With Transformers: Rise of the Beasts being released soon, many fans of the franchise are looking back at all kinds of previous Transformers media as the film franchise is revived once again. With new and old faces alike, it is a fascinating time to look back at the history of the Transformers within the world of video gaming.
With varying levels of success over a wide variety of years and consoles, the Transformers game series has been turbulent and sometimes incredibly fun. But every franchise that has such a similar spread of revivals across different media has got some very good and some very bad games. Whether Rise of the Beasts is a box office success, the Transformers will always be welcome to try their luck at another video game.
7 Transformers Animated: The Game
A side-scrolling platform game that was released on the Nintendo DS to coincide with the newer animated Transformers series which began in 2007 at the same time as Michael Bay released his first Transformers movie. This series was aimed at a young audience and garnered some opposition from long-time fans of the franchise, but the game was an effective tie-in that worked well.
The story followed a group of episodes from the animated show in which Autobots were trying to fight off rogue factory robots. With this simple story and a nice set of mechanics built around switching between three Autobot characters in order to deal with different obstacles, the game managed to become a memorable Transformers gaming experience.
6 Transformers: Forged To Fight
It is easy for a franchise such as Transformers to find itself moving over to mobile gaming. Mobile games are often simple to keep updated with new features and don’t need to focus as much on storytelling as other games. However, Forged to Fight was a mobile game that managed to be a great little RPG in the Transformers universe.
Forged to Fight recently stopped getting support, but it will be remembered as a genuinely amazing piece of fun that went beyond what mobile games often attempt to do. A lot of characters and missions made the variety of this game fairly endless, and the simple controls made it accessible for anybody to pick up and get sucked into.
5 Transformers: Devastation
Devastation is a game definitely built for fans of the original animated Transformers series. The extremely cartoonish style of this one and the simplicity are reminiscent of how that series was built and will be extremely nostalgic for anybody who watched and loved that show when they were younger.
PlatinumGames brought their uniquely fast-paced hack-and-slash style of gameplay to the Transformers franchise and allowed players to zip around speedily in battle, with a very simplistic style, mostly just fighting the entire time. The feeling of fighting like a true Transformer, even turning into a car during some combos, was something that was a huge deal at the time for many fans of the franchise.
4 Transformers Prime: The Game
Another Nintendo-made game that was released in 2012 on various Nintendo consoles, Transformers Prime was about the Autobots standing against the Decepticons, as usual, as the villainous robots attempted to resurrect an ancient Transformer. The story was fairly fun, the diverse levels which included racing and plenty of action were fun, and the game was a fairly complete package.
Based on the Transformers: Prime animated series which ran between 2010 and 2013, this game had all the drama and battling that the players would want in a regular Transformers game, but also included a nice story aspect that leveled this attempt at a large-scale Transformers game up somewhat.
3 Transformers: War For Cybertron
For so many reasons, the War For Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron games are some of the absolute pinnacles of what has made the Transformers franchise successful in the world of gaming. War For Cybertron took place on the Transformers' home world of Cybertron, years before they ever came to Earth.
As most fans of the franchise know, Cybertron was destroyed during a civil war between the Autobots and Decepticons, and this game showed that battle in all its terrible glory. It was a third-person shooter game that included multiplayer, a well-told story that included some great voice acting, and plenty of action.
2 Transformers (PS2)
One of the earlier attempts at a large-scale Transformers game was released in 2004 on the PS2. Based on the Transformers Armada animated show, this game is still considered by many to be the definitive take on the franchise in gaming terms.
The story was simple and a little strange, focusing on Autobots trying to capture ancient “Mini-Con” technology before the Decepticons could retrieve it. But it meant that a variety of unique challenges were handed out which made players think more than most Transformers games manage to do, and showcased a variety of locations around the world where the Transformers could battle.
1 Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron
The sequel to War For Cybertron was an amazing story that told of the final days in the battle for Cybertron as Autobots looked to escape the dying planet. With some truly emotional moments (Bumblebee sacrificing himself to save Optimus Prime for example) this game managed to tell the best story of any Transformers game to date.
The game also managed to improve upon its predecessor in gameplay terms, leading to many critics and fans praising it as the most true to the franchise Transformers game there had ever been. Whether everyone agrees with this, there is no doubt the effort that went into producing War For Cybertron and Fall Of Cybertron was the single largest effort put into bringing Transformers and their universe to the world of gaming to date.