Remember how when the first Transformers movie came out, there were a few different tie-in games? And of them, the Nintendo DS version was the only one I’d dub genuinely ‘fun’ past the obvious gimmick of playing as a giant robot?

The sequel, not so much.

Strike One against Revenge of the Fallen (Decepticon version anyway) is that they’ve axed the free roam ‘overworld’ segments where you can fuck up cars, climb buildings, and generally have a grand old time rampaging around. Instead, you poke at a map on the touchscreen to select uncompleted missions, sometimes revisiting the same spot two to four times. The lack of freedom extends far beyond that- as far as I am in now, there’s still no aerial vehicle I’ve been able to scan and take as an alt mode so I can get around the missions easier, and the only flying missions thus far consist of Starscream (who is apparently made of flash paper wrapped around fireworks) fighting waves of enemies who can all be foiled by waiting until their shots are about to hit, then boosting/hitting Transform. The vertical axis has been eliminated, basically making the whole flight sequence handle… well, like a car, like the other 90% of the game I’ve played so far. Some of the mission assignments are just plain retarded (BARRICADE! Sideways has challenged you to a race! If you go off the track, I’ll kill you for no reason!) and the ones that aren’t seem a little too reliant on utterly raping you from all sides with rapid firing tanks that take too long to kill when you’re in a hurry against a time limit, but are too damaging to shrug off. It doesn’t help that you’re a lot less nimble this time out- struggling to lift items, and transforming while in motion doesn’t let you keep your momentum into a run. It’s just overall less fluid. They even trimmed out being able to rip up trees and signs and swing them around.

Now, the good: The graphics are mostly better, and they’ve fine tuned the controls a bit. Your ranged/melee attacks are less context sensitive and you do all your shooting by holding down L. You can also cycle lock-ons instead of being made to shoot the nearest thing by default. The biggest plus is that you can actually customize the main character to an extent beyond ‘Level Up And Get Good At Everything,’ equipping specific weapons and equipment and growing stats in a way that suits your style. It’s just a shame everything else was dumbed down for mission based play other than finding items and collecting more energon for upgrading.

Basically, find the first one if you want a portable transforming robot fix. Or import Chosouju Mecha MG.