Transformers Rise of the Dark Spark Pc Review
| Game Info |
| Box Fine art North/A |
| Platform 360, PS3, Win, Wii U, 3DS, PS4, Xbox One |
| Publisher Activision |
| Programmer Edge of Reality |
| Release Appointment |
Transformers: Ascent of the Dark Spark demonstrates how easy it is to ruin a good thing.
Publisher Activision previously entrusted developer Loftier 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).
The Cybertron games demonstrated a grasp of just nigh everything that made the idea of a Transformers game exciting — blasting and nifty giant robots with a diversity of cleverly-executed weapons in third person, and all the while, shifting betwixt vehicle and robot forms at will. By combining a good balance of adventure vs. reward, proper incentives for experimentation, and good level design with a real sense of momentum, High Moon nailed it.
But High Moon'southward (evidently) last Transformers game released in 2012. With a new movie to tie into in Transformers: Historic period of Extinction, Activision has given the license to developer Edge of Reality. But that'southward not all that Activision handed them. 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 tedious levels, bad checkpoints and laughable presentation.
For no discernible reason, Transformers: Rising of the Nighttime Spark seeks to unite the completely divergent fictions of High Moon'due south Cybertron universe with Michael Bay'south Transformers filmic reality — ignoring the fact that the Cybertron games were repeatedly insinuated to exist a potential origin story for the original blithe serial. Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark opens in the present day Bay universe as Transformer compensation hunter Lockdown is chasing the titular Dark Spark, a matrix that allows the user to practice stuff. Past which I hateful annihilation whoever wrote or designed Transformers: Ascension of the Dark Spark thought might be cool at that item moment, it seems. It can decadent or mind control other Transformers! It can slow downwards fourth dimension and brand the user invincible! Time travel!
Lockdown snatches the Nighttime Spark as Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Drift look on, and then ... it's dorsum to the Cybertron-era to explicate what the Dark Spark is, and why it'south such a threat.
Only what this conceit feels similar is an alibi — to retread, recycle and re-employ equally much as possible from War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron. Transformers: Rise of the Nighttime Spark may include the most ambitious repurposing of existing avails I've ever seen in a game. Character models are lifted directly from High Moon's games. Incidental dialogue is lifted straight from High Moon's games. The interface is the same. The in-level loading icon is identical. Each level feels pieced together from bits of the Cybertron games, with the thinnest, most brief explanations given, if they're given at all.
Number of instances of game-related profanity during this review: 48
If anything, Transformers: Rise of the Night Spark's shameless plundering of the Cybertron games makes me capeesh them — and dislike their successor — even more than. Edge of Reality's endeavor to recreate High Moon's successes demonstrates just how easy it is to blow it completely on execution.
Where Loftier Moon's Transformers games unfolded quickly, covering enormous distances past ground and air, as vehicle or robot course at will, Transformers: Rise of the Night Spark crawls through monotonous, boring areas as slowly every bit possible. The majority of my time with the game involved walking/rolling for fifteen-30 seconds then waiting for a door to open every bit I blasted incredibly stupid (though maddeningly lethal) enemies until Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark decided it was time to motion on to the side by side functionally identical department.
State of war For Cybertron and Autumn of Cybertron had moments like this as well, only Transformers: Ascent of the Dark Spark has likewise badly upended the series' combat dynamics. Weapons feel ineffective and flimsy or, in the example of the guided rockets that every Transformer's vehicle form seems to accept, incredibly overpowered — and then much so that by the end of Transformers: Rising of the Dark Spark, I was sitting in vehicle way most of the time. Swapping forms became pointless in all but a few situations.
That isn't to say that Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark is always like shooting fish in a barrel. I was routinely murdered by enemies I never saw who eliminated me with just a few shots, and checkpoints are spaced much too far autonomously. All of this results in a game that just isn't fun to play.
Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark fumbles the elements of other better games that it lifts wholesale, merely it handles what little additions information technology makes with even less grace. "Motion picture" reality levels are budget-game cloth, all apartment surfaces and stock buildings. And the few new Transformer designs to feature in Transformers: Ascent of the Nighttime Spark are an embarrassment, a barebones imitation at the complication and sophistication of the Cybertron titles' robots.
This is a game that takes a behemothic robotic tyrannosaur and makes him the least interesting, most boring character — not to mention the nearly clearly half-assed transformation in a game full of disappointing presentation elements. The story inelegantly moves from department to section, including a affiliate that ends as the Autobots get on a train (let that sink in for a moment), followed by the adjacent chapter starting in the wreckage of said railroad train. The game's dialogue is awful, and its attempt to ape previous games' alternate view of the Autobot/Decepticon disharmonize only results in a story that feels meandering and pointless.
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Source: https://www.polygon.com/2014/7/3/5868449/transformers-rise-of-the-dark-spark-review-xbox-one-PS4