Hasbro’s Transformers has to be one of the all-time greatest toy lines and entertainment franchises. The titular robots in disguise were in their prime (pun intended) in the 1980s, when the mind-blowing innovation of toy vehicles that could transform into robots swept the world, along with a mega-popular animated TV series and an epic movie. Then the franchise had a second wave starting in 2007, with Michael Bay’s blockbuster take on the concept. The Transformers franchise has also spawned many video game spin-offs over the years, some of them really good. Others… well, they belong on the scrap heap. Here are the ten best.
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10) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the second, and one of the best, of the games based directly on the Michael Bay Transformers movies. It was a long way from great, but it was competent enough to expand upon your enjoyment of the movie. It gave you Transformers, and it gave you big, destructible environments in which you fight in robot form, and zip about it in vehicle form. The multiplayer was actually pretty passable too, although it wasn’t well populated for long.
9) Transformers: Battlegrounds
While Michael Bay is still making Transformers movies, the live-action franchise is way past its peak of popularity, and games industry heavyweights are no longer interested. Activision’s exclusive license expired at the end of 2017, paving the way for smaller companies to sign modest, single-game deals with Hasbro. The best of this bunch is Transformers: Battlegrounds, which is a solid, if quite ordinary, turn-based strategy game that suits the franchise reasonably well. If you’ve ever wished for a crossover between Transformers and Front Mission, this is probably about as close as you’re ever going to get.
8) Transformers: Human Alliance
Believe it or not, Sega has been making light gun games since 1974. Some of them have become decent-sized franchises, such as Lethal Enforcers, Virtua Cop, and House of the Dead, but there have been a great many others, including a lot of crossovers with other franchises. Transformers: Human Alliance is one of those titles, and it’s a lot like many other Sega light gun games i.e. it does what it does well, but it’s very formulaic. It’s the kind of arcade machine you’ll have a blast with over a few bucks worth of plays, but you’re not going to keep coming back to it again and again.
7) Transformers Prime: The Game
After the first few Michael Bay movies were out of the way, Activision turned its Transformers sights on other opportunities, with Nintendo platforms providing a natural home for games based on new animated shows that were themselves riding on the back of the success of the movies. These DS and Wii releases were consistently, and surprisingly, decent. The one thing that Transformers Prime really got right was that it understood that different individual Transformers suit different gameplay experiences. So, while none of Transformers Prime’s gameplay styles was great in itself, there was enough switching between brawling, shooting, driving, flying, and exploring to prevent the whole thing from getting boring.
6) Transformers Autobots/Decepticons
While PlayStation, Xbox, and PC gamers suffered the tedium of Transformers: The Game, Activision took a different and less painful approach to the Nintendo DS. They figured that if Nintendo could simultaneously market multiple versions of the same game with Pokemon and Nintendogs, then they could do the same with Transformers. Splitting the Autobot and Decepticon campaigns into separate products is pretty greedy, given that many other Transformers games include both in the same package. But at least the games themselves were better than Transformers: The Game.
5) Transformers Animated: The Game
Among the new wave of Transformers TV and movie franchises, Transformers Animated was in many ways the most faithful to the original 80s version. It was colorful, cartoonish, funny, aimed at kids, and it had the same awesome theme music. This game adaptation also benefited from being aimed at a younger audience. While the more “grown up” games emphasized action and violence, and therefore usually got repetitive pretty quickly, Transformers Animated was more about exploration, puzzle-solving, and adventure. It accomplished all of the above reasonably well.
4) Transformers
In the early noughties, the live-action Transformers blockbusters were still just a twinkle in Michael Bay’s eye, and the 80s felt like a really long time ago. So, when Atari announced it was working on a Transformers game loosely based on Transformers Armada, the animated series keeping the franchise alive at the time, the collective response of the gaming community was, “Cool, but… why?” But then the game came out and it was actually really good. Nothing exceptional, but just exactly the kind of third-person shooter (with driving bits) that the source material deserved.
3) Transformers: Devastation
On paper, PlatinumGames and Transformers are a perfect match, and the combination worked out great in practice too. The Japanese super-developer specializes in fast-paced, funny action games with a proud retro streak, and that’s what Transformers needed after too many plodding, clunky movie tie-ins. PlatinumGames is also clearly a big fan of the 80s Transformers TV show, comics, and toys, and this love shines through every minute of Transformers: Devastation.
2) Transformers: Fall of Cybertron
Transformers: Fall of Cybertron was very much a “more of the same” sequel to War for Cybertron, which is no bad thing, but means that it did not surpass its predecessor and take the top spot on this list. There were more weapons and upgrades and abilities, and the level design was tweaked, all in the name of making the playable characters feel more distinct from each other. Basically, this was much the same sort of fast-paced, fun third-person shooter as its forebear.
1) Transformers: War for Cybertron
While everyone expected PlatinumGames’ take on the Transformers franchise to be good (and you could argue it maybe ought to have been even better than it was), Transformers: War for Cybertron came as much more of a surprise. Its release was sandwiched between the second and third Michael Bay movies, and gamers were already suffering Transformers tie-in game fatigue. But anyone who played War for Cybertron really enjoyed it. There was nothing exceptional or original here, but it was polished and well-designed, and it never got boring. It’s just a shame that, since Activision’s Transformers license expired, you can’t actually download War for Cybertron anywhere.
