Game Review - Rise of the Dark Spark

[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

[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. (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.