Transformers: Battlegrounds (Xbox One)
Despite licensed games having fallen off in prominence with the rise of HD consoles, Outright Games continues to publish them with surprising regularity. However, they have also seemingly kept alive the tradition of games based on licensed properties being rather poor experiences, games like The Addams Family: Mansion Mayhem, Hotel Transylvania: Scary-Tale Adventures, and Ben 10 all cheap low effort game adaptations of films and television shows. Transformers as a brand has cross-generational appeal and even a few good games in its history though, so its seems some extra effort was taken to produce a game that isn’t an easily slapped together platformer. In fact, the game goes for something that isn’t going to be broadly accessible, the turn-based tactical combat requiring a bit more care and attention to pull off than plopping character models into 3D environments.
Based on the Transformers: Cyberverse cartoon in particular, Transformers: Battlegrounds continues the seemingly never-ending war between the Autobot and Decepticon factions. These transforming robots are fighting for the fate of their home planet Cybertron, the Decepticons lead by Megatron hoping to rule it while the Autobots lead by Optimus Prime stand against their tyrannical ambitions. The Allspark that can create new Transformers is thus a powerful tool in this conflict, and in their search for a way to bolster their numbers, the Decepticons find themselves on Earth. When the Autobots step in to defend the human citizens caught in the crossfire of the conflict, a human catches the eye of their fairly funny floating assistant Teletraan-X. Lifting the human up in the air at first to evacuate them, the human ends up providing tactical insight on the battlefield due to their knowledge of the city, the Autobots deciding to recruit this person in guiding their actions to stop the Decepticons and protect the Allspark. While indicated as male despite never being depicted, this human is meant to be the player, and while the journey takes you to deserts, forests, and even Cybertron itself, you’ll still be the one calling the shots from your aerial view.
In each turn of play in Transformers: Battlegrounds, you’ll be able to give commands to every Autobot on your team. Characters have a set of three action points they can use in a variety of ways before ending their turn. Movement in the grid-based environment is important, the distance an Autobot can travel determined by how many action points you’re willing to spend moving them into position. Attacks also cost action points, normal attacks costing only one but every robot on your team also has a technique that has varying levels of power or effectiveness if you’re willing to invest more of your action points into it. A heal will be more effective, damage dealt will be increased, and afflictions like removing the targets ability to move or attack with Anchor and Disarm respectively will be more likely to work with more points put into them. Ultimate abilities also exist that let you attack outside the point system and tend to cover a good amount of area with fairly strong attacks, but techniques can also serve extra purposes like knocking enemies into each other for extra damage or moving them out from behind cover.
While you only get six unique Autobots in your team total across the game’s main story and even all of its extra modes save one, they do have diverse approaches to battle that ensure their strategic purposes are varied. Windblade is able to blow opponents into walls and explosives with fans and can cover more ground than others in her jet form, Wheeljack and Arcee are the only ones with healing abilities, and Grimlock and Optimus Prime prove to be heavy hitters despite their limited movement options. Your group of six are also fairly fine companions for the story sections, the story-telling not exceptional or anything but Grimlock switching between a well-spoken gentleman and a nearly mindless brute based on if he’s in robot or dinosaur mode is a cute touch and they at least poke at some character history like Windblade being a former member of the Decepticon’s Seeker group. Even the voice acting, carrying over the cast from the show, gives their dialogue some more energy, Arcee’s voice actress in particular giving the character some personality when she’s not often given much of a focus as a major player in the plot. In some story levels you will be forced to use certain characters and others let you swap out whoever you have unlocked at the time, the not so subtle suggestion being you have one Scout class character for quick action, a Support Autobot for healing, and a Brawler for some heavy damage.
Based on the difficulty you set for a mission, the payout afterwards will be scaled appropriately, the rewards allowing you to buy new techniques for your Autobots that increase their flexibility a bit more albeit by replacing current abilities with new ones. While this naturally means the combat can come with varying levels of challenge based on what you pick and how you cultivate your team’s growth, the strategy side of things never gets too complex, random chance mostly just cropping up for status effects and battlefields mechanics fairly straightforward. Explosive objects you can attack to hurt nearby Decepticons are common features and later Energon cubes can provide ambient ultimate ability energy if you park your Autobots in their range despite the risk the cubes can be detonated as well, but beyond some deadly mist that is easily avoided on Cybertron the only major consideration of a battlefield besides distance will be simple things like positioning yourself behind some cover so you can’t get shot from range. Since you can move and attack in any order as long as you have the points it isn’t uncommon to see enemies approach, shoot, and flee to somewhere slightly safer, but their power is scaled so that you can often take a fair few hits without fear of losing a team member. A death can’t be undone in battle but they will be available for fighting in the next mission, and during special fights with more important characters a loss can become more of a risk. The amount of total mechanics at play isn’t too overwhelming even with a wide variety of enemy types in a fight so keeping track of capabilities on both sides is manageable, but it can feel like the game isn’t asking you to consider enough at times as well unless you’re in a fight that features some special conditions or characters to spice it up some.
Decepticon characters of note like Megatron, Soundwave, Shockwave, and Slipstream are all given more unique abilities than the usual fare you fight. Typical Decepticons have low damaging attacks but high numbers and it’s not too difficult to gradually fight your way through their lightly disorganized ranks, but important members hit harder and have techniques that are more likely to hit you with statuses or move you into a bad spot. The plentiful basic battles with low level troops end up becoming a bit easier to swallow when usually a level also has some sort of confrontation with a real threat you need to approach a bit more carefully, and the goals of a specific battle can be ever-changing. Some levels will keep adding more baddies until you make it to the exit area, others require you to wipe out every Decepticon you’re up against, but perhaps the most interesting are the survival battles where you need to try to survive enough turns against heavy opposition. The other two goals don’t necessarily require big risks nor do the enemies usually push in with too high a level of aggression, but survival cranks up their threat level and you really do feel like you need to focus on survival while also thinning out the enemy ranks or else they will potentially overwhelm your now outmatched team.
The scales do more often tip towards the level of simplicity that makes the strategic gameplay a bit too easy unless you really lack self-preservation instincts, but it whips out enough moments where it’s not as much of a pushover to keep the campaign interesting enough if perhaps a bit too long for how few new ideas it whips up, even the later half more about rematching familiar major characters than anything novel. Multiplayer does exist, but in some rather unusual forms. You still get to use the characters from the campaign in it and the abilities you’ve bought, but beyond simple cooperative play you also have a few modes independent of any story you can hit up for quick play. Arcade Mode features some fairly straightforward ideas like Last Stand where you try to fight back a constantly replenished Decepticon army for as long as possible and Destruction where you instead try to defeat as many Decepticons as you can within a certain turn limit, but others do feel like a bigger break from the Story Mode’s action. Capture the Flag requires you to enter enemy territory to grab and escort the flag back to your side a few times while they attempt the same and Energon Capture involves trying to hold specific territories that will require splitting your forces some. All these modes have special rules on revival to make their concepts more tenable, but the issue they face is that the AI doesn’t seem as good at planning as human players, it not being too hard to guard the marked enemy respawn points for example and kill them the moment they’re back to life. Perhaps more damaging for this mode is the way it locks off content, the player not only needing to play each map to unlock the next one, but the difficulties per map must be played in order as well. You can’t just play Desert on Hard, you need to play Desert Easy and Desert Medium in that specific mode first on top of already having to have played Suburbs Easy in that mode type to unlock the Desert.
The unlocking requirements make playing Arcade Mode less appealing since you have to push through slow but easy wins to face a tough fight, but one mode is more interesting than the others: Decepticon Grudge Match. Here you actually get to control four of the Decepticons you fought in Story Mode, their attacks handled in a different manner than the Autobots. Most every power they use costs 1 action point no matter how strong it might be and they have a wider variety of techniques than the Autobots usually can bring into a battle. It is a bit of a power trip because of their inherently stronger skills and even a numbers advantage in lower settings, although harder difficulties do even the odds a bit once you’ve unlocked them. It’s not quite the same as having an equally capable army to play with and it’s a shame they’re only playable in one mode, but it is a more enticing bit of content outside the story than the straightforward modes like Destruction.
THE VERDICT: While many of its missions and even extra modes are often light on the strategy that is meant to guide the action, Transformers: Battlegrounds overcomes some of that simplicity with the foes and survival challenges that do put up a better fight. You’ll need to push through some basic battles with enemies that don’t ask much of you for the fights that are a bit more interesting, but there is still the small bit of planning needed to succeed to keep you engaged before a fight starts asking for more vital tactical play. The Arcade Mode doesn’t structure itself the best, but there is still enough decent play found in the robot battles of the story to keep Transformers: Battlegrounds from growing stale.
And so, I give Transformers: Battlegrounds for Xbox One…
An OKAY rating. Gradually gaining new abilities for your Autobots, figuring out clever ways to get a bit more out of them in a battle, and facing off with the occasional foes who can better stand against it helps Transformers: Battleground remain just interesting enough that the story doesn’t lose its energy, but it certainly could have used more new concepts throughout and a bit of a wider villain cast to ensure that the rematches aren’t as frequent as they ended up being. New techniques from the opposition feel like they don’t crop up enough to spice up the more common battles, a fair few too many ending up in a standard mold that isn’t teaching you anything new or justifying its presence with a more compelling level of challenge. You do at least need to be managing your action points well and thus you remain involved even in the less exciting bouts, but some fights do feel like they’re filling time to space out the more interesting encounters some. Your six Autobots do at least get a good range of new moves to experiment with and their diversity means picking your team involves some actual decision making. Some of the ways to play over in Arcade Mode can provide some extra challenges, but locking them behind required lower difficulty play certainly hurt their potential in letting you get straight to the better content. Certainly the difficulty levels were meant to help it better appeal to fans of all ages, but it can feel like Transformers: Battlegrounds is afraid to exhaust its better ideas too quickly and pads the experience to compensate. It never gets deeply strategic, but more moments where positioning and respecting your enemy properly are required like in the survival battles would certainly go a long way to keeping the game’s energy levels high rather than just tolerable.
Transformers: Battlegrounds is perhaps a bit too streamlined at parts and too stretched at others, but it has its moments thanks to a battle system with enough thought in it that you can’t get fully complacent. Charge in blindly and suddenly you get hit with a status effect that might put you in jeopardy or an enemy Decepticon has a move that can shove you into the hands of their allies. However, that danger isn’t the kind of constant consideration that would require frequent strategizing, so instead its more about figuring out some smart and safe moves rather than taking risks or balancing your unit actions too heavily. On one hand that can mean you won’t find yourself taxed by situations that are too demanding, but it could have afforded a greater presence of the fights that do push back a bit better against your capable team. Rather than being a surprise hit from Outright Games or just another low quality tie-in, the strategy combat focus of Transformers: Battlegrounds required a degree of attention to mechanics and battle structure that ensured it was at least a fine enough Transformers experience.