The boss battles aren’t the only repetitive missions in this game. Most missions fall into three basic categories: get to the next area in time to beat up some drones; destroy x number of things in a set amount of time; get to the next area before the robot you’re protecting dies and beat up whatever is attacking your Cybertronian cohort. The difference comes into play based on whether you’re an Autobot or a Decepticon. As an Autobot, you’ll be driving from place to place and putting up with the game’s absolutely horrific driving physics. Controlling your car is a crapshoot and more often than not you’ll find yourself caught up on a palm tree as seconds tick off the clock, bringing you closer to your eventual mission failure.

When playing as a Decepticon, the frustration is minimized as you’ll be flying rather than driving, except for when playing as Blackout, but it doesn’t make the missions any more fun, just less frustrating. Even the drones are the same regardless of which side you’re playing. There’s the car drone, the jet drone, the tow truck drone that spins his tow hook around and the cement truck drone that has to be knocked down via thrown object, picked up and tossed to be destroyed. Yes, Hasbro is famous for repainting toys and calling them new characters (Starscream, meet Skywarp) but this is ridiculous.

As mentioned, the plot of the game loosely mirrors that of the movie yet is different enough in the main details to not spoil the movie for anyone. The cut scenes that tell the story of the game look muddy and washed out on the Wii and try to have a sense of humor, but many times simply fall flat. The voice acting ranges from excellent (Peter Cullen and Frank Welker reprising their roles as Optimus Prime and Megatron) to passable (Shia LaBeouf recreating Sam Witwicky from the movie) to downright awful (everyone else). Unlike the voice acting, sound effects are uniformly excellent with plenty of effects for the back speakers and plenty of explosions to work your subwoofer.

For the die hard fans, or those with a thing for punishment, extra side challenges can be performed and Energon cubes can be collected to unlock bonus content. This content ranges from clips from the Transformers movie, movie stills, comic book covers and concept art and G1 skins for Optimus, Megatron, Starscream and Jazz. The G1 skins are a nice touch and are sure to rekindle the flames of nostalgia in anyone old enough to remember when Bumblebee was a VW, but they’re still not enough to make the game enjoyable. Even viewing the extra content is a chore as there are 158 pictures to view, and these pictures are unlocked in no particular order, causing you to button press your way through dozens of locked pictures just to get to a shot from the movie you’ve been able to see online for months.

Transformers: The Game somewhat resembles its cinematic sibling in that it’s loud and possesses some exciting visuals, but where watching the movie is a fun and enjoyable experience, playing this game is nothing but a boring chore, devoid of the fun you’d expect from running around as a giant robot. If this game were a Transformer, it’d be Rodimus Prime: all flash and no substance.