The story is all about the eternal battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons to catch the AllSpark, some giant cube (which can also become very, very tiny) containing enormous powers rendering the possessor virtually invincible. On which side you’ll do the fighting is entirely your choice, but it doesn’t make a real difference in gameplay since the mission objectives are practically the same on both sides: go to that spot and kill some robots.

So, that was all about the storyline, but that’s not the immediate cause or reason for this low score of the game. The main problem is the monotonous gameplay and all its simplicity. On either sides, you can bash or shoot everything that can be bashed or shot, but there aren’t many possibilities to go on a rampage. You’re offensive powers are a cumulation of heavy and light attacks accompanied by firearms which are divided into the same categories. You’d think that when having four buttons to attack with, you would be able to do some damage or major combos. Forget it! Every combo keeps coming back, over and over again, no funky stuff like dive, shoot, dive smash, back flip and shooting. And before I forget, apart from these manners of destruction there’s yet another option for you to use. The player can pick up items found in the environment and catapult the mall the way over to the enemies face… WAUW!

In between the missions (and also during) you can transform into a vehicle (like a muscle car or a F-22 Raptor) to get from one area to another a bit faster. Too bad, but the control of these vehicles truly sucks monkey-balls. Try to get your truck (Optimus, leader of the Autobots) to stay on the road or get it through a bend without going off-road. Add to that the similar control of every vehicle , one might go a bit faster than the other, but the driving remains exactly the same for each on the disc. The transforming animation from bot to car is rather nice though, or at least it would be if it wouldn’t keep on coming back over and over again. A dive where the robot morphs in mid air while performing a perfect corkscrew (or how do the call that?).

Luckely, the graphics of this game don’t under-perform, I might even call it the stronger point! On the other hand, this is PS2 so don’t expect very high-quality images. Compare it to GTA, no great graphics but sufficient to keep us happy. Add a destructible environment to that and you’ve got a visually acceptable game.

Since the campaign can be finished in little over 4 hours, the creators (luckily) have added some extra content for you to collect in the game levels. So, for those Sherlocks among you, there are hidden cubes to be found (100 for each level) which give you access to many new challenges, concept art and stuff like that.