March 2018 Playthrough - Transformers: Devastation

[singlebanana]

Was playing again last night, and can I just say...Blitzwing is a freaking jerkface!  Holy cow, is that a hard enemy.  I had a little trouble with Megatron in the initial fight, and again with Starscream, but man, Blitzwing is giving me real problems.  I'm hoping to get over that hump this evening, but yowza, he sure is difficult.

Yeah, I finished Chapter 1 the other day and had to fight the final boss several times. And yes, I'm playing this on easy as well. Button mashy games aren't really my cup o tea.

[GrayGhost81]

I picked this one up a couple weeks ago. I'm excited to learn it's only 5-6 hours long.

Does that mean you're IN?

[Pam]

I’m in!

[MetalFRO]

What difficulty are you playing on?

To the surprise of nobody, I played on the easiest difficulty.

Whatever the default is, which is what I typically do.

The G1 fanboy in me, was so happy that they had Wheeljack, in this game.

Yeah, I played for a while as Wheeljack, which was awesome.  I've been playing as Grimlock for the last little bit, now that I've unlocked him

[MetalFRO]

Well, I just finished Chapter 4, so I’m ahead of schedule. Menaskr was a jerk, but ended up being easier to take down than either Devastator or Blitzwing, at least for me. His size is a disadvantage to him and his attack style, so use that to yours, if you haven’t got that far yet. Also, stay close to him.

[MetalFRO]

I’m in a rhythm now, so I’m still playing, and just finished Chapter 6. The second fight with Soundwave is pretty awesome. I won’t spoil it, but to say it’s pretty interesting and fun.

[MetalFRO]

Forgot to post earlier, but I finished the story campaign. I will wait to discuss some of the story elements until everyone else is coming along. I enjoyed the game on the whole, however.

[Pam]

Started this last night. I'm playing on XB1 on the middle difficulty. I played through 6 or 7 missions which I think still leaves me in chapter 1.

I really like the art style. The combat is quite button-mashy and it makes my hands hurt after a while but it is satisfying to quickly transform into a vehicle and slam into an enemy. The ultimate moves are also pretty cool.

I haven't paid much attention to the story.

[MetalFRO]

Started this last night. I'm playing on XB1 on the middle difficulty. I played through 6 or 7 missions which I think still leaves me in chapter 1.

I really like the art style. The combat is quite button-mashy and it makes my hands hurt after a while but it is satisfying to quickly transform into a vehicle and slam into an enemy. The ultimate moves are also pretty cool.

I haven't paid much attention to the story.

I like how the story kind of tries to appear like it's an episode of the cartoon, but the plot is pretty "Transformers-nerd" heavy, so I felt like the exposition got a bit too obtuse and self-important after a bit, even for a long time fan of the original like myself.  Perhaps if I was riding higher on the nostalgia it wouldn't have felt so heavy-handed, but oh well.  It was still fun hearing a lot of the original voice cast come back, and even the replacements weren't too bad.  The guy who did the voice work for Starscream and Wheeljack in the game did an admirable job of replicating Chris Latta's tone and that trademark Starscream rasp.

[singlebanana]

Sorry to be checking in so late on this. With the fun drive last month, the new site leadership announcement, and a lot of personal stuff going on, I was really afraid that I wouldn't be able to finish this game. Luckily?? I had a stomach bug today and had to stay home from work. The struggle is real, I guess...

Anyway, I just want to give some of my thoughts on the game and respond to some of what's already been said. I have to agree with FRO, but be much more infatic and say that I absolutely love the story this game! It really felt like I was in an episode of the Transformers, possibly one of those five-part weekly series. Haha! This game is super button mashy, as Pam said, and I have to say that the game play is probably the worst part of it, but it's not altogether terrible. I have to admit that I haven't played a lot of modern hack and slash games, and that definitely weighs heavily on my opinion.

I feel like a lot of the controls were a little off, especially having the same button for transforming and dodging. This gave me problems on many occasions. It just seemed that they wanted to do so much that they had to map the same button to do different things at different situations. I think this is the case where less is more.

There wasn't really good tutorial on how to fuse weapons and it wasn't until the end that I even learned that you could sell weapons and also purchase special moves. Perhaps this is all in the online manual, which of course I'm never going to bother to read. However I thought that the game did do a good job with the in-game tutorials and I never felt like I was stuck. If I had trouble somewhere, oftentimes there would be a pop-up reminding me what I should try. Perhaps this is more of an annoying feature to some of you more modern gamers, but for me it was nice.

This game is simply beautiful and I loved how true they were to all the character designs. Would have liked to have had more Autobot options, but at the same time, I can see how that would be problematic and time-consuming. In the least, I feel like there should have been an Autobot combiner that you got to use for some of the bigger fights. The voice acting for me was pretty good, but I have to disagree about Starscream's voice. That is such a well-known voice that they really needed to get someone who could do it better. Thankfully (though being one of my favorite characters I would have loved to have seen him more) he wasn't in the game very much.

There were tons of collectibles and of course items that I really had no idea what I was picking up most of the time. Green cubes are for health and that's pretty much all I cared about. Wasn't a big fan of many of the driving scenes and I felt like the camera was a little wonky during these at times.

Not the best game we've ever played, but I still had a really fun time with it. I thought the length was pretty spot-on and probably helps diminish most of the gripes I have.

[BuriedOnMars]

I feel like a lot of the controls were a little off, especially having the same button for transforming and dodging.

This.  X100

[MetalFRO]

I feel like a lot of the controls were a little off, especially having the same button for transforming and dodging.

This.  X100

I got used to it after a while, but yeah, I would have to agree as well.  It's a little weird dodging, then having to use the same button to transform for a quick stomp attack while in slow-mo, or dodging and transforming to set up a power uppercut.  Not as intuitive as it should have been, which is surprising for Platinum.

[zophar53]

I'm disappointed I didn't look into this playthrough game earlier in the month. Between the comments here and a let's play video I watched earlier today, I gotta say this game looks freaking rad. I'm ok with it being a bit button-mashy; I'm loving the visuals and sound effects. It kind of looks like a mashup of the cartoon I loved as a kid and awesome anime-style character-action combat. Platinum's catalog is a little spotty, when they do a game right they really make a fantastic action game. I found an XOne copy for just under $20 brand new, but I may already own a PS+ copy...gonna have to check on that when I get home.

[singlebanana]

So this just twerked my A.M. ...........

[MetalFRO]

So this just twerked my A.M. ...........

Man, that's pretty cool!  I wish the vocalist was a little better, but honestly, that was a sweet cover.  And that is some next-level cosplay going on!  Cool that they included RC as well.