Transformers The Game(Activision)

This whole retro thing confuses me. When I was growing up, gaining consciousness just in time to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was taught to me as part of the National Curriculum that the 80s were rubbish. But look around you today and you may be fooled into thinking that the 80s weren't a desolate time for culture and the world in general. Everywhere you look there are tight trousered, monkey haired individuals pounding away on synths, apparently reveling in the decade that gave us AIDS.

The problem is nostalgia - which tends to kick in after about twenty years. All of a sudden everything you used to see and hear was bloody brilliant, no matter what the evidence to the contrary is. The average student talks about childhood cartoons and just how awesome they were roughly 50 times every second. Why this is I've yet to discover. From what I recall these cartoons were brash, pointless light shows that caused small seizures in my brain, leaving me slightly dazed for the rest of the day and my parents free to get out of the house for a few hours. Of course when I was eight, they were stark-bollock brilliant. I don't see any particular reason to revive them now though…

Apparently the world chooses to disagree, which is why we're being treated to the all-new Transformers film. Transformers was a great one. These giant fucking robots that feel they can disguise themselves and not draw attention to the fact that they've destroyed half the city in a battle. And we believed it.

And when you have a film like that it's inevitable that there will also be a computer game to commemorate the event. What's also inevitable is that the game will be all kinds of bad gash. 99% of games based on movies create a sensation in the gamer not unlike having your shin bone smashed between two bricks. They are wasted games, foetus-like in their infancy and development, with unimaginative gameplay and graphics. Their soundtracks contain the subliminal echos of merchandising execs frolicking in money and laughing hysterically while game designers who once had dreams and beliefs cower in the dark, cutting themselves.

Would Transformers The Game be any different? Would it create new, previously un-thought-of gaming mechanics? Would it achieve the impossible and just be playable? No. Well, that's not quite true. There is one, and only one, way that Transformers is a good game and in its own way, slightly brilliant and interesting. If the whole thing is meant as a hilarious, but poignant, reminder of what it was like to play bad games on the N64 then it's the most important release of the year. I'm not being sarcastic, at times it genuinely looked like I was playing on an N64. Especially when there were explosions, eerily reminiscent of Nintendo's foray into 3D. I think it must be something to do with making people nostalgic or something.

Gameplay wise the game has moved on with the rest of the crowd, dragging and kicking its heels as it goes. You get an illusion of a sandbox world to move around, completing missions as you travel along in that poor man's GTA way that seems to be all the vogue at the moment, but there's nothing of interest apart from a few pointless boxes to find and some highly selective scenery to 'destroy' and 'interact with'. There are different locations that you travel to but they're all so bland in themselves that while travelling around you can't shake the feeling that you're going in circles.

As for the missions… it's hard to think about them without wanting to smash my head into my laptop. They consist of chase, shoot, pursue, protect, blow up, follow, hunt, hit, find, *smash*. That was my head. Each one draws out with a tedious inevitability, their ideas of progression being to repeat the same task once, twice, maybe a million times in one mission. Exactly which ones you are forced to perform depends on whether you choose the Autobots (yay!) or the Decepticons (boo!), although quite what the difference is isn't made clear. Things vaguely flash across the screen depending on what you do and how much you destroy things but it really makes no difference because you're nigh on indestructible and all you want to do is finish the mindless tasks as quickly as possible so you can do something more interesting like play Snake II.

The game tries to push up the difficulty level through the likes of vehicles that handle like greased condoms on ice, enemies that have to be killed in juuuust the right way, and a targeting system that gives your enemies as many opportunities to ineffectually lay into you as they can before you've targeted them. Transforming isn't cool in any way, like it should be. One second you're a robot, the next a car. And all the Transformers are pretty much personality-void cardboard cutouts of each other, staring blankly out with their vapid eyes at a world they don't understand and can't help destroying.

This isn't a review, it's an impassioned cry. Do not buy this game. There is nothing to recommend it, it is dross and every part of it has been done before and done better. With the costs involved in making computer games climbing ever higher, these low-cost means of generating some cash from sicko fans and gormless parents who think they know what their children will enjoy are never going to go away. If they didn't make money, they wouldn't get made all. the. fucking. time. But just make sure you don't make the same mistake. If you like Transformers and you play this, it will be like watching a childhood pet burn, and if you don't like Transformers then you may die.

It's like the 80s in game form.