We hate this game. Bringing back the Transformers in film form was insulting enough, but this trough of unplayable bollocks just stamps on the nostalgic bliss of the franchise. This should have been a fun and gratifying game, but is instead the kind of film tie-in tripe that’ll send long-term fans into rehab. If a game ever felt broken, and only 60% complete, then Transformers: The Game is it.

Your devotion to Transformers will have no bearing on your enjoyment here. From the smallest things, such as climbing buildings, all the way up to the important things, like the combat or the driving, this game is a broken piece of arse, and only our most intense, professional attitude prevented us from stamping on the disc and lobbing the PS3 plain out the window. It isn’t broken in every sense, but it’s just depressing in that sick, fascinating way – if your patience is thin, you’re going to lose your temper here.

At the start, your spirits are steady: you can choose to play as either the Decepticons or the Autobots, and this idea of choice is a refreshing revelation. Two games! This is a cause for celebration, you think, before choosing your favourite side with a smile.

Well... stop smiling. Both games are monumentally awful, but they do, at first, play differently. Playing as the Autobots starts you in Suburbia, where the Decepticons are invading; playing as the Decepticons lands you in a giant military base in the desert. The ability to transform, along with the fairly diverse range of playable characters is instantly gratifying, but it’ll take you a mere hour to realise how shallow it all is. Destroy things, transform, travel to the next place– this is all the game is, and the awkward difficulty of these missions is perplexing. Destroying the city would be fun (if you’re the Decepticons, of course), but instead you’re forced to endure a set of missions completely at odds with the licence’s potential.

Destroying radio towers is one thing, but where is the imagination? Traveller’s Tales, developer of the overrated Lego Star Wars games, is responsible for this mess. There are few good ideas here, and everything present in the PS3 version stinks of the last generation. The graphics are barely above average, the sounds effects are awful, and the mission structure requires little intelligence or perception.

Our favourite mission was a Decepticon one, but that isn’t to say that we enjoyed it. At first, we thought it was good; you play as Blackout, the Transformer that doubles up as an Apache helicopter. Flying over an army base in the desert, your mission is to take 20 enemy aircraft out of the sky in a set time limit, and only your helicopter form will keep you from getting killed. Entertaining, huh? It all gets a little Ace Combat from there, which is at first acceptable. Within two minutes, however, you stop to get health and are killed for it.

In the second attempt, you find that helicopters, the most deadly foe there, don’t count as enemies on your quota of 20. Only Harriers and Stealth Bombers do. Why? Why are you forced to kill annoyingly hard enemies at your leisure? Before you know it, the horrendous targeting system has ruined your chase of the enemies, and you’re out of time.

Rubbish. Once you’ve done it, you’re transported to the exact location of the Autobot missions. This seals the deal: both games are exactly the same, and nothing about either of them is special. The robots feel flimsy, the controls are unresponsive and the combat is an almost turn-based series of button mashes that ends in a random defeat. Worst of all, the transformed vehicles handle like a Skoda with a paper steering wheel, and the tiresome transformations don’t induce any glee. Almost every one of the Transformers controls the same, and the missions feel identical, regardless of the side you choose.

There’s no passion in this lifeless, brain-dissolving tie-in. The licence could have been implemented in so many ways, but the tack taken here is in the name of mindless destruction, a formula that would’ve worked so much better if they had done anything with it. Sadly, it wasn’t to be. Traveller’s Tales not only took a bad approach towards making a tie-in, but developed that approach in the worst possible way. The Autobot missions expose this. The game is about destroying buildings, yet it encourages you not to in half the missions. What’s the point of a game that encourages you not to have fun?

Transformers: The Game barely tries to entertain you after the first hour is up, and the choice between sides is meaningless. TT spliced in some CGI cut-scenes, as well, but they’re completely out of sync with the events of the gameplay, and the voiceovers are a bit laughable (Shia LaBeouf, it turns out, is an actor, and not an exotic hat). Murder your expectations, because these robots are better off in disguise.

Samuel Roberts