Ever since 1984, Optimus Prime and the Autobots have fighting against Megatron and the Decepticons. Yada, yada, yada, surely everyone knows the story? Now, in 2007, the transforming action figures have found their way to the big screen with arguably one of the year's best films. Alongside the movie, Activision have released a slew of games for all major gaming consoles and handhelds. With the DS games, Activision took the Pokemon route and released two versions of the game: Autobots and Decepticons. Unlike Pokemon, these games are both completely different, in the sense that they both have different characters, stories and locations. Overall they're still mostly similar though. You'd think, or at least hope, that one of the year's best movies would have a great game to go with it, but sadly, Transformers: Autobots (and Decepticons) falls extremely short of expectations.

The story of the game is pretty much in the same boat as the movie, only you take control of a new Autobot named whatever you want it to be, and there's no Shia LaBeouf. It's the Autobots versus the Decepticons in a search for the AllSpark, the device that has the power to revive either race and, in the hands of the Decepticons, transform Earth into their new robotic homeworld, at the expense of the human race. Along your journey you're going to complete missions, fight Decepticons, transform into one of thirty-seven vehicles and explore an open world where you're free to wreak as much havoc as you'd like (despite being a good guy). Sounds like a good premise, doesn't it? Unfortunately, though, it's only good on paper, as the implementation will leave you very much disappointed, partly due to the many poor decisions in the graphics and in the controls, which ultimately lead to a poor gaming experience.

The graphics are somewhat of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the Transformers themselves look great. There's plenty of detail for such a tiny figure that not only looks great but also moves fluidly. This is definitely odd, because on the other hand, everything else looks terrible, with emphasis on 'terrible' and extra emphasis on 'everything'. From the bland buildings, uninspired vehicles and lousy terrain to the awful effects that make you feel like you're playing a 16-bit game, it's difficult to understand how the developers did so well with the look of the transformers and then failed so badly with everything else. Seriously, when you blow things up, they tend to send blue electric shocks into the air that look like they were made in MS Paint. The game looks great for the first couple of minutes and, if you're like me, you'll definitely be hyped up for it - until you actually get past the first part, that is. Everything goes downhill from there; the graphics, the gameplay, everything. When you can finally transform into a vehicle, you'll be wondering, "Is that a car or a blue box with wheels?" or "Why do these effects make me feel like I'm playing the original Doom?" or "I can't actually believe I thought this game would be good."

And it just continues to get worse; the gameplay is absolutely horrific and instead of having a robot versus robot brawl, you're most likely going to have a DS versus the wall type of ordeal. You have two attacks to utilize - ranged shots, which consist of either lasers or missiles, and melee attacks. You can pick pretty much everything up, so cars, trees, pylons and enemy Decepticons can be brandished as a weapon. Once again this sounds good but once again it's poorly executed. Attacking is a chore and when you should be having a blast bashing baddies you'll be frustrated by the fact that lousy controls with an even worse camera equal the complete opposite of fun. You move the camera using the shoulder buttons, which feels a little awkward on the DS, especially in combat, when you need to go in one direction then do a 180-degree turn and blow something else up by mistake. Fortunately there is a targeting system but unfortunately it doesn't work to well. If you turn even just a little too much, you lose your lock and you have to straighten yourself up again, which can result in some massive damage while you're trying to get that lock back. Other times you lock onto something you don't want to and you have to deal with that first, before you go onto what you really want to destroy. There is very minimal use of the touch screen, which is unfortunate. The only real purpose it serves is as a mini-map, something I've never seen before in a DS game, as well as two buttons used for either transforming or scanning vehicles. The touch screen could have been utilized for so much more, but lazy development prevented innovation and makes the touch screen nothing more than a gimmick.

Transformers has an RPG element; you collect experience points by destroying Decepticons and completing quests, then you level up to increase your health and ammo meters, as well as learning new skills. Most of the skills really help you out, but they still don't make the difficulty any better, which leads me to yet another problem; the game is either ridiculously easy or ridiculously hard. Some parts are just a bore to get through, while others will have you fueled with anger because that one missile shouldn't have hit you or you shouldn't have run out of time.

The missions are pretty varied and there are some missions where you have to go from one location to the next while protecting another ally, finding certain vehicles to scan and morph into, or just killing various Decepticons. The difficult ones are the ones that send wave after wave of enemies after you, with a limited supply of health or the timed missions. With the former, you're going to take a lot of damage and the only way to replenish your health is by collecting red orbs that drop from everything that's destructible. The drop rate varies a lot; sometimes you get virtually nothing while in others you're flooded with life. With the latter, you seem to only get just barely enough time to finish your mission. If you mess up or don't know what to do then you're pretty much screwed and will have to do the whole mission again. This is another thing I dislike about the game - if you mess up once then you must restart the entire mission, which drives me absolutely crazy.

The world is a large sandbox and it's there for your enjoyment. You're free to do what you want and kill whatever you like. The areas, as big as they are, really aren't too impressive though; there are some areas that might look nice, but when you're looking at a majority of the levels they're mostly repetitive and boring. Having such a hefty location to investigate, you're going to want faster transportation than running, which is where vehicle mode comes in. You can change into any vehicle that you've previously scanned and the controls are fairly simple; you accelerate with B or up and brake with L or down. For some reason you can't control the camera in vehicle form though; the camera follows you instead. This would have worked better when in robot form too, as it's much easier to control and just overall feels much more user-friendly.

When you're fleeing from the police or trying to get a destination in time, you're obviously going to want to go as fast as you can. You definitely can, but trying to do so will result into crashing into everything around you. This is due to the terrible hit-boxes of all the items and the loose controls. You can drive right past another car on the road but in actuality you're just going to crash right into it, possibly making it explode and raising your threat level. Much like Grand Theft Auto, the more destruction you cause, the more the authorities are going to try to get rid of you. The threat system is pretty poorly done, because random things give you a higher threat level, then laughable things like crashing into cars and trees lowers your threat level. This definitely could have used some more tweaking.

The sound is probably the game's best feature, but it can't redeem this atrocious beast from being, well, atrocious. Where the developers skimped on graphics they somewhat make up for it with great voice work and a decent soundtrack. By great, I don't mean sufficient soundalike voice actors with petty dialogue, but rather the actual voice actors saying almost every bit of text there is in the game. Trust me; listening to Optimus Prime's booming voice on the DS's tiny speakers is quite impressive, especially when he's giving you a full briefing for your next mission. Even Bumblebee, with his damaged voice box, talks using the radio, just like he does in the movie. However, I was a tad disappointed that most of the time this was just random radio bits instead of actual radio clips of people talking, but I guess beggars can't be choosers. The musical score meanwhile is pretty decent but ultimately forgettable.

If my review hasn't convinced you to not the game yet then you'll be happy to hear that there is replayability. There are thirty-seven vehicles to scan and unlock, which range from cars to trucks to jets to helicopters. All vehicles can be scanned, but some of the more obvious choices to transform to aren't included, like tanks and police cars, which is a pretty brainless choice on the developer's part. There are two wireless modes to choose from, although each person must have a copy of the game, with deathmatch and capture the flag variants on offer for four players, which makes for a bit of fun but won't keep you coming back for any length of time.

The other mode available is the AllSpark Wars, which utilizes Nintendo Wi-fi. Instead of using it for online multiplayer, which you would expect, it's actually a miniature war. You are one of many soldiers fighting for your team, which is determined by which game you have. Fighting is really not the right word for this though - what you're really going to do is complete a downloadable mission and score points, which are then used to combine with the other scores of all the people that have played for the day, then whichever team has the most points total wins a piece of the AllSpark cube. Every seven days the battle is over and a new one begins. Each day has a different mission and they're all generic and not really too interesting to play. Getting more points for yourself allows you to unlock vehicles and cheats, so this is a mode that the completists out there can't ignore. You can also sign up to the official Transformers DS website and track your stats, which is a really cool addition to the game. Unfortunately it doesn't track how many holes you've punched in the wall out of frustration. One interesting thing to note is that every time that I've looked at the score, the Autobots are winning. I've never seen the Decepticons win, so I guess it pays to be good; especially when you can destroy everything in sight with no remorse, just because it means you'll win a war against evil.

Oh Transformers, you could have been a much, much better game if only you hadn't had wonky controls and there had been more time in development for better graphics. The sound department is spot-on, but that's not nearly enough to save Transformers: Autobots. The lack of good multiplayer hurts as well and while there is the wi-fi route, I feel that not enough people are going to be using it and that it would be better if it were just regular online multiplayer. The game is like the little transforming robot train that could, only to have a group of bad transforming robot trains gang up and obliterate it. Do yourself a favor and just skip this typical movie-based action brawler; your wallet will thank you, your hands will thank you and anything capable of being broken in your room will thank you. There are a lot of words I can use to describe Transformers: Autobots, but unfortunately, none of them are synonymous with 'good', leaving us with a game that's even less than meets the eye.

Reviewed by Ryan Brenner for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).