Game Review - Rise of the Dark Spark

[BigTransformerTrev]

Introduction
Rise of the Dark Spark, available on multiple platforms (I have the PS3 version), follows the storyline of – surprise surprise – The Dark Spark. First how it originated on Cybertron as Unicron’s version of The Matrix, then arrived on Earth conveniently to be found during TF4.

Storyline
The Cybertron part of the Dark Spark saga takes place between WFC and FOC and comes across as something that should come in an expansion pack rather than a whole new game. The Dark Spark earth saga does not fit with the movie story at all and felt shoehorned in. Disappointing.

Gameplay
If you’ve played any of the TF games released over the past few years you know how this game plays so I wont waste time going into depth. What was disappointing was that there was less reason to Transform in this game and when there was a reason to use your alt-mode it was usually to get from A to B in a hurry such as Jetfire evacuating Trypticon or Optimus driving through Kaon. Once again, the Cybertron levels felt like an expansion pack for FOC and the earth levels felt like the DOTM game. No innovation or anything new to really enjoy.

Weaponry & Special Skills
All lifted directly from FOC, no new guns, no new innovations. Instead of earning cybercredits to upgrade your guns you get different locked boxes that come with different ungrades and graphics in them. Even the special abilities were recycled from FOC, such as the shockwave that Vortex could send out has been passed on to Jetfire, Starscreams cloak passed onto Sharpshot, Jazz’s grapple passed onto Sideswipe etc. One of the few new things was that Optimus could deploy a shield that would absorb enemy fire and then charge up and fling it back at them but that was rather annoying to master.

Characters & Enemies
It was kinda cool to play Shrapnel/Skrapnel/Sharpshot/Whoever he is in this game and Shockwave in the storyline mode. On Earth you get to play new characters like Drift. All other characters had been recycled from previous games (Optimus, Soundwave, Jetfire, Swindle, Sideswipe, Bruticus, earth Bumblebee etc). I quite enjoyed the interplay between Megatron’s 3 main lieutenants (Shockwave, Starscream and Soundwave) and it was interesting to see an Insecticon and Combaticon on a mission together. But much like the Transformers mythos overall, the G1’ish Cybertronian characters were interesting, the Bayverse characters were dull.
The enemy characters were pretty dull, the only ones being remotely interesting were mini-bosses such as Cliffjumper and Megatron. As for Lockdowns army – argh! “Lets see what we’ve got” is said about 8 million times per fight! Guess what nimrods – your boss already said “Bumblebee and Drift are in the hanger” so you already freaking know what you’ve got! There was not a lot of AI on show, though some of Lockdowns crew were good at taking cover. Nearly all enemies were in robot mode, a few in vehicle mode, and I don’t think I saw one enemy besides Megatron transform during the whole game.

Graphics
The Cybertron levels fail to pop like FOC did, they are more on par with WFC and even then fail to meet the standard. I was really disappointed that Kolkular was visible out a window yet you could not see it properly or position your bot on an angle to see it better, I would have loved to see the capital of Kaon in all it’s glory! There was not much variety and everything, even the bots, were fairly drab.
The earth levels were uninspired, much on par with the ROTF & DOTM games. With the processing power available even on the last generation of consoles like the PS3 they were capable of having huge scenes with buildings on fire and humans running and screaming – yet just bland forests and empty warehouses.

Multiplayer and Escalation
I have gotten that bored with the storyline game I have not bothered to have a go at them. Somebody else can bite the bullet and do them.

Overall
I wanted to wait until I had finished the storyline portion of the game and at least had a go at Escalation to review the game but time constraints at home and, to be frank, a lack of interest means I have yet to do so, so I apologize for an incomplete review. Would be interested to hear if it’s at least worth playing up to the earth-Grimlock level.

Anyway – overall a fairly disappointing game which for me the only redeeming feature of was that you could play as G1 based characters. We have come to expect crappy movie tie-in games and they have not broken the mold here. If you enjoyed FOC then when the game price drops you may want to pick up the game to play through those levels.

[Omega Metro]

Played about an hour of it when I first got it about a month ago. Have not touched it since.

[MayzaPrime]

I finished it and played a few of the escalation levels and that was it. I traded it in for a pre-order for Destiny.

I was very disappointed with this game, if you still have a 360 or a PS3 keep your copy of FOC or WFC they are far superior games.

[Facepunches]

Agreed. I picked it up on Ps4 and really hoped that by using High Moon's assets as a base, the game could turn out OK...how wrong I was. There is a very clear distinction showing what was 'recycled' and what's 'new' (read terrible). Again, I wanted to like this game so much after all the awesome work High Moon did on the first two games...but even at $58.00, this game is $40 too expensive.

[Zommael]

Can anyone post a plot summary? I'm not really interested in the game but would like to know what the story is.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Can anyone post a plot summary? I'm not really interested in the game but would like to know what the story is.


Ya can find the whole plot here mate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers:_Rise_of_the_Dark_Spark

I was gonna copy and paste it over but thought there were too many spoilers :)



Would be interested to hear if it’s at least worth playing up to the earth-Grimlock level.



Ah well, I've answered my own question from that bit of research for Zommel, apparently I'm very close to it so maybe on the weekend I'll steel myself to get there and polish the game off

[CBratron]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers:_Rise_of_the_Dark_Spark

Movieverse Drift battles his way through Lockdown's foot soldiers on Earth when the Autobots notice the 'mysterious purple meteor' fall. When it's found Optimus utters a cryptic "I feared this day would come" or something like that. Lockdown shows up nabs the meteorite/darkspark and escapes.

Flashback to Cybertron pre FoC. Megatron sends his lieutenants Soundwave, Shockwave and Starscream to retrieve the Dark Spark from the Crystal City.
Blah, blah, blah... Cue series of Decepticon and Autobot missions to track down/obtain/transport the Dark Spark
Megatron gets his hands on the Dark Spark, powers up. Fights Optimus. The Dark Spark is ejected out into space during the fight.

Flash forward to movieverse Earth again. Drift and Bumblebee locate and infiltrate Lockdown's base of operations. Drift gets taken captive. Out of nowhere, Grimlock breaks out of captivity and tears the place up. Lockdown escapes again with the Dark Spark to his second base where his Time Bridge is being built. Reveals his plan travel back in time to reignite the civil war (because peacetime is bad for bounty hunter business). Optimus confronts Lockdown in the final Boss Battle, wins and blasts the Dark Spark with the Matrix.

In the credits G1 Optimus sees the familiar purple meteor fall to Earth.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Well I polished off the last few levels last night. It was kinda cool to play as earth-Grimlock, even if once again all his moves were taken right from FOC Grimlock. Lockdowns forces became even MORE annoying - their catch phrase this time was 'He got away' which they yelled non stop EVEN AS I WAS RUNNING STRAIGHT TOWARDS THEM AND TAKING FIRE FROM 3 SIDES?!?! Awful! Playing as Prime at the end was ok but I don't think I had to transform once, and in the end fight the game wouldn't let you transform at all which was damn annoying for a TF game, plus there were times in that fight where transforming could have been handy.

The only highlight - right at the end (and I don't think I am spoiling anything with this as it's in no way intrical to the plot) you see a comet go over the desert they always used for G1 and road runner cartoons and G1 Optimus is looking up at it. Really REALLY made me want a G1 game based on the first two seasons of the cartoon! Went to sleep thinking about it.



So overall for the game:

Pros:
-Get to play as Cyberton and Earth Optimus Prime
-Grimlock feels very powerful
-Fun in small doses
-You get to play as Sharpshot (Shrapnel) and Shockwave in the main story
-Interesting banter between some of the FOC-based Decepticon characters
-Areas such as Kaon and Kohkular are explored somewhat
-Some interesting TF lore


Cons:
-Weapons and moves all recycled from previous games
-Most characters recycled from previous games
-Drift and earth Bbee are boring to play as
-Lackluster Cybertron environments
-Awful earth environments
-Irritating enemy characters (not hard, just annoying)
-Gameplay a step down from FOC, not up
-Little reason to transform and in some areas you cant at all!
-Poor amalgamation of TF universes
-Little replay value


So yeah, skip the game unless you want to play the Cybertron levels down the track.


Extra Note:
Oh, and as a little add-on note, this game sadly has made me not want to watch 'Good Game' on the ABC anymore. Not because they scored the game poorly (it didn't deserve much better) but that Hex (the girl i had a crush on for a few years) talked about 'Yeah, I hardly felt the need to use the weapons, using the melee weapon was much more effective'. This is only true for the first part of the first level so it meant that she played it for about 20 minutes but still went on air and presented a review like she had played the whole game. Very dissppointing and casts doubt on all their reviews in my opinion.

[Tfiguy]

...I guess that's what happens when big corporations and share holders care only about what money they could make out of a franchise, instead of making an amazing game with it's potential. Push, push, push... rush rush rush...make this, make that, I know we'll put both games into one... it will make green blah blah blah... get it out before the movie gets released... meh...

[Lint]

I've not played this personally but it sounds like we'd be better off with the 3DS version of this title. It looks like an upgraded version of the 'Transformers G1 Awakening' mobile game from many years back.

http://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/ds/transformers_rise_of_the_dark_spark

[CyberiusPrime]

Well I for one got Rotds on PC and personally it just felt like a game to coincide with a movie release.

Other than that i was greatly disappointed.

The Cybertron components werre finely polished (as it should be after 2 other games).

Earth storyline components were very lack luster.

As mentioned previously no new weapons. Multiplayer Deathmatch (i still play it on FoC) has been removed with only escalation as a multplayer mode, as such this greatly diminishes replay value.

All in all i expected alot more for a Transformer title.

But that is my opinion

[griffin]

A big thankyou to Ravagecat for helping me get the one trophy you can't do on your own.

The story was interesting, and works well between both universes, if you accept that this particular Movie Universe is a alternate universe/dimension to the one in the four films. It isn't stated as such, but it's the only way you could have the story work between the three universes we see (Movie, Aligned, Gen1)... and they don't specifically say that it is the same universe.

The selling point of Grimlock was way too late in the game, and should have also been in the first chapter as a sampling of what to look forward to later.
And when you do play Grimlock, they make you use different buttons to transform and use weapons... which makes it unnecessarily confusing.

The final scene of Gen1 Optimus watching the Dark Spark arrive in his Universe/time, hopefully means a Gen1 game next... as the WFC universe has been played out now, and the next movie game won't be until 2017. I think it could work now and be successful, with the significant interest in the brand after all the Movies prompting so much Gen1 merchandise and toys in recent years. (and I know a lot of long time fanboys like me would squeal with delight if we finally got a decent game with Gen1 characters and alt-modes)

The gear-boxes you earn in the game and in escalation are a bit annoying. First you can't successfully play Escalation without earning about 50-100 of them, to unlock and upgrade all the weapons and Abilities. But then once you have them unlocked along with all the Escalation characters, the gear-boxes are redundant. Also, it isn't obvious at first, but as you approach level 25, it is best not to open any more gear-boxes, because when you activate Prime Mode, you will need a heap of stored gear-boxes ready to unlock and upgrade weapons and Escalation Abilities.
Prime Mode is only something you want to do if you aren't halfway to earning certain accumulative trophies (like the audio logs or healing ones). Best to chase up those trophies between Prime Modes - as there are 5 Prime Modes, each one resetting certain counters back to zero. The fifth Prime Mode is called Primus Mode, which is noted as leaving all things unlocked when you get it, but I'm still a couple hours away from getting it to see what happens next.

There is a good selection of maps to start with in Escalation, including two that were from WFC. I never played the FOC maps, so there might be a couple from there too.
A lot of characters to choose from as well, with the flying ones being the better ones, as all the abilities and weapons are accessible by everyone once they are unlocked. The alt-mode weapons are mostly similar between them, to make the flying ones the best for quicker fight or retreat.

Broken Hope is the one I find easiest, as I can complete it with the techvolt, slime cannon and ammo beacon, from the top bridge. You also get three lives, plus a number of weapon and corrosive instillations, that can eliminate most opponents in each wave. (that's on easy setting - when I get Primus Mode, I'll see what hard is like)
The bad thing though is that the game ends at wave 15, unlike WFC which keeps going forever if you survive.
Some of the other maps are really difficult to play on your own, or even in public matches, particularly if you have a lag from poor internet or distance from the Americans hosting the game.
But a tip for playing a private map on your own, is using the Cyber corrupter and Ammo beacon with the Techvolt. From a protected corner you get them to kill each other for you, and the Techvolt takes care of anyone who gets in close.

No Multiplayer games this time, which probably put off people buying this game, as they can be a significant portion of play time (value) to the purchase price. It was also probably why it was easier to complete the trophies on this one, as a lot of trophies in WFC and FOC were in Multiplayer games, that are difficult to get with a game lag, or drop in online players preventing games from even starting.

Chapter 3 was the most challenging for me to get a particular trophy, so I had to do it quite a few times... and since it had unending Insecticons in one location for me to chase up a number of weapons challenges, I ended up getting in the top 20 for the global rankings for that chapter.
I like seeing the leaderboards in this one covering all the chapters and escalation maps... as it can be an incentive to outdo other people, particularly your friends (as you can toggle between three lists).

For anyone needing help with chasing up trophies on this game, I used this site (http://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/transformers-rise-of-the-dark-spark-ps/trophies/). (I try to get them first, before looking at that site)

[Sinnertwin]

I haven't played what i consider to be a decent game since the Ps2 all those years ago.

I foolishly went out and bought Revenge of The Fallen & 3 minutes into it all i wanted to do was put my head through the walls. Repeatedly.

[FruitBuyer]

Honestly, the only good thing about this was getting the same VAs of the guys from WfC and FoC.

The bit where you're that Insecticon meant to act as Shockwave's bodyguard.....did Shockwave forget that he can fly?

[griffin]

Reached "Primus Mode", which pretty much ends the game for me if I don't get any others interested in playing the online game with me. It is the last level to reach, and stops accumulating points or levels... making it less fun to play (to chase levels)... and also makes gear-boxes even more redundant, as the multipliers are now worthless, leaving only TECH and Hacks as the only things you still use up (but by the time you get to Primus mode, you'll have each maxed out to 99, which won't run out any time soon).

I think the campaign shouldn't have counted to points/levels, as it made it way too quick to earn just by doing the campaign... but was probably a compromise to not having Multi-player games this time (which counted in previous games). You only need to reach first Prime mode to get all the trophies, which I think you'll get just from the campaign. (especially if you redo bits to secure trophies, which racks up more points in the process)

I still have two maps to try out, and try to find ways to complete them like Broken Hope and Remnant... but might go back to finishing off some of the earlier TFs games instead soon.
It is really satisfying to complete all the trophies in a game, particularly if it is a property (like Transformers) that interests me, but I think having it paired with the Movie Universe has put people off it, and tainted the WFC/Aligned universe in the process.

Now I wonder who we can petition to get the next chapter to be what the epilogue teased us with (Gen1).

[Paulbot]

Saw this in store today for $15 so came here for the reviews. Not really convinced either way and I've got two other PS3 games I've not started so might just leave this one behind.

[MayzaPrime]

Saw this in store today for $15 so came here for the reviews. Not really convinced either way and I've got two other PS3 games I've not started so might just leave this one behind.

Its awful mate, dont bother. I had such high hopes for this game, as I love WFC and FoC. It was my 1st Xbox One game and I finished it and returned it within a week, thank goodness Diablo 3 was out around the same time. :D

[BigTransformerTrev]

Saw this in store today for $15 so came here for the reviews. Not really convinced either way and I've got two other PS3 games I've not started so might just leave this one behind.

For $15 it might be worth picking up to play the Cybertron based levels - only so many games out there where you get to play as Shockwave and Bruticus :)