You know...
::Sigh::
It's like... ::sigh::
Alright.
I write for a lot of different venues. Most of the time, the only reason for my musings is to share my opinions and to cut out my own little piece of mind in this crazy world of the intertubes. However, I remember the day that the first Transformers: WFC trailer came out. My jaw dropped at how amazing it looked. The story seemed to be there, the visuals were there in spades, they managed to take a wartorn robotic city (you can see the damn face in many places) and make it seems thrilling; a venue that was truly exceptional, one we had truly, actually, genuinely never seen before. I posted the trailer everywhere, I wrote disertations about why this game couldn't fail. I got everyone who would hear my voice to pay attention and give Transformers the god damn attention it deserved.
And now, I feel I have to apologize to those people. Because Transformers WFC is servicable at best.
Now, I know what youre saying. "But Mesoian! This game is leaps and bounds over the last 2 transformers games!" You're right. On the surface, this game isn't really all that bad. The storyline given to the origin of the autobots and decepticons isn't very deep, to say the least, but it gives us a little bit of insight to why the decepticons are the decepticons and the autobots are the goodie two shoes.
The campaign is okay. I played through on hard and, while it does get a little difficult and mildly frustrating, it always seems fair. The enemy AI puts up good enough of a fight for it to seem like a challenge. I wish I could say the same for your team's AI, because it is awful, often needing you to PUSH THEIR MODELS THROUGH DOORS in order for them to react. But even then, all you're using them is for distraction since they can't die and many enemies require you to target a certain area for them to be dispatched in any reasonable amount of time. The bosses present a wonderful sense of scale, each one seeming bigger than the last until you come across the hulking bohemeths waiting at the end of each campaign. And you know what? At times, it's pretty funny. Not Mitch Hedburg funny or Eddie Izzard funny, but chuckling, that was clever, "Oh starscream you incompetent boob..." funny. It's not bad, though it's not great either. Each campaign is about 4 hours long and can be completed in even less time when playing with online co-op since everyone can actually pull their own weight. And it does boil down to hallway, room full of guys, hallway, room full of guys, hallway, room full of guys that just so happen to cloak, etc etc etc...But with the story set pieces that follow you around,. it's pretty okay. But just okay.
The way that each robot moves feels pretty good as well. They're all tailored towards forward movement, which makes sense considering the nature of the game's maps. And even in vehicle form, all players can strafe and shoot, so you never feel locked into traditional vehicle misadventures. It feels like, rather than driving a car or a tank or a truck, you're flying the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Even the jets feel this way until you mash on the boost. It feels good, peppy, brisk, but over all easy to use.
So with that rousing endorsement, why am I so upset? Because of the multiplayer.
The multiplayer has been touted as the lynch pin of this game. Yes the campaign is short and fairly easy, but the online vs, multiplayer is there to save us, right? No. In fact it's as if all the frustration that was carefully carved from the campaign had been shoved into the online rather than simply being discarded.
Where do I even begin?
I think the best place to start is by asking a simple question. "Why?". You see, when it comes to online games that are tried and true, they adhere to a set of rules which are iron clad, never changing, set in stone, CONSTANT. In Halo, you can approch with the battle rifle and melee for a quick kill, but if they back away and respond with, let's say, the pistol to the head, they go down in fewer shots than the stream of bullets exciting the rifle. In modern warfare, if you're in cover, an airstrike won't kill you, but if your cover has a hole in the roof, it can still get you. As you learn to play, these things become more and more constant. There's a balance that is maintained at all times with very little room for error, and that's what makes a game to play.
Transformers doesn't have that. Many times, you'll be playing as a scout and you'll try to play sneakily by flanking the enemy team and back stabbing them ALA TF2 spy. And you'll be successful...about 60% of the time. The other fourty, you'll hit for about 20% less damage, and other times you'll hit for no damage. And you're left asking yourself, why?
Other times, you'll be playing as a scientist and you'll be swiftly gunned down by scrapmaker chaingun. That's fine, but then you will switch to soldier, the class that has said weapon by default, attempt to gun down a scientist in the exact same method, empty a clip into him, only to have him walk away. Not fly or jump, no sort of fleeing what so ever, he will simply walk away. And you can only ask yourself, "why?"
Or let's say you're playing the decepticon leader and you have the big megatron gun (I can't remember what it's called). You will take scouts out with 2 or 3 hits every time, making short work of any cloaked spies looking to sneak upon you. Yet when other people do it to you, it does half a block, maybe 1 block of damage from he exact same distance. And you can only ask yourself, "Why".
Why, why, why? That's what I kept saying as I played. Every crazy thing, every status ailment that never happened or remained for triple the time length for seemingly no reason, everytime two shots from the scattermaster destroys a soldier, but a full clip of 8 shots won't destroy a scientist who has a third of the soldier's health, every time a grenade launches itself directly into the air even though the redical is pointed down field, every little thing that could come to mind, I could only ask why? And the game cannot give me an answer. When I first started playing the deathmatch modes, I thought it was simply a weapon imbalance, that certain things were over powered or took too long to use or had too long of a cool down. Now, having played the game online for about 6 or 7 hours, I can say that the game is balanced, but it's not consistant. It's as if the rules are constantly changing, constantly fluxing around, as if it has a life of it's own.
And I know what you're saying. "why why why? More like wah wah wah." Well don't jump to conclusions. My ratio here is pretty good, I beleive i'm still in the high 1.9's. But is that good? The fact that i'm able to kill people well under this crazy system doesn't say anything about my skill, it just means that more times than not, I'm getting lucky. Lucky that the game decided, "this time, the sniper rifle will do 100% damage at center mass" while when someone else picks it up, it decides it will do 10%. I cannot feel satisfied this way. I don't understand how anyone could. It feels...rebellious, as if the game has no intention on making the input of the user matter.
It feels loose, inconsistant, but not sloppy. It feels like this is a game with intent, High Moon knowing what they wanted to make while making it. I don't know what happened though. It's as if the multiplayer got away with them. I know i'm going on and on about how it feels like this game has a mind of it's own, but...it truly does.
And the place that makes this known more than anywhere else is the escalation mode; this game's horde session. It's fun, but it shows you exactly how the weapons are supposed to behave by allowing you and 3 other people to destroy waves upon waves of enemies using them. It's tough. On average when I play, I can only get to about level 10. But I know exactly how the assault rifle will fare compared to the sniper rifle when the brutes finally start flooding in, I know when to turn into a car and when not to, I know why flying is a good idea for waves 1-4, not through 5-8, but good again for 9-12. There are rules. Set in stone, static, iron clad RULES. And because those rules are set in stone, proper strategies can be formed, and team play comes together beautifully, like it should in the versus online.
But it doesn't in the versus online, and the game is poorer for it.
The campaign is just so so, the inconsistant nature of the online multiplayer robs the game of any lasting appeal and the only real merritable thing about this game is the horde mode. That's not acceptable, and I will not let my nostagia for the old G1 TV show cloud my judgment. I cannot endorse this game. Perhaps a patch will come out later on that will make the game more reliable, but...until then, no.
Do not buy this game. I don't want to say that, but I feel that I must. If you're in it for the nostagia, rent it. But I can't honestly say that this game is worth 60 dollars.
I will say one thing, it is the one game that has made me scream at my television more than anything else this year. That includes playing Super Street Fighter 4 online with a bunch of 12 year olds. Every time I lusted for an answer about such an inconstant experience, I could only yell, much like in this video, demanding an explanation that I will never get.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx-97uRkzRg
