Transformers Devastation

I'm surprised by how much I was impressed with Transformers Devastation. I got it for free during a Playstation Plus "free games" thing and it kind of languished on my PS4 hard-drive for a while. I only got around to trying it out a few days ago, thinking I'd just get a few Trophies and then delete it to make room for other games.


It's by Platinum Games, and it shows. It's not a million miles removed from stuff like Bayonetta, fast-paced melee combat against multiple opponents, end-of-level grading, etc. I'm not sure why that made me hesitant to try it out. In any case, I became a bit obsessed with getting better and better at it. It's not a long game, and that might be why I wanted to play it again. If it were some obnoxiously long, open-world game like Skyrim or The Witcher I'd likely have gotten bored early on and never come back to it. I certainly wouldn't have leveled up my character as high as possible and beat the game on the highest difficulty setting. And I certainly wouldn't have wanted to keep playing it after that.


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Another reason why I was reluctant to try it out because a guy on Youtube who's really into games by the developer said it wasn't that remarkable by their standards. I figured he knew what he was talking about more than I did. But it got its' hooks into me. Even very late into my time with it, I was still finding new ways to play it. It gives you a lot of little RPG-style mechanics to make everyone's experience potentially different, even though there are only five characters to choose from.

In addition to being one of the few games I tried to "complete", it's also one of the few in recent memory where I was happy just kind of running around the game world. Just hopping around in areas I'd already cleared out and... playing, I guess.


Especially as Grimlock. Seeing that big, stupid toy-looking dinosaur robot running with his little arms flapping from side to side trying to keep up with sports cars and jets.


In some ways, it feels like it has the spirit of an old NES-era licensed game, but through a modern lens and using contemporary trends in games. I've heard similar sentiment regarding the new Zelda, "Breath of the Wild", but I've yet to confirm if that's the case. Devastation feels kind of like a self-contained episode of the old tv show in tone. I think of it more fondly than the over-designed, self-important War for Cybertron.


This sounds like a shitty game review I'd have written when I was 15. "Now I will go down my checklist of Things and then Rate them Accordingly". Sorry about that. Just thinking out loud here. I liked it, is what I'm saying.

And I like the soundtrack. Okay I'm done.

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~A.H.