Number of instances of game-related profanity during this review: 48 Each level feels pieced together from bits of the Cybertron games, with the thinnest, most cursory explanations given, if they're given at all. Incidental dialogue is lifted directly from High Moon's games. Character models are lifted directly from High Moon's games. Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark may include the most aggressive repurposing of existing assets I've ever seen in a game. it's back to the Cybertron-era to explain what the Dark Spark is, and why it's such a threat.īut what this conceit feels like is an excuse - to retread, recycle and re-use as much as possible from War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron. Lockdown snatches the Dark Spark as Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Drift look on, and then. It can corrupt or mind control other Transformers! It can slow down time and make the user invincible! Time travel!

By which I mean anything whoever wrote or designed Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark thought might be cool at that particular moment, it seems. Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark opens in the present day Bay universe as Transformer bounty hunter Lockdown is chasing the titular Dark Spark, a matrix that allows the user to do stuff. Despite having (and using) all the pieces of High Moon's successful Transformers games, Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark is a shuffling mess of boring levels, bad checkpoints and laughable presentation.įor no discernible reason, Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark seeks to unite the completely divergent fictions of High Moon's Cybertron universe with Michael Bay's Transformers filmic reality - ignoring the fact that the Cybertron games were repeatedly insinuated to be a potential origin story for the original animated series.

But that's not all that Activision handed them.

With a new movie to tie into in Transformers: Age of Extinction, Activision has given the license to developer Edge of Reality. reward, proper incentives for experimentation, and good level design with a real sense of momentum, High Moon nailed it.īut High Moon's (apparently) last Transformers game released in 2012. The Cybertron games demonstrated a grasp of just about everything that made the idea of a Transformers game exciting - blasting and smashing giant robots with a variety of cleverly-executed weapons in third person, and all the while, shifting between vehicle and robot forms at will. Publisher Activision previously entrusted developer High Moon Studios with the Transformers license, which resulted in the excellent Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron (and we'll just pretend the mediocrity of the Transformers: Dark of the Moon game didn't happen).

Transformers foc xbox one