Transformers: Revenge Of the Fallen

System: Wii
Developer: Krome Studios Melbourne
Publisher: Activision
Genre: Third-person shooter
Players: 1-2 (maybe more)


As you may be aware Justin (a.k.a flaminglemon) and I visited Krome Studios Melbourne back in April and were privileged enough to get our sweaty hands on the unfinished Transformers: Revenge Of the Fallen game for Wii. Without giving away too much they showed us only a snippet of what they’ve proudly been working on for the past year. They’ve been pretty tight lipped regarding the game and although we were invited to play the unfinished code they were still quite secretive. As many of you know the previous Transformers video game for Wii was something to be forgotten. However this time with our one and only Krome Studios in the developer driving seat, we can confidently say (from first impressions) that they’ve definitely delivered a better experience.

TRANSFORMERS ROBOTS IN DISGUISE!! Phew I’m glad I got that out of the way. The game, hence the name revolves around the story from the upcoming movie. Now from the main campaign they showed us three modes. We saw a third person combat stage, a driving sequence and a flight-based rail level. We were also lucky enough to get our hands on a co-op mode called Arena; which they initially didn’t plan on showing us, how lucky we were! From what we saw and played the game looks very promising. Enter into the third person level, there’s a cut scene and we’re greeted by none other than Bumblebee! You’re goal is to run around through a linear path in a city jumping on rooftops and ‘defeating’ Decepticons. It’s basically like a Beat’ em up. I put ‘defeating’ in quotation marks because they adamantly told us Transformers do not kill but only defeat. This is one such example of how Hasbro has had an influence on how the game must be implemented. After all giant robots smashing and breaking things aren’t meant to be violent or cool in any way what-so ever, yeah right!

Now although the main game is single player you can play co-op in what Krome call the drop-in drop-out feature. A second player using only the Wii remote can start to play at any time during the game by pressing ‘2’ and play as what Krome call the “Remote Weapon System”. This little machine floats around the main player and hence the name; is equipped with some neat weapons. You can shoot, produce a shield and perform your own special moves to help out the main player. This is very similar to that of Mario Galaxy where the second player could collect and shoot star bits. The mechanics of the game are also pretty nifty, take health for example. Although it’s nothing new, on the top left you have a health bar but below that there’s also an energy bar. You can use energy to replenish health but its major purpose is to fuel special moves which I’ll mention later on. With the second player you can also exchange energy between the main player, so if you’re low on health and don’t have any energy to replenish it just call on your friend to send some over. An issue we came across in the game was while we were on the rooftops. We were unable to determine where to advance and go to next. This resulted in us randomly attempting to jump over to unreachable buildings thus falling to our doom. The only way we were able to advance was with trial and error, small hints or arrows wouldn’t have gone astray.


The control scheme for the main player has about a 20 minute learning curve. The nun-chuck control stick is used to move, down on the d-pad produces the character’s special move and left and right on the pad exchanges energy between the players. The rest of the buttons are used to fire, produce your shield and jump while motion controls are used for your melee attacks and aiming. There’s no ground breaking use of the motion controls here, simple gestures such left and right produce punches while up and down gestures administer a more powerful over-head smash. But wait there’s more! Hold down the c-stick while flailing around and you can do combos against not one, not two but all enemies in the vicinity. Although it can be very satisfying dealing a blow while jumping mid air, the fighting mechanics could be a touch more fluent, Wii MotionPlus where are you?! ! On more than one occasion you’ll find yourself flailing around in a desperate attempt to destroy a Decepticon until you remember about that special move. Despite taking a chunk out of your energy bar it delivers an almost lethal blow to enemies in a cool animation sequence. The moves are unique to all the characters, fantastically animated and definitely equal awesomeness.

The driving sequence, we agreed was our favourite out of the time we got to play the game. As Transformers do, you transform! Alternating between being a car to drive and a robot to fire your weapons is really cool. In the level we played our goal was to chase the enemy(we think it was Megatron) through the city streets and into a tunnel while dodging traffic and shooting bad guys. Now dodging traffic was very important because if we hit an oncoming vehicle we lost control and health. It makes no sense for a massive robot to be totalled by a small car but nonetheless the second player can come in very handy to take out the traffic before it takes out you. Bumblebee plus small sedan = sedan win.


A flying level! Sounds awesome, it did and when they mentioned it we were excited, that was until we saw it. We personally didn’t get to play this one, instead we watched Mark Coombes take the reins. The level we saw consisted of flying as a new Autobot named Sideways shooting enemies down in a ‘Lylat Wars’ fashion over the sea. After dancing around the sky for a few minutes he transformed and started jumping from platform to platform in order to ‘complete a task’. The task we do not know because they wouldn’t show us! Kevin Burfitt quickly stepped in front and covered the screen in an attempt to prevent us from seeing anything top secret. What a nice fellow. The major drawback to the level was the ocean which honestly looks very bland and the entire level is based over the ocean! The water effects were weak and the draw distance was poor, it’s a slight let down but hopefully they’ll have improved it for the final code.

Arena mode, oh how it could have been a fanboy’s dream. Instead of pinning two players against each other in an all out melee you have to team up and contend with waves of enemies. Fair enough, a bit of team building and robot ‘defeating’ action! The stage is set from a scene in the movie, the characters; top secret and the mission; defeat an infinite number of enemies until you’re defeated. There’s really not much to tell, it can be quite enjoyable for a little while but after 15 minutes or so it gets rather repetitive.


Throughout the game there are quirky voice-overs which will definitely give you a laugh. In terms of visuals, the game is definitely above par and for Wii it’s not bad. The character models are decent and the environments are average. As mentioned above the special moves are animated superbly, and personally I’m excited to see all of character’s various special moves when released. Because we only saw a very small portion of the game I’m not going to make any real conclusions other than kids will love the game. Fans of the upcoming movie will certainly enjoy it however I’m not entirely sure the die-hard Transformers fans will like this version for the Wii.