Transformers:
Battlegrounds Playstation 4 Video Game Review
Publisher: Outright Games
Developer: Coatsink
ESRB Rating: E10+
Release Date: October 23, 2020
Hasbro's first non-microtransactional
mobile game in years was released JUST before the next generation of consoles
was made available, so TECHNICALLY it's current-gen, but that was pretty
close. Anyways, it's also their first non-mobile game in even longer to
be based on an actual cartoon-- that is, Transformers: Cyberverse. The
game was released to almost no fanfare, looks very simplistic graphics-wise,
and was at a relatively discount price when released ($40 U.S., compared
to the normal $60). Almost no game details were released before the game
was actually out, and the packaging didn't even have any actual new art,
but just art re-used from toy packaging and various other Cyberverse products.
So you'd be forgiven for not even giving this game a second glance... but
SHOULD you? Well, you'll already giving it a second glance by reading this
review, so let's see.
Looking at screencaps,
it generally doesn't look that impressive, and like borderline "shovelware".
And indeed, by PS4 standards this game is VERY below-par, especially for
a retail-release and not some small cheap indie game. The graphics look
like they could easily be accomplished by a PS2, with the models simplified
even compared to the relatively cheap Cyberverse cartoon. The environments
are fairly basically detailed as well, and there's no humans at all-- the
humans have been "evacuated" pre-game, so you're free to wander around
towns and villages with no "collateral damage" to worry about. Although
things still look decent when in the default "mostly overhead" view when
playing, when zoomed in on the models for cutscenes you can see that the
graphics don't cut it for a modern title, not remotely. For cutscenes the
models don't even talk or express themselves much, there's just dialogue
boxes on the bottom (that are thankfully voiced by the same voice actors
from the cartoon). The interface itself is basic, but in comparision to
the in-game graphics it's pretty smooth-looking, with pretty slick high-def
art, so that's good.
The story is incredibly
basic, and seems to follow an alternate plot after Season 2 of the cartoon
begins-- everyone from the Ark is awake, and halfway through the game you
find the Allspark only for Megatron to take it and threaten Cybertron's
existence with it. Yawn. Haven't we heard this story before many, many,
many times? There's really only even 1 remotely original twist in the plot,
otherwise it's pretty straightforward. Additionally, although it GENERALLY
fits into Season 2, it doesn't really line up completely with ANY part
of the cartoon. For example, Windblade comments on Bumblebee getting his
voice box just fixed, which would put it before the beginning of Season
2, but Wheeljack comments later on their adventures on the moon, which
happened after Season 2 began and 'Bee already had his voice back. Most
notably, although the Allspark is involved, Cheetor is nowhere to be seen--
instead it's found in some random desert ruin. The action ends up in Cybertron
at the end, which shouldn't happen given the events of much of the latter
half of Season 2. Additionally, basically no Season 2-and-on characters
are present. So the story doesn't really fit anywhere, which is weird for
a game BASED ON the cartoon.
As for the gameplay
itself, it's been described as "XCOM-like", which is accurate in terms
of it being turn-based gameplay on a grid, with each character on your
side taking their turn before the enemy all takes their turns. Cover also
helps a lot in keeping you out of your enemy's eyesight (and visa versa),
and like in XCOM, you have a certain number of "action points". Each character
can attack only once per turn-- with stronger attacks taking more action
points-- and moving a certain distance also takes a certain number of action
points. So you can decide not to fight and just move a pretty long distance
in one turn (this is normally the only time when anyone will transform
into their alt modes); use a really strong attack but not move; or do a
weaker attack and move a shorter distance. Many characters can also be
put on "overwatch" instead of attacking if enemies are too far away, so
that as soon as someone comes into your view (or you into an enemy's),
they get an automatic shot off before the 'Bot can finish their turn.
That said, it's a bit
simpler than XCOM-- as you'd expect for a game aimed at kids-- and with
several differences. For one, there is no partial cover-- you're either
fully covered or not. In addition to that more simplistic take, there's
no % chance of hitting someone-- if they're within your range, and you
target them, you're going to hit them, and you'll always do the same amount
of damage (which is listed with the attack). If you don't use all of your
action points in a turn, remaining action points will be converted into
Energon, which will be stored in a handy-dandy Energon meter on the side
of the screen. (You'll also get a small amount of Energon for doing actions,
but not at the same high rate.) When the Energon meter is half full, it
unlocks a "special move" for each of the Transformers on the battlefield
(depending on the mission, you have anywhere from 1-6 in play at once,
with 3 being the normal number). When the Energon meter is completely full,
a stronger version of the special move is unlocked. Whenever a Transformer
uses a partial or fully-strengthened special move, the Energon meter is
subtracted the relevant amount. It should be noted that using a special
move does NOT take any action points, which makes them especially handy
when you need to take out a lot of 'Cons in a turn.
Unlike with XCOM, instead
of having a constantly rotating cast of characters, you only have 6 Autobots
you can play in the campaign. 2 are scouts-- Bumblebee and Windblade, which
are appropriately speedy and can deal some nice long-range damage. 2 are
brawlers-- Optimus Prime and Grimlock, who move fairly slow but can deal
a good amount of damage. (Grimlock, by the way, is the only one who stays
in his alt mode the whole time you're in battle, only transforming to robot
mode for cutscenes.) 2 are support characters-- Arcee and Wheeljack, who
can do some unique kinds of damage but are generally focused on being healers
for the other 'Bots.
Admittedly, having only
six characters to play as in a Transformers game is a bit anemic, and the
relatively low budget definitely shows through here. However, each Autobot
can be changed up significantly-- as you move through the campaign, you'll
unlock and be able to purchase with Energon (gained automatically at the
end of a mission) a veritable smorgasbord of new regular attacks and special
moves for each, expanding their capabilities and allowing you to tune each
'Bot to how you want to play. You'll unlock area attacks, moves that do
damage/heal everyone as you drive along, very powerful melee moves, moves
that can inflict unique status effects, and the like. You can also switch
out between the various abilities any time between missions, so you're
not "stuck" with a particular set of abilities after you choose them. This
can take a fair amount of the sting out of only being about to play as
6 different Autobots. Of course, given the storyline, death in this game
doesn't mean permadeath-- they're just out for the remainder of the mission.
There are three different
difficulties for the game-- Easy, Medium, and Hard, predictably-- and as
opposed to most games, they're actually accurate. No "Easy" modes that
are actually hard, here. The main campaign consists of 4 acts of at least
4 and up to 6 missions each, for a total of 20 missions. Most missions
consist of a "travel" phase where you have to get to a certain point with
weak Decepticons spawning continuously, and you have to toe the line between
taking them out before they get too numerous/deadly and not getting too
focused on them to the point where this phase never ends. After you reach
a point, after a short cutscene you'll usually engage in a boss battle
with one or more named Decepticons, usually with more hit points and stronger
attacks than an individual Autobot has. These are usually the hardest part
of the mission, but the game only permanently saves progress at the end
of each mission, which can be annoying. It temporarily saves progress at
the midpoint when you switch to the second portion of the mission, so if
you die in the second half you can re-start from the middle, but if you
exit out of the mission entirely you'll have to replay the whole thing
again-- and missions usually took me 30-45 minutes to beat (though I was
playing mostly on Hard). Aggravatingly, you can't restart from the mid-point
checkpoint manually-- even if you know you're about to lose, you have to
wait until everyone's dead before you can re-load. Why such a simple feature
was excluded is baffling to me.
The whole campaign takes
a decent 10-15 hours to complete, which is decent for a campaign, but beyond
the four different environments there really isn't enough variety. There's
only three-- THREE-- different types of non-named enemies (regular Decepticon
scouts, stronger Decepticon brawlers, and Seekers). Having so few enemy
types makes things get rather same-ish by the halfway point of the campaign.
This is compounded by the fact that-- except for Megatron-- you fight basically
every other boss Decepticon at least twice, usually three times. This includes
named Decepticons with dialogue like Shadow Striker, Soundwave, Starscream,
Slipstream, and Shockwave, as well as "redecoes" of the main three Decepticon
enemy types as various second-tier Transformers, like Ramjet and Dirge
from the Seekers, Roadtrap and Offroad from the brawlers, etc. The latter
never talk, but just serve as slighly-more-difficult variations on their
enemy types, often with attacks that will inflict some status effects on
you. (These include shock, which will do 1 damage to a TF a turn; decreasing
your attack or defense; or disallowing a TF to move or attack the next
turn.)
Beyond the campaign,
there's an "arcade mode" where up to 2 players can play against each other
locally. Normally Player 1 will play as the Autobots and Player 2 will
play as some Decepticon unnamed enemies, but there is one mode where Player
1 plays as the Decepticons (any of the 6 forementioned Decepticons with
dialogue in the campaign). In this mode, you're instead able to fight against
the named Autobots and take them down. The Decepticons have cool abilities,
but compared to the Autobots in the campaign, theirs are fixed. It's a
shame you can only play as them in this one version of the arcade mode,
but it is what it is. The other modes of the Arcade mode are: 1. Energon
Capture, where you battle it out for keeping control of Energon points
spread over the map; 2. Capture the Flag, where you have to take the enemy
flag back to your base 3 times before the enemy can do the same to you;
3. Two different modes that are basically Survival in all but name. In
one you face unlimited waves of enemies, in another you try to kill as
many as possible in 10 turns. They use the same maps and general mechanics,
and aren't really that different. If you don't have a second player, AI
takes over for Player 2. The AI is generally decent, but for some reason
in a certain situation where Energon mists slowly move over the map (they
auto-kill any TFs caught in them), they act really dumb and just ignore
the mists even if they're right next to them, basically killing themselves.
Beating a stage in arcade mode unlocks the next-hardest version of it (Easy-Medium-Hard,
just like in the campaign).
To tie up some loose
ends, the sounds mostly consist of a few crashes, shots, and bangs, and
the voice cast (which again, is the same as in the cartoon). So it does
the job, but that's about it. Same with the music-- it's there, and it's
not bad, but it's not something you're going to get stuck in your head.
It's pretty background-y and doesn't really take center stage at any point
during the game. As for the camera controls, for the most part you're almost
top-down, at a slight angle-- this is default, at least. You can use the
right stick on your controller to zoom in or change the camera angle, with
Transformers hidden from your view behind objects outlined in light blue,
which is certainly helpful. However, looking at the battlefield from a
more horizontal view will show you how quickly the environment ends outside
of the allowed battlefield-- it almost immediately dissolves into a blue
nothingness, which just looks bad. There couldn't even be generic terrain
you put in past a certain point? Meh. Additionally, the camera auto-focuses
on enemies when they move, which you'd expect-- but it's kinda glitchy
and jumpy when it does so. It's kinda off-putting, though you can hold
down a button to fast-forward through the enemy's turn, thankfully.
There is some DLC for
the game, but it's mostly just extra skins*. Gold skins, Energon skins--
not even new models, really, and one more Arcade Mode type-- though I haven't
purchased said DLC, so I can't comment on that last type of Arcade Mode.
It doesn't seem remotely worth the money to me.
Transformers: Battlegrounds
may at first look like it's a very crummy shovelware game-- and it definitely
has a very limited budget-- but there is a bit *ahem* more than meets the
eye to this game. There certainly could be more of a variety of TFs to
play as, environments, models, and enemies, but with the figurative popsicle
sticks and glue Coatsink was given for this game, they pulled off something
that is actually an okay Transformers game. It's got solid, easy-to-understand
rules, pulling off of the XCOM-style of games while adding in its own unique
touches like the Energon meter and special moves. Because of the repetiveness
of the game given how few types of enemies there are, I'd recommend getting
it during a good sale-- say, 40-50% off-- but at that it's absolutely worth
your time and money.
Graphics: 4/10
Music: 7/10
Gameplay: 17/20
Storyline: 3/10
Level Design: 7/10
Cutscenes: 6/10
Controls: 17/20
Replayability: 6/10
Technical Issues -2
Overall Rating:65/100
Above
Average
*The day before I was about to publish this review, a substantial bit
of DLC for the game-- "Shattered Spacebridges"-- hit for $10 U.S. Although
I have not played it, looking at the overview it appears to add a randomized
campaign to the game, wherein you have quick "runs" through each campaign
of several missions, with each mission focusing on getting a piece of the
spacebridge and then putting them all together in the end to get back to
your dimension. Compared to the main campaign, you don't normally heal
between missions, and you have to more thoughtfully decide how to upgrade
each of your Autobots, as you won't be able to afford everything by the
end of these mini-campaigns. Because of the randomized nature, mutliple
runs are encouraged. However, other than a few new maps, little actual
new material has been added to the game, so it doesn't affect my overall
review.
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