It’s incredibly hard. GTA IV cost more than 100 millions to make involve hundreds of developer and usually, the marketing effort will be 1.5 - 2x the cost of development.
Top that with the cost to ontain the licnese that creates a pretty high stakes for anyone who obtained those licenses. Not to mention it’ll probably take them 2-3 years (usually more. Latest ff was 10 years development).
and the success for all of that is determined within two weeks of release

 

Devastation was a boring, soulless 80's nostalgia cash-in and not even remotely "good." I know I finished that game, but I can't even remember most of the story or gameplay because it was just nothing. An empty plot with one-dimensional characters, repetitive combat in generic uninspired arenas, and visuals that offered nothing beyond "it looks kind of like the old animated movie."

I think the genre was perfectly accessible. Beat-em-ups can be fun and engaging. Devastation was not. It wasn't the worst I've ever played but it got old real fast, and offered nothing to anyone but older fans who just wanted to see the G1 characters in an animated style again.

To anyone who wanted a fun game, or younger fans who aren't so easily swayed by slavish G1 fanfare, it left a lot to be desired.

 

Well I really enjoyed that game and it got good reviews.

77% on metacritic and 7.7 ign

 

Oh ffs!!! Can I get one freakin' decent Transformers game this decade!? This is what happens when Hasbro continues to cheap out rather than let a AAA studio have a go at the IP again. At this point I'm desperate enough to take a AAA Transformers game from EA. I'd say I'd even be okay with them going back to Activision... but fuck Activision. Plus, at this point they're going to be a shadow of their former selves after everything going on. It would be awesome to get a sequel or reboot of WfC/FoC though... nothing has scratched the right itch for me since FoC. Devastation was alright and I loved being able to play the entire game as my boy Wheeljack but there's only so many times I can play that game before I never want to touch it again. WfC and FoC I go back to anually. Primus help me, I got so desperate for a new Transformers game I bought Battlegrounds on a deep, deep discount a couple weeks back. It's 100% a glorified mobile game but hey, it's something new and it has Wheeljack. Plus I really enjoyed Cyberverse. I even repurchased RotDS because I could play it on PS4. like even if Transformers:Rise does still happen, it's going to be a painfully obvious cash grab with no soul and it'll be lucky if it lasts a year.

 

And sounds like you've never looked at context before. I'm talking about TRANSFORMER GAMES.

 

I enjoyed Devastation, but this is a pretty good summary of it's quality overall.  

It doesn't even do the slavishly G1 thing right when a lot of the elements were just borrowed from IDW and the recent toyline at the time.

 

No comment.

 

They also wrecked High Moon Studios in a very EA way.

But, even more so, yes, I would prefer very much not to give any money to A/B, though a rerelease or remaster of the High Moon “Cybertron” games are the one exception I’d make.

I think it just goes to show how special High Moon and their “Cybertron” games were.

They were passion projects by fans for fans.

Or, at the very least I remember one of the leads on FoC saying that including Grimlock was something that they fought for because they loved the space t-rex so damn much and eventually proved to their higher-ups that including Grimsy was rad.

P.S.: Finding that interview was not that hard, and I shoulda said it was the director who said so because it was…

Transforming Grimlock: How High Moon saved the Dinobots

 

I mean... transformers games? No. Otherwise objectively we've been getting great video games over the past couple years. Doom was an amazing game. Breath of the Wild was spectacular and fresh. God of War may be a perfect game. Returnal has a great loop. Warframe is free and a blast.

I remember that article!
God those games were such a treat. I was so hyped about them that all my friends ended up buying them even though they had no affection for transformers. Luckily I can still play FoC cause it's on my Xbox hard drive. Sadly Rise of the Dark Spark was buggy mess.

 

Started to replay Devastation last week as a time filler. Yeah it's not great but it looks nice, Voice acting is almost spot on and the combat is fun. Just wish the enemies and locations were a bit more interesting. Prob worth keeping in mind it was made as a budget title.

Any ways on topic this really does not look good for the game. Even if it's not on time if no one actually running the show cares about making a quality product it'll be DOA or just last a few months. Basically it'll be like that last Transformers F2P that advertised itself as a 3rd person shooter moba but never actually did any of that moba stuff it was just an ok third person shooter with a cash shop. I kinda liked it and I enjoyed that for the most part you played as new characters. Despite reaching open beta it got shit canned quickly I guess because it just wasn't drawing in the player count they were looking for. I think Jagex was behind it? Had a sorta Prime vibe to the designs.

On a side note on the Unity sub reddit some one made/ is making an amazing little sand box game that has you play as the toys themselves it's quite cute.

 

Wrong. Devastation is probably the best game I've played since the original Super Mario World. It was a a song to the fans, and showed a lot of heart.

 

Amen to this, Its my favorite game but also to be honest one of my most hated too LOL because it was just too short, you couldnt play the decepticons, no decepticon campaign. no online type fight ( whatever stuff like fornight is called ). Basically I wanted a whole lot more of everything, characters, stages, ect

Still , for me the best game ever made for Transformers.

 

Should've said so in the OP, buddycakes. Communications 101. Speak/write clear intent if you don't want to be misinterpreted.

At least you finally edited your post to accurately convey your idea rather than making it sound like a general attention about the games industry.

Gold star!

 

So what you're saying is it was the only game you've played since Super Mario World?  

But seriously, I wouldn't consider it really much of a song since it existed largely as a vehicle for the CW toyline and reeked of corporate synergy. Grimlock but no Dinobots, Superion and Defensor literally showing up on a Skype call in their CW bodies, few of the characters from the original show and basically only "evergreen" ones like Starscream, Soundwave, Bumblebee, Sideswipe, etc. The story awkwardly pulled from IDW and felt totally disconnected from the Sunbow aesthetic, and it all took place in a generic city and even more generic Cybertronian structures that didn't look like anything from the cartoon. Unless you just really, really like seeing kinda-sorta Sunbow style designs in a video game I don't get the love. The Cybertron games felt like they had more appreciation for the franchise in them.

There was no heart in that game, just Hasbro's current synergy and flat characters with no wit, soul, or purpose. I can't even remember if some of them talked. (I played Wheeljack the whole way through and couldn't recall a single line of his)

Damn dude, does it feel cool to be this much of a jerk to a random guy on the internet?

 

Absolutely. Decepticon mode would have made it even better!!

 

I don’t think it’s not about hasbro cheapning out on AAA developers.
Usually how ip licensed out is through a pitch, either from Hasbro and they hunt for developers (which means they usually intend to published it themselves) or hasbro Approached by publisher/developer combination with a gameplay pitch (and ROI analysist). So, no AAA dev right now means either any of the pitch are not interesting to hasbro

 

I dare to say that if anything, it's not a terrible game for what it is (And really no matter what way we look at Devastation, that was very much advertising, especially since in a Fresh copy unopened, you find a little card that basically says "Hey, the Devastator in this game is a toy, take a look and maybe buy his core components!"), but honestly much like many Platinum Game Entries, I don't play for the plot, I'm playing for the combat, which the game... more or less delivers on. It basically feels about as full of heart as it is whenever Sonic Team puts Green Hill in a Sonic game.

It's a 4 hour long game with a stretched out G1 Episode Plot compared to the WFC/FOC Stories and people spout references mostly comic readers and existing fans recognize ("I thought you were made of sterner stuff" ring a bell?), and honestly for me, that's okay. I don't need every Transformers game to be telling me some big story and acting like it wants to tell the Citizen Kane of Transformers. If the movies can get away with its barebones stories riddled with inconsistency, this game can get away with a story more bland than tasteless oatmeal that could have developed into something better if it had gotten a sequel and explored a Sunbow style G1 Nova Prime.

Also Sideswipe's evergreen? He sat out of every toyline from Prime Wars Trilogy and only came back in Siege, and unlike the more set in stone characters like Starscream, Megs, the Waves Sound and Shock, Optimus, Grimlock, Bumblebee, and even Wheeljack to a lesser extent, who did get evergreen designs (Even Hound and he's not been onscreen for years until Siege if you exclude movies, and Prowl got one too sooner), Sideswipe gets kind of shafted for a character of his varying popularity, unless you really wanna count his slightly changed variant in RiD 15 and his cardboard cutout of a character in the WFC Trilogy, likely due to the fact we have a very popular sportscar robot in TF Media with Hot Rod now and not much can really be done with the impulsive bot ready to get his struts dirty when you have another bot who's impulsive and and ready to get his struts dirty.

Red Alert in G1 is now considered more a character and he was just a remold/repaint of Sideswipe to begin with...

Anyways, apologies on my Sideswipe tangent, I'm just a simp for the guy and wish he did more... Maybe give him some actual development beyond him being a typical jock bot who enjoys fighting. Show more of that "I don't break the rules, I bend them. A LOT." personality when Hot Rod doesn't steal that spotlight.

 

My expectations were on the floor. Now they're in the sewer.

 

Definitely braver than most for having expectations for a modern TF Game to start with.

Besides that, I do wonder what happens. I really just want them to go back and understand what it was that sold us on the WFC/FoC games....