Transformer Rise Of the dark park ( 3 DVD )
Though it's developed by Edge of Reality, Rise of the Dark Spark's action is closely modeled on developer High Moon's games War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron.
Narratively, however, where this game falls is completely unclear. In
some ways, it seems to exist in the same universe as the cartoons, but
on the other hand, the robot designs sometimes resemble those from the
films, and there are plot details that refer to Michael Bay's latest
opus, Transformers: Age of Extinction. The result is an incoherent story that feels like it was cobbled together from the spare parts of other stories.
The
gameplay doesn't fare much better. High Moon's Cybertron games were
mostly enjoyable shooting galleries, and there are times when Rise of
the Dark Spark seems like it might manage to be the same. Playing as a
variety of Autobots and Decepticons over the course of the game, you
unleash hot robot death on countless enemy grunts. At its best moments,
Rise of the Dark Spark is fun in the generic and familiar way that so
many blandly competent shooters are fun--a pleasant enough way to pass
the time if you have nothing else to do. There are a good variety of
weapons for you to use, and although you rarely have much incentive to
transform, it's nice to have the freedom to drive or fly away from
enemies when the action heats up.
Unfortunately,
although you move around with a feeling of appropriate heft for a
sentient being constructed of strong and heavy metals, when you get
swarmed by enemies, you go down so fast that you might as well be made
of aluminum cans. It drains all the joy from being Optimus Prime to see
him crumple almost immediately in response to enemy fire, and these
poorly designed combat encounters make victory not a matter of playing
defensively and using smart tactics but of just trying again and again
and hoping this time it works out for you. Some sections go on for much
too long, keeping you stuck in one spot fighting off waves of identical
enemies when all you want to do is advance, and the game's maddening
checkpoints regularly require you to replay lengthy sections of
frustrating action when you fall in battle.
In
fact, Rise of the Dark Spark's entire campaign goes on for too long. By
the time you come to the end of its 14 chapters, you'll have had enough
of shooting robots to last you at least until the next three
Transformers movies have been released. It doesn't help that the game is
so unpleasant to look at and to listen to. The urban environments on
Earth are so drab and simple that they look like the miniature set of a
low-budget monster movie rather than a real city, and the sound design
may drive you insane. In one level, I heard the Decepticons shout the
line "Let's see what we got!" so many times that I decided it had to be
part of a psychological warfare campaign meant to undermine the
Autobots' morale.
Your progress is also hindered by the
occasional bug, and I don't mean those pesky Insecticons. During one
boss battle, I fully depleted my foe's health bar, but nothing happened.
I had to let him kill me and restart the fight to advance. During
another boss fight, I became completely stuck on the geometry and was
helpless to defend myself against my enemy's attacks.
There
are a few merciful moments of reprieve from the standard action, like
one sequence in which, as Jetfire, you must fly your way out of a
structure before a weapon goes off, and another in which you play as the
massive dinobot Grimlock, who can unleash a constant stream of flame
from his robotic jaws. This power trip feels like a reward for slogging
through so much tedious and frustrating action, but it's too little, too
late.
There's
also Escalation, a cooperative multiplayer mode in which you and up to
three other players fight off waves of invading enemies, but one wave
feels very much like another. There isn't enough variety to it to keep
it interesting for long. The game tries to keep you hooked by doling out
a constant stream of rewards for your progress in the form of weapon
upgrades, experience point boosts, and other doodads, but the action is
too shallow to make any of these rewards meaningful. The Transformers
are a great property, one that seems like it should lend itself to the
creation of great games, but Rise of the Dark Spark is so sloppy and
incoherent that it feels more like a cheap knockoff than a proper
Transformers game. Optimus Prime deserves better, and so do you.