GAME review - Devastation

[BigTransformerTrev]

I've beaten the game on easy and medium but only the first two chapters on hard. I'm going back to play some of the other levels on medium to build up credits to upgrade my weapons before tackling chapter 3, it certainly does make a difference. I've got my A-grade twin bolt swords up to level 20 with 5 different buffs on them to give me more focus time and repair drops and they are fricken killers now!

[Lint]

Picked this up from JB Hifi as it is now $30 bucks (PS3). Despite initial misgivings last year from watching the game trailers I actually like this game.

I played the game on 'normal' difficulty and found it to be an adequate enough challenge for a casual gamer like myself. While the game is very easy to cheese (especially with rush attacks and super especially in the early-mid game) I found myself tending towards trying to 'win with style' rather than simply 'win as quickly as possible'. To me, nothing was more satisfying than (as Grimlock) smacking Starscream around with your fists, doing a dino roll as to dodge his snarky bladed counterattack, having his missiles explode harmlessly in your breath of fire when he transforms and strafes you and then knocking him out of his alt mode with a body slam before finishing with a shotgun to the face. This practice of course involves a good amount of dying but its so satisfying when you win on your own terms.

The creativity of some of the story levels was a surprise to me as well, a few car chase levels, a turret level, a couple of weird space brawls and a bizarrely pseudo 2D platform level. I love the cartoon cel-shaded visual aesthetic, only the environment comes off a bit bland.

I didn't play with the weapon crafting system until I was well halfway through the game (noticed I was doing next to no damage to some of the higher level mooks). While not especially deep, it did suck me in wholesale and I found myself equipping TECH that boosted weapon drops and rarity and weapons became those things I sold for money, to that thing I pay close attention to between levels. The TECH 'research' system was fun, but I found it kind of random. I frequently obtained TECH from 'red zones' that were inferior to those obtained from 'blue zones' and spending 5000 credits vs 1000 credits only seemed to stop you from obtaining bad TECH, rather than enhancing the quality of good TECH.

Finally, transformation. I love it. I found myself doing it more often than I ever did in the WFC/FOC games. It was quick, easy and gameplay relevant.

Onto what I didn't like:
The camera, while able to be manually controlled, it frequently defaulted to looking at the underside of my car whenever I got to the edge of the map. This did get me killed on multiple occasions.

Ammo on ranged weapons vs level design. While I understand some of the ranged weapons were supremely powerful and needed to be kept in check, if you made the mistake of only having a short ranged shotgun at your disposal, some of the aerial mooks simply became annoying to fight. I feel like every character needed a regular ranged 'blaster' with regenerating ammo equipped as a minimum. Or at least a tooltip recommending that you equip an appropriate ranged weapon when starting a level that has heavy aerial presence.

Devastator. While a visually imposing boss he's actually pretty easy to beat. You fight him way too many times and he doesn't really get that much harder to beat each time you saw him. Considering most would get in close to his feet for that fight, you don't really even get the field of view to appreciate his full majesty most of the time anyway.

The final boss battle. I wasn't a fan of the 'space' levels. While it was somewhat visually nostalgic, the lack of spatial reference and horrible camera made it more irritating that enjoyable, especially since the battle is 'just because'.

Overall I guess you could say the game was pleasantly "more than meets the eye" (ho ho ho). I was expecting a dumb boring beat-em-up but the creators have injected enough fan service, level creativity and gameplay mechanics to make it an enjoyable game. It's not a 'epic blockbuster' game but at $30 it is now more than worth the price.

[Paulbot]

Put this in to give it a first play and I'm not particualy loving it.

The G1 fan in me is loving playing as G1 Autobots and battling G1 Decepticons. They do a great job capturing the look and feel of the cartoon and animation models.

The gaymer in me is not loving how chaotic and confusing the battles are. Fighting Devastator the first time should be more fun than just jumping in the air and hitting buttons until you can't do that anymore. Maybe I'm missing something. I've played many a game where fighting is the pressing the attack button into a set of combos (AC, Arkham, GOW) but despite the long list of "combo moves" in the help screen, they just seem to be all the same.

It also took like 20 attempts to defeat Megatron as Sideswipe the first time (as Megatron kept hitting Sideswipe with moves that took out 60-70 of his energon in one go) - and the last time I tried was actually quite easy although my tactics didn't really change.

And for some reason I keep glitching on the transform control (sometimes the 'bot transformers only for a second, often it doesn't do the vehicle mode part of a combo).

Current judgement is the game is "okay".

[BigTransformerTrev]

Our PS3 copy went missing ages ago so when we upgraded to a PS4 I picked up a cheap copy for the new system.

I can't see any discernible difference between the two due to the relatively simplistic G1'esque graphics.

Good fun though - my 4 year old is on his 4th playthrough. He only needs me to help with those annoying jumping bits and the end fight with Megatron.

[Trent]

Finally picked up Devastation today as JB had it for $25. Spent about 2 hours on it tonight and while it looks pretty and is a good bit of fun, I'm glad I didn't pay any more for it. I started it on medium difficulty and have never played a Platinum game before so it took me a few goes to get the hang of it and beat Devastator. I can definitely see my son loving this game when he gets a bit older but realistically I can't see it getting a second play through from me.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Don't believe I haven't posted in this thread yet.

I bagged Devestation on PS4 and thought it was all right.

While nice messing about with G1 bots again, I found it lacking focus for my liking. For example, the fisticuffs seems pretty deep with dodging, slo mo and combos, and using transforming, but then they add in something a bit half baked, like weapons.

I always found the weapons a pain to use, they felt cumbersome and awkward and while games like Devil may Cry let you use guns while fisticuffin, there was non of that here. SO the fast pace of fighting was lost when you had to use a gun.

The weapon crafting and stuff never got me going either. I picked up so many as I went, that I'd be shown at the end of the level, and I don't care about, having to craft and equip etc, just took up time. I felt it distracted from the combat.

Speaking of which, while the combat was fun, some of the graphical bits were annoying. Example being this, I had a weapon with an ice element to it, which would make nice looking ice effects as I swooshed it about, however many times, the weapon effect would cover the animation of the dud I was fighting, so I couldn't see his attack. In some sections, this happened a lot and I found myself avoiding the weapons with some elemental attacks.

So while parts of it was fun, other parts were a little annoying. Many times I also felt like I was stuck with the same Autobot for a long time. In the end, I didn't find it terrible, but it wasn't as good as it could have been.

There were some damn cool fights in it! I really loved the Motormaster and Menasor section. But then there were damn annoying bits. Like one the insecticon sections where I just couldn't take him down.

I'd give the game a 7 outta 10.
Not terrible, not brilliant, but a bit above average