game. And we just reviewed Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron, which is a really good game.

So when this game showed up on my desk, I still had the taste of fun Transformers games

lingering in my mouth like garlic after pizza.

So I expected good things and tasty burps.

All I got was freaking heartburn.

Released in 2009 to coincide with the movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen doesn’t

do a whole lot you haven’t seen before. It’s basically a standard third-person brawler,

only because you play as Transformers, the fighting is actually split up by a couple

different segments...so flying, shooting, what have you.

Now, you don’t actually get to choose which side to play as, which you could do in the

PS3 and 360 versions of this game. Instead, each stage gives you a specific character

and you go from there. The weird thing is...it’s like, you’re playing as Bumblebee one minute,

then you’re shooting Bumblebee the next.

I mean...it’s like you’re some robot traitor.

And obviously, that could actually be interesting. But holy crap, that’s not the case with

Revenge of the Fallen. For starters, the game was actually ported

to the PlayStation 2. That means it’s a game that doesn’t even remotely push the

Wii’s hardware, because it also had to run on a less powerful system. And that means...blurry,

low-poly, outdated graphics. Sadly, that was the case with a lot of non-Nintendo Wii games.

That still makes me sad.

Games like this could’ve been awesome on Wii.

And the controls aren’t much better. I mean, aiming does benefit from the pointer, so shooting

feels great. But everything else is a clunky mess. The combat is dull, and you can’t

even freely transform. I mean...if you’re a serious Transformers fan who wants to blow

up some Decepticons on Wii, this at least lets you do that. But really, a game like

the newer Transformers Prime does it a lot better.

The

Wii had this unfortunate greenhouse effect where it was, like...third-party games were

usually bad, so people didn’t buy third-party games. And third parties didn’t publish

good Wii games because people didn’t buy third-party Wii games. So it was this vicious

cycle that ultimately led to games like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

A mediocre game to which only Transformers collectors need apply.