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The shakedown: Transformers & Pokemon Battle Revolution

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Picked up both of these games yesterday, since I had them on reserve and had store credit to completely cover one and partially cover the other. (Yes, I’m a 24-year-old man who likes giant robots and battling monsters. So what, you wanna fight about it?) How did they fare?

Well, let’s do the breakdown.

Transformers: The Game (Wii version)

The Good:
- The Transformers are rendered very well (I heard Traveller’s Tales had access to the same 3D model files used in the movie itself, so they should be).
- Melee combat is fairly simple and is what you’ll use to dispatch most enemies. Throwing a car at Barricade is pretty fun. Most controls in robot mode are fairly intuitive, actually, with the exception of aiming - it take a while to get used to the fact that your Transformer is going to fire at the reticle on screen where your pointer is, and not in the direction he’s facing.
The Bad:
- Driving controls are very, very sloppy. (Note: this only applies to car-modes, as I haven’t gotten to play as a heli, jet, or Scorponok.) Driving controls are also very awkward; using the handbrake - a near necessity, since apparently Bumblebee, who is a f’ing sports car, cannot make a hard left - requires the index finger and second finger to both be on the C and Z buttons of the Nunchuk; these buttons are close together, but not close enough to be usable with one finger, so unless you’re a skeleton or The Blob, this is not comfortable.
- Camera is f’ing terrible; it is tied to the cursor, which often gets moved to the side of the screen when you’re moving it back and forth for melee combat, and it does not automatically recenter - ever. There is not even an option to automatically recenter. It has to manually be done.
- Missions are frustrating sometimes; an example is the mission where you have to race three Decepticon drones to a used car lot before Sam Witwicky gets there; unfortunately, the drones start rather far away from you, and the used car lot isn’t even indicated on your radar until you’re already at it (and chances are that if you’re there, the Decepticons are there too.
- Oh, and - no Cybertron level. It’s an Xbox 360/Gamestop exclusive.
The Verdict:
- Well, I’m glad I didn’t spend real money on this. Store credit’s not real money. After I finish this, it’s going straight back to Gamestop. It’s fun, but not enough fun to keep me playing for long periods of time - I make it through a few missions and I just don’t want to play that much. Oh, and we were lied to - the Transformers do not make the original G1 sound effect when transforming. If you have to get this game, for the love of all that is holy, get the Xbox 360 Cybertron Edition. Maybe the DS version? Kevin picked it up, it might be okay. More on this later.

Pokemon Battle Revolution

The Good:
- The rendering is leaps and bounds beyond what Colosseum, the last 3D battler, was able to do. (Note: I’m fairly sure Gale of Darkness didn’t have a versus mode, so I am ignoring it for the moment.)
- Move animations seem to have a dynamic camera, finally, so moves aren’t always a case of ‘(a) show the move, (b) cut to the other Pokemon, (c) show the other half of the move animation’. Some moves are rendered like that, some are in splitscreen, some actually (finally!) show the two little buggers making contact during fights, and in one case (Seismic Toss), the target is picked up and literally thrown into orbit, where they fall back to Earth.
- There’s little to no story in this one; in this respect, it’s sort of like the N64 era of Pokemon battlers. Basically it’s “there is a theme park, it has colosseums, go do battle.” Woo! The colosseum gimmicks are usually enough to keep each battle interesting.
- Oh, and there’s an announcer - and, after about five hours of play, he has not managed to annoy the piss out of me. This is a new record for a video game announcer. I’m looking at you here, Digital Representations of John Madden.
- And, at long last, Pokemon has black people, among others. That’s right, the character creator has a few skin tones to pick from for each character type (three or four basic models for each gender, plus a load of custom items unlocked via beating colosseums, or using the rewards from beating colosseums).
- Lastly, the DS integration is pretty darn complete - in the single-player mode, you have the ability to copy your entire party plus all 18 storage boxes of your cockfighting seizure monsters into PBR at once; if you level them up or change them in the DS game, just copy it again. In multi-player mode, your DS is actually your controller - all action involved in picking a move takes place on the small screen. Basically Pokemon Battle Revolution replaces the top screen where a battle would ordinarily take place - and it looks good doing it.
The Bad:
- Some of the 3D models are just weird. Salamence’s wings still look like a kid’s 2D drawing of a battleaxe, Bastiodon looks like a fricking Muppet (as does Carnivine), and Shuckle looks like a Claymation model. Then again, variety is the spice of life.
- As mentioned, there’s zero story, so if you’re looking for story, you’re screwed. And, well, friend codes. Do I need to say more? I hate friend codes. Nintendo does offer random matchups, though, so even if you can’t save a random opponent’s friend code afterwards (hint: you can’t), you can still find random battles - and really, I’m not that bothered, because how often do I friend someone on, say, Xbox Live after one game of Halo? Not very damn often.
- The character creator is not as flexible as we might have been lead to believe; you don’t really set a custom skintone so much as you choose from four or so per model, then customize from there. Some clothing and items are still only for specific models - want to make your character based on the ‘Cool Boy’ model wear a t-shirt? Sorry, no can do - but the design is adapted onto his jacket. There’s one female model (the young girl, basically a hyperactive 6-year-old) who is completely unable to wear pants; she’s stuck with dresses, all the time. (To be fair, the game does warn you about this if you pick the model - her description says “Refuses to wear anything except dresses.”) The others, however, are fairly normal.
- The biggest flaw, though, is that some of the individual colosseum gimmicks punish you for having well-trained Pokemon. The nastiest of these is the Fortune Match, where you don’t choose your team from your normal lineup, but from a Pokemon Wheel - you and your opponent’s 6 Pokemon are mixed together and put onto a wheel of fortune, and you each take turns picking four randomly out of the lineup. I cannot emphasize this enough: if you bring well-trained Pokemon into this arena, you will lose, because your opponent will usually get at least two of them. Luckily, this is where the rental lineups come into play - groups of six random, mediocre Pokemon that are designed so you have something to use if you don’t own the DS games yet. They’re important, because your opponent likes to boobytrap their six with useless things like Kakuna.
The Verdict:
- It’s got its flaws, but overall, this is a pretty good addition to the Pokemon game lineup. I had a good deal of fun playing it last night just in a single-player capacity; I haven’t even tried multiplayer, mostly because no one else was around for most of the time I was playing it.

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