and I don't know if it had the potential to be. Some truly confusing design decisions — why in God's name does this have random loot and crafting systems? — are ultimately not that impactful to gameplay, but they're annoyances that pile up. The absurd overuse of controller rumble made my hands go numb, twice. The weapon switching menu takes up so much of the screen for such a long amount of time that trying to swap to a different gun in the middle of combat is almost guaranteed to make you eat a hit. The story is Saturday morning cartoon fare, but, you know, it's Transformers. It's fine. I was struggling for a long time to land on a score for this, and a 3.5 just felt too high. There are peaks here, but there are far too many valleys for me to pave over them.

I wasn't expecting much. I didn't get much. I suppose it's only fair.

Reviewed on Mar 20, 2023


2 Comments


Glad you at least enjoyed it! I admit that I kinda have a soft spot for this one since it was one of the first games made by Platinum I played, and perhaps it's not as good as I remembered...

Still, amazing review!

1 year ago

Yeah, thanks for suggesting it. It's a bit of an oddity, for sure, but I'm glad I actually went through it and got to experience all of that for myself.