BotCon 2009: Transformers Activision Games

Activision and Luxoflux

Activision and its developers are set to jump all over this Transformers bitch. How are they gonna do that? How about five unique games? One for Xbox 360 and PS3, one for Wii (taking advantage of its controls), one for the PS2 (thankfully NOT being ported to the Wii with waggle tacked on), and 2 for DS (much like last year). Each game was designed specifically to take advantage of the strengths of each console. But, of course, the most useful feature? You can Jump and Transform! Oh yes.

Activision spared no expense making these games epic; between all five, 500 people worked on development. Oh baby! Luxoflux is developer responsible for the “next-gen” systems (but not the other games), and was present for the panel, so most of the questions would seem to be largely be centered around this version of the game – although other aspects may apply to the rest.

The voice talent for these games is crazy. Peter Cullen and Frank Welker are back as Prime and Megatron respectively. They even got to record together, which was a great experience for the developers to watch. It was difficult to get voice talent for the first movie because the actors weren’t all decided until the last minute. This time, with lots of returning characters — and the foreknowledge that the robots would be able to talk — it was much easier to secure the voice talent for this game. Even got Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox into the studio, which was “a really GREAT day.”

This game wasn’t designed to address what might have been wrong with previous games, but rather was created first and foremost as a “great game.” The designers would look at the characters and critically think about what role each character would fulfill on the battlefield. This especially comes through in multiplayer. Oh yeah, the multiplayer! Haven’t seen anything like this since the moderately adequate Beast Wars games. Does that mean the fighting isn’t inane and repetitive? Hmm…

DLC is going to be super-happy fun time! Apart from characters (such as Soundwave), there will be “a lot more”, including stuff that will “make G1 fans happy.” The content will be equal across the Xbox 360 and PS3. Likewise, acheivements and trophies aren’t designed to be given for completing inane tasks; instead they reward players for mastering different aspects of gameplay. There are a few tied to completing a separate “medals” system within the game, so you definitely can’t get them all until you’ve completed these milestones. But for sure, players won’t be playing and replaying the same stages over and over, grinding pointlessly to get every achievement (or trophy) in the game. The most interesting achievement is a “viral” achievement that you can only get if you compete against one of the original “carriers” (one of the developers), or play against someone who got it from the developers… or someone else!

So how “spoilery” is the game? How different and unique is it that one can play this game without ruining their enjoyment of the movie? The developers asked Paramount what the top four or five best moments in the film, which allowed them to extrapolate and explore ideas that might not have made it into the film. Both the movie and game “begin and end with the same storyline”, but the game will definitely “tell the story from the bots’ perspective.” Even some of the same music is going to be used for both the film and game, due in no small part to the composer of the original film also working directly on the game. Cool? You bet it is.

I’m looking forward to this game, especially as an improvement over the previous Activision offering, but even more as a nice end cap for a Powet.TV Transformers game retrospective! Stay tuned, Powet Rangers.