Transformers is in a bit of a weird spot as a franchise.

Recent films haven’t quite been the success stories studios would hope and the games haven’t really hit the mark despite multiple different genres and takes. While people may have once loved what this franchise was, what it has become is something very different.

And this latest from Outright Games sadly also falls a bit flat. It takes its cues from the animated Transformers: Earthspark featuring Alan Tudyk and Sidney Mikayla and sees you take on the titular role of Bumblebee as you smash through robots, traverse a semi-open world and enter high speed races with other Autobots.

As far as Outright Games usually go, this one has a much bigger scope than you may expect. The games are usually fairly linear, filled with cutscenes and lengthy spans of dialogue, but this one kind of lets you get exploring once the initial tutorials and cutscenes are out of the way.

As you venture around a wide open canyon, you can find collectable cards, pick up scrap from crates, take on optional missions and eradicate enemy threats within set bases. Sometimes you even have to turn off generators and find glyphs to reveal a hidden message.

Transformers: Earthspark – Expedition follows many of the familiar tropes of most any other open world game you’ve played over the last ten years as you’ve also got an upgrade tree to add in new abilities, you can customise your car to look even more stylish and there’s even combos you can fit together depending on where the mood takes you.

It’s a pretty good introduction for youngsters into these types of games, actually. The environments are sizeable but not too big. They’re almost split up into levels, so you’re encouraged to dip back to base in order to upgrade and take a breather, and there’s things to do off the beaten path. Though the environment often feels more barren than you’d like.

And while driving around as Bumblebee is surprisingly satisfying actually as you whizz through checkpoints and vault off rampways, the combat really lets this one down. Strikes barely feel impactful, the health bars are hard to see and difficult to determine what damage you’re doing, and it’s almost too easy between the fast evasion and the overly long stun time when using your blaster.

You do get to unlock some cool abilities later on, like being able to slam your Car down during strikes and doing a pent up force Falcon Punch, but what with the enemies respawning as you revisit certain areas, the battle patterns working at a very samey tempo, and encounters popping up once too many times, I was finding myself falling asleep at the buttons.

But like I said, I’m not really the target audience for this one. This is a game you introduce to a real fan of the animated show, or a youngster who’s never played an Assassin’s Creed or Grand Theft Auto (well, you hope not) so hasn’t seen world class developers work their magic to the full in these types of sandboxes.

If I’m looking at this one critically, it feels empty, the collectibles aren’t all that interesting, the side missions are a bit too sparse and repetitive and combat just isn’t particularly fun. But this looks, plays and sounds like a Transformers game, there’s an energy within it that just about captures some of the magic of the franchise and it’s definitely more ambitious and open than you’re used to from Outright titles in general.

Don’t go into this expecting a Transformers-branded, world class competitor to some of the other big hitters we’re seeing this month and take it for the easy-going, simplistic experience it is, and you might just manage to have yourself some fun. Meanwhile we’ll all just live in hope that someday we get something on a larger scale, with a bigger scope, and a more universal appeal.

Guy can dream, right?

Verdict

Transformers: Earthspark – Expedition is a relatively bare-bones, baby’s first open-world adventure game experience that often feels barren and has fairly uninspired combat. But it’s also a great introduction to the genre, has cool fan service for fans of the show, and is about as good as any Transformers title we’ve seen in recent years. It also has a much larger scope and scale than most are used to from Outright Games titles, so certainly isn’t doing things by halves and really is going the extra mile to pay homage to the franchise. Don’t expect it to be a world class competitor to this month’s meatier experiences, but Transformers fans won’t want to outright disregard it either.