Although the premise was a little cheesy, I thought that Rise of the Dark Spark was a decent game. What saddens me though, is that I saw that there was a great amount of lost potential, which if utilized, could have made this title into a memorable game. After playing, the component that saved this game were the additional chapters that were added to the WFC/FOC universe (let's just pretend that they are not a part of the Aligned continuity). These chapters and characters were diverse and received greater visual refinement. This is understandable though as many of the characters were already established in FOC. But my favorite element, which was quickly dropped as the game continued, was the return of character boss battles. Facing off against the Insecticons and Ironhide were great fun. The AOE chapters, which almost seemed like an afterthought, were bland, with minor exception for the Grimlock level, whom seemed to just be a new skin for the FOC Grimlock. Basically, you just switch out between four characters, and mow down hordes of Lockdown's army. Sadly, the ending boss battles for both universes were poorly executed, and lacking a true challenge. Instead of battling a super charged FOC Megatron, you just use Prime to shoot him a few times, and worry more about destroying a machine. Similarly, AOE Lockdown, although "super charged" is bested by a couple of shield melee attacks from Prime. After seeing these strengths and weaknesses, this game could have easily been improved. I would have capitalized on the crossover element. It seemed as if I was playing a FOC DLC, and the designers thought, "Oh yeah, we are supposed to include that new movie," and quickly included some trash AOE levels. Just by looking at the cover art, I thought that there was actually going to be some crossover! Instead, the player feels like he is just playing game previews for two different games that happen to be on the same disc. I would have enjoyed a FOC Grimlock vs AOE Grimlock showdown! The FOC characters could have easily left Cybertron to chase down the Dark Spark and clashed/ teamed up with the AOE characters. It is not like the creators were bound to respecting the continuities, as the FOC chapters seemingly fit various places before and after FOC, and the entire AOE arc is incompatible with the movie. If there was more crossover, it would have been even easier to include more character battles as the FOC vs AOE element would be present. Heck if done correctly, the game could have been endorsed by the toyline, since the two universes were released in sequence and were nearly side by side on shelves. Additionally, if the AOE arc was refined to introduced KIS, Galvatron, and Stinger, in order to stay closer to the movie, options for more characters and more intriguing AOE missions would have opened up. Those are just my thoughts on how to improve this game. What are your ideas on how to improve this game? Would you have enjoyed a greater, purely for fun, crossover element?
Yeah I was let down that there were not a lot of levels to play and that the storyline did not make much sense. The part I did like was playing as Shockwave in the beginning, I play it over and over. Most of the levels involved holding off hordes of bots while waiting for the boss to attack which is bland. It could have been way better.
I personally think had lockdown been replaced with galvatron the story would have tied with the movie, but if you cut the earth levels and if there was a better mp mode it would be a lot better
To be honest, the whole game felt like it was some kind of discarded DLC for Fall of Cybertron with some crap, hastily made Movieverse levels glued on.
I haven't played the game, but from what I've seen, with so few new additions, with what's there being so poorly made, I think the main problem is nobody making the game gave a damn. It's also seems evident that the writers didn't have access to AOE's script. But, if I was to pretend there had ever been a chance of this being good, I definitely think playing up the crossover would help. If nothing else, they should have made it possible for Escalation, and included some of the character models from High Moon's DOTM game. The ability to kill movie 'Cons as FOC 'Cons alone would've convinced me to buy the game.
Step one: Grab a screwdriver. Congratulations! You are now in possession of an improvement over Dark Spark! - Seriously though, I don't care how it was made in the first place. I don't see any places to improve on without making a new game altogether.
Agreed. Level design was uninspired, texture detail and colour a major regression from the High Moon work, and the Earth levels not remotely to scale with the Transformers (Drift's alt mode was twice the size of a semi, for instance). Felt like a dialed-in game. Not as bad as the 2007 movie tie-in, but not a high point for games in this franchise, either. I can't even bring myself to finish this game: too frustrating to play.
i think in the final fight with lockdown, he shoudve pulled dotm megs from the time stream and made optimus fight him. oh, and i think they shouldve used the movie matrix in the movie segmant, instead of copying and pasting the foc matrix. Bad game but i enjoyed playing as sideswipe and that insecticon.
I would at least try to make more of a crossover. I was actually excited for this game when I first heard it was being made mainly because of the fact that it appeared that characters from two different Transformers universes were going to meet/interact with each other. I mean, they really had an opportunity to make SOMETHING cool in terms of storyline, but they dropped the ball. It might just be me not happy with the game turning out the way I envisioned it, but I would do a complete rehaul of the story.
Well the earth levels were kinda ehh. The Cybertron levels were more fun to play but that isn't saying much. This probably is because I really liked FoC which this basically is a copy of, but made (way) worse. My main problem is that Megatron is in his upgraded body, which he shouldn't be at this point. I also would've liked them to let us play as Blast Off and Onslaught, We already got Swindle (multiple times), Vortex and Bruticus in FoC and Brawl in WfC so being the other members of the team would've been cool.
I just finally played and beat this game, myself. It was a decent game. I got it for ~$25 so that helped lol. It definitely felt like a rush job though. The parts in the beginning were cool, playing the Cybertron portion of the game. The "of Cybertron" games are definitely the best Transformers games so it was nice to see more of that. Hopefully we'll get another one in this continuity. The AoE levels were nothing special. Except playing as Grimlock, THAT was awesome. I don't even know why they bothered making this a "crossover game" when the crossover element was hardly there. The AoE levels barely even tied into the movie. Also... why did they have a black guy voice Drift? That made zero sense lol.
