Savage Entertainment, Hasbro, and Activision are names that will sit in my conscience for years to come, not because Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for PSP was somehow great, but because it was utter crap. Sure, the boxart’s great and completely misleading, but there is nothing worth justifying the hours of agony spent trying to beat this title.
It’s really a dual stick shooter, without the second stick. The key to this title is to navigate the linear, predictable environment with the analog nub and shoulder buttons while holding down Square. It’s so easy, a child could learn to play within seconds. Yes, there’s a melee button and a dodge button, but the dodge button gives little advantage when being shot at and the melee attacks are so slow that you’ll inevitably absorb more damage than you can dish out. And I should mention one thing before I move on. You cannot transform in this game. There’s vehicle levels and on-foot levels, but the only chance you get to transform is by pulling off a special super-melee attack that depletes your entire Energon meter.
Yes, Energon does make an appearance in the game, and is dropped by the majority of your slain enemies. But don’t be fooled. Though countless Energon cubes litter the stages, it takes a lot of cubes to fill the Energon meter and only one special move to waste it all. Weapons powerups are also scattered throughout the levels, and work in conjunction with the Combo System to increase the spread and speed of your character’s weapon fire. Though the movie places a large emphasis on physical combat, this game is essentially Asteroids within a Michael Bay setting.
The key to beating every enemy, except for the bosses, is to quickly alternate your character’s movements onscreen, i.e. left, right, left, right. Doing this ‘complicated maneuver’ fast enough completely incapacitates the enemy A.I., as it gets stuck in an animation loop for turning (you guessed it) left and right. From here, simply shoot at them with your weapon, complete with infinite ammo. This works well for one-on-one fights, but becomes a problem when the game tosses five or six enemies on screen at once.
