Game Review - Rise of the Dark Spark

[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.

[CBratron]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfo...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/...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