izigame.me

A couple first impressions of the game. It's a fun simple arcade racer game. I thought I was basically getting Mario Kart, but with combat. That's not the case here. It's a decent racing game with a lot of potential. That'll be important later in the cons section. I kinda had the same feeling buying this when they released whatever that cyberverse clone of XCOM was. Only difference is I didn't refund the game this time. It genuinely is enjoyable, and has a lot of room if the developers wanted to add some new things to the game. This game does have some glaring flaws, I bought this kinda on impulse as it was another transformers game as starved of decent games as this community is for them. But lemmie list the ups and downs and elaborate a little further.
PROS: - The driving feels legit:
The driving in the game is different from some other racer games I've played. Best way to describe it is you can feel the weight of your character. Like when I raced originally with Prime. His speed and weight felt like I was a truck. The drifts were fun, bashing into other bots as they take more or less damage depending on their chassis. And the handling, by far my favorite mechanic of the game. Heavy bots like Prime and ESPECIALLY MEGATRON have just this slide to them? This is what I mean you feel the weight of what you're driving. But that can be augmented with relics (This game's version of like perks). Other racers like MK and Sonic Racers it's not as prevalent imo. When you race with lighter bots like Flamewar or Arcee OMG. I'm living the dream. Super tight handling, base speed is pretty gnarly. It's just fun.
- Good graphics, not super detailed very simple designs:
This is something I wish more games would prioritize lately. (Not just for a cosplay perspective), more of a please for the love of god focus on fun mechanics and not how badly you want me to upgrade my graphics card. They're really nice designs, they are the designs mostly from their marketing side of the IP. That and their legacy toy line (If any of you also are on the Hasbro Pulse checking out toy releases too.). I love them.
- The Combat system is engaging:
Again simple mechanics, which I enjoy tremendously I'm not having to abuse I frames like in WFC or FOC when trying to not die XD. You bash when a car, you shoot when you're a robot. It does an auto targeting thing, which is super nice for controller users. This game clearly was designed with that in mind. Some of the guns are meh, I think there's like one or two of important note. The rest is just silly. Bashing people does sometimes improve your speed and OMG is it annoying to get bashed and your stuck on a wall for 10 mins. It's part of the fun imo. Frustrating sure, but it just means drive better next time.
- The Energon System:
This wacky little bar of purple electric fun is neat for a couple reasons. I've beaten it to death this game is ultra simple. Your energon bar you can use for boosting in car form, and in robot mode you can use it to activate an ult. There's a bunch of different strats around maintaining the bar all the time. Also when you kill an enemy bot it grants you a bar of energon. If you kill a turret you get two bars. Pretty swanky, offers some variety on how you wanna engage certain maps. And allows for any character you pick to have some method of gaining an advantage over the others.
I've talked a little bit about the pros and what I enjoy about this game. This game isn't without its flaws. Some more glaring than others.
Cons: - Difficulty Scaling:
This one is wild to me. And part of my frustration kinda went away AFTER I leveled up the characters to lvl. 10. The first two difficulties you play on are Rookie, and Veteran? I don't remember off the bat. Then there's Prime. We'll talk about the first two real quick. Rookie is pretty easy, your default "Oh ok I'm understanding the game" difficulty. Veteran is like normal. The bots aren't really trying but if you give them a chance they can kinda win? Then there's PRIME.... My god! I've never been more angry at a game than playing on Prime! The best way to explain prime is the first two are like Easy and Normal, then there's just BRUTAL +10 (for any sc2 nerds you know what I'm talking about). The ai is just insane, they go from bumbling idiots to Gods in one difficulty change. They are perfect in every regard, and I think max leveled characters? I could be wrong, but it feels like that. You can't beat the difficulty unless you have a level 10 speedster character, so Bee, FlameWar primarily. And you need some pretty good relics. I've unlocked all the characters so I've beaten prime with Prime, Bee and Meg. But good god almighty I practically only won with megatron due to a bug. It wasn't an honest win. You just have to be perfect in everything. And not just that you have to have the right gun or else the other bots will just roll you. It doesn't feel super play tested. Because it could use some tweaking. The bots perfectly bash you into walls if they are near. They also all target you if you are in front in combat zones. I don't know a remedy to this, either tone them down or add something in between for difficulties. Again feels like you must be perfect in everything you do, there's a big difference in halo when you play on heroic. Which is a comfortable challenge to Legendary. Where the ai literally cheat. That's what the bump feels like.
- Movement, Shooting, and Driving OH MY!
This hurts... it really does. I have never designed a game. Nor do I care to but I feel some things should be cleaned up before launch. And the movement and shooting should be one of them. Especially when you are a racer game. There's a lot of times where you just fall through the map. I'm not kidding. If you hit something at the wrong angle well bye bye! Off you go to the void. Which is incredibly frustrating on difficulties like Prime where one mistake and you're restarting the race guaranteed. And when you collide with a wall in any form, bot or car form. Jesus Christ... you just sit there. There's no bounce back or anything you just sit there and have to reverse and get around whatever you crashed into. Bot form you can at least kinda recover but not in car form. The shooting oh woof, needs improving. Unfortunately there's a few weapons that actually seek out the opponent. Everything else is los from what it looks like. So unless you are on top of said target good luck getting an accurate shot to kill them. It just goes straight to where they are. If they are moving.... which they are it's a racing game.... You're not hitting them. It would be nice to maybe speed up the projectile speed or maybe an auto tracking thing? So it can predict where they will be and account for that? Again I'm not sure what the solution to this is but it's worth noting.
- Leveling System:
Kinda goofy tbh. So every character can level from 1-10. It takes a fat minute especially since unless you're perfect in every run on prime it's gonna take a minute to max them out. At this moment of this review I've only got 5 out of the 11 at max level. And that was grinding for several hours a day. Each level they gain a buff to their stats. Which isn't a con, but you can't even dream of completing prime unless you level 10 on these characters or at least close to it. For what little you can do in the game I wouldn't mind seeing a buff to the level system. Unless that's their way of adding "Replay-ability" to the game. Which would be awful. The leveling does feel like a slog. Even when you have all the relics, and you know the maps by heart still takes a while. And every maps is just about 5 minutes long. But if you want that extra xp for the harder difficulties you'll play on them.
- Multiplayer? Or lack there of?
Only has local coop? Why not have online multiplayer so more friends can join? Be really nice to see this option, but it already limits the audience who wants this game.