Like for the first Transformers Movie DS games, Transformers RotF: Autobots and Transformers RotF: Decepticons allow you to play both sides of a similar story, with the Autobots version roughly following the events of the movie (VERY roughly, as I'll explain shortly) while the Decepticons version veers off in a "what if?" direction. These games also use the same engine as the previous TF Movie DS games, and many things like the overall style of the layout, as well as the font are very similar as well. Since in many cases my comments on this game will compare it to the first Movie DS games, if you aren't familiar with those games you might want to follow the link above and read my review on those games first before you continue with this one.
    Now that that's out of the way, the core game mechanics for the two games are nearly identical. Targeting, aiming, shooting, the radar, scanning stuff, etc. are the pretty much the exact same as in the first game, as well as the whole health/energy thing, so there's no real difference there. There are a few changes made to the RotF controls, however, some of which impact the gameplay a bit and some of which are really minor. For one, you no longer use the touch screen to transform-- you just press the X button. A better configuration, methinks, since you don't have to reach to press the button anymore, and often you need to transform in a jiffy. Another improvement is that you can switch between two weapons now by touching the respective one on the touch screen to activate it.
    The major gameplay change, however, has to come from you being able to allocate "energon" (AKA experience points) from killing enemies and completing missions to various categories, such as durability, strength, and health regeneration rate. You can do this on an interface screen in between missions. The game increases at a roughly the same rate as you'll collect energon, meaning the difficulty will more or less stay the same after the first few missions until the end of the game. You can "cheat the system" by playing earlier missions over again, thus making your character and making later stages easier that way if you so desire. You can also switch between a couple dozen different weapons to load your two weaponry slots with-- you only start out with a few, but you unlock more by finding hidden "scan equipment" boxes in levels or by getting a certain number of points in online challenges (explained later).
    Now instead of going from a couple of environments, each game has a total of 17 different environments, though each is considerably smaller and MUCH more linear than the first DS games' environments, and each DS game only has one environment exclusive to it (and it's a stretch to call the Decepticons' exclusive level an "environment", since it's just a flat expanse of sea with a small oil rig in the middle). You play through each environment at least twice-- once on a main story mission, and a second time on a "challenge" mission that's usually shorter and simpler, like a race or collecting a certain amount of Energon before the timer runs out. You select each environment from a world map, and though they open up in a linear fashion, you can go back after you complete an area of the world to re-do the missions and challenges with extra requirements, such as "Win with your stats halved" or "Win under 2:30", for example. The difficulty of these extra requirement missions varies wildly, from being basically just a re-do of the mission to ridiculously hard (try to survive 2 minutes without getting hit even once--- UGH). Once you complete one of these missions, the marker on the world map for that environment will change from transparent to silver to gold, depending on how many of the 2 extra requirement missions you have completed. Sadly, there's no reward for getting all gold markers, though.
    The environments have to be what makes these games inferior to the first two DS games. As said before, they're very linear, and much, much smaller than the environments in the first Movie games. And although there's a few hidden "scan equipment" boxes to find, there's no free roam, so you're forced to find them during missions, even though only a few are actually difficult to find. There's no extra "found in the environment" challenges to tackle, either. This makes the game very short-- even if you go back and get gold medals, you'll probably beat each game in under 10 hours. (It should be noted that four of the environments, which move the story forward, don't have any kind of extra challenges or requirements.)

    Another big letdown is that one of the major things the DS had going for it-- being able to scan any vehicle in the game and then convert to that mode-- is completely absent from this game. In the first tutorial level, you scan either a light, medium, or heavy vehicle, and once your self-named character scans it you can't scan anything else and are stuck with that form for the rest of the game.
    The character rosters are pretty minimal. Nearly all of the time you'll be playing as your genero-bot (or -con), which again wouldn't be bad if you could switch between a bunch of different vehicle modes like you could in the first DS games, but here it just gets monotonous. As the Autobots, you also get to play as Optimus Prime, Sideswipe, Breakaway, and Bumblebee, and as the Decepticons, you can play as Sideways, Barricade, Starscream, and Megatron, but these are all only for very brief challenge missions for the most part. The only exception are the couple of aerial combat missions in each game, where you'll play as either Breakaway or Starscream, which are very very basic. (In fact, Breakaway uses the same model as Starscream even though they look nothing alike. LAME.)
    Also, the boss fights are incredibly uninspired. In the Decepticon's game, you fight Bumblebee, Ironhide, and Prime. In the Autobot's game, you fight Grindor, Sideways, Starscream, and Megatron. Not a huge selection there, given the RotF movie's large character roster. You don't even get to fight the Fallen in either game-- that's dealt with "offscreen"! And every fight is exactly the same-- they'll stand in the center and just keep firing until you get them down about one-fourth of their health, then they'll hide behind a forcefield and you'll have to scan something within about 10 seconds that will redirect something to blow them out of their cover, and the process repeats until they're dead. All you literally have to do is circle-strafe them and you'll win. Even the final boss fights are the same, with one extra stationary gun added with makes it maybe about 5% more difficult.
    Also, the story and cutscenes are much weaker than in the first game. Heck, the story is practically non-existent-- the story only moves through the most major points of the movie's storyline at four missions, and the rest of the missions are just random quests like "destroy/protest NEST vehicles" that have nothing to do with the movie other than the mention of NEST. The "cutscenes", for the most part, involve very minimal animation and just are dialogue boxes. The spoken dialogue (which happens on the four missions that move the story forward in each game) is well-done and uses the same actors as on the "main system" games, however, so that's a plus. The music is also slightly better than in the first game-- the main themes for the Autobots and especially the Decepticons are very fitting and epic-sounding, though most of the in-mission music is pretty forgettable.
    Like in the first game, you can log online with the DS and download daily challenges to compete in. Also like in the first game, they get pretty repetitive, but you get to choose from a couple different challenges each day instead of only one. However, the main downside to the "new" daily challenges is that it requires a lot lot LOT of points to go up in your "online rank title", and unfortunately gaining in online rank titles is the only way to get some weapons and get 100% on your game. It's a ridiculously repetitive way of trying to artificially lengthen the game-- I gave up after playing about 40 challenges and getting going up all of three ranks with plenty more empty weaponry slots still sitting there in my profile.
    You're also able to hook up with other Nintendo DS owners locally and play a versus game, but I don't know anyone locally who has either of these games, so I can't comment on the multiplayer. Sorry.

    Seeing as how the Revenge of the Fallen DS games use the same engine as the first TF Movie DS games, you'd think they'd have spent the extra time upgrading the gameplay from great to excellent. Instead, the RotF DS games are a definite downgrade. Despite a few nice extras like the ability to switch our weaponry and gain experience, these are overshadowed by the much more limited environments, inability to switch your main character to different forms, uninspired boss battles, and considerably more limited replay value given the limited number of challenges. Buy the first TF Movie DS games instead of these, and if you already have those... well, unless you're a huge completist, I'd spend your money on a more deserving DS game instead, or at least wait and get these on a heavy discount.

Graphics: 7/10
Music: 8/10
Gameplay: 13/20
Storyline: 4/10
Level Design: 7/10
Cutscenes: 4/10
Controls: 18/20
Replayability: 4/10

Overall Rating:65/100 Above Average

(Screencaps taken from Gamespot.com)

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