Transformers Animated: The Game

An awful lot of portable games, particularly on the DS, are tie-ins to some sort of kids' movie or TV show. Not that it has any real bearing on the game but sometimes we reviewers only have a fairly vague understanding of the source material, particularly if it's a movie that's not out yet. Here though, your loyal correspondent can speak as a source of some authority on all things Autobot and Decepticon.

Or rather, I could if this was the old-skool Generation 1 cartoon series. Instead Transformers Animated: The Game seems to be some sort of new fangled modern show – even though the theme tune is almost exactly the same. The bendy art design seems strangely inappropriate for a bunch of robots but the images of Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Megatron looming out from the box cover are familiar enough. Who Bulkhead is remains a mystery, but three out of four isn't bad.

Transforming robots have always seemed a concept uniquely suited to video games, allowing you to switch between on foot combat and four wheeled (or whatever) racing at the press of a button. It has therefore been a source of constant irritation that most of the games have been rubbish and even the two that aren't (the recent Transformers G1: Awakening mobile game and, those that remember it, the PS2 game from Atari) don't actually use the transforming gimmick in any integral manner.

Neither does this because it's a The Lost Vikings clone.

One of the first games developed by World of WarCraft money printer Blizzard, The Lost Vikings is almost forgotten today. It, and indeed Transformers Animated: The Game, looks like a standard 2D platformer, except each of the three central characters has a very different set of abilities.

Bumblebee is the only one that can jump and can also use his electric stingers to power-up lift generators. Optimus Prime, meanwhile, has a special axe throw that can activate switches, as well as a grappling hook for climbing up scaffolding. Finally, Bulkhead is the bruiser of the group and apart from being the best in a fight can punch through metal doors and drag or push heavy objects.

Completing each level involves you switching control behind each of the three characters as they slowly clear the path for each other: activating lifts, pushing crates onto switches and wall jumping their way between obstacles to access otherwise unreachable areas.

The concept is tried-and-tested but there are significant problems, the first of which is the initially bewildering set of controls. Not only is everyone's different but it's another of these DS games which expects you to use every single button and have the stylus to hand at the same time. Which means you have to sit holding the DS with the stylus clenched, claw-like, between two fingers to deploy at a moment's notice.

A more serious problem is that the puzzles never reach anything like the level of devious complexity of Blizzard's originals – and we use that as an example of untapped potential rather than a direct comparison. They do get harder as the game progress, but only in the sense that they're more convoluted, rather than actually more complex or cleverly designed.

The other issue is the bag of free wasted opportunity the game comes with, in terms of it actually being a game about Transformers. For a start, the only time you actually transform is in some ultra simple racing mini-games, which the game sprinkles all throughout the first half of the campaign and then completely forgets about thereafter.

On top of that there's virtually no sign of the Deceptions outside a few cut-scenes. Megatron does turn up for two poor quality boss battles, as does a bounty hunter called Lockdown in one of the racing sections, but that's it. For the rest of the game your enemies are a bunch of brain dead 'drones' that don't transform but look exactly like flying hairdryers and wheelie bins. (Hopefully there's a pic of one of them in the screenshots because that's not an exaggeration at all.)

And yet from a technical point of view Transformers Animated: The Game all very easy on the eyes and ears, and as unchallenging as it might be the game does very successfully while away a few un-distracted hours. It also makes the 'ch-ch-cherking' transforming noise when you close the DS lid to pause it, so it can't be all bad. Even so, there's no pretending that The Lost Vikings and Transformers both deserve better. Ideally in separate games.