Special thanks to Activision for allowing us to review this game.  I was relatively skeptical about a TV-show-turned video game for the Nintendo DS thinking it would be too childish for someone like me but I was pleasantly surprised.

Transformers follows the animated series of which my son loves to watch.  Certainly a step up from the old Transformers cartoons of my day.  The characters are a little more “animated” in a cartoony way but it doesn’t take away from the enjoyment.  Personally I think my son would be bored if he watched the old series.  I digress.

In Transformers Animated you get to play as either Bumblebee, Optimus Prime or Bulkhead.  Each character has his own strengths and is able to perform certain tasks that others cannot.  For obvious reasons-Bulkhead (the largest one) is able to bash down walls while Bumblebee (the more nimble) can multi-jump on walls to make his way up obstacles.

The game is fun as a platformer, various degrees of challenges and remembering which character can do what task.  The story is a little tough to follow as I am not a fan of the cartoon series but I don’t think most children would follow the story much anyway.  You do get to transform into vehicles but it certainly is not the emphasis of the game and it’s probably better that way.  The game works well as a platformer and not so much as a driving game.

The graphics are what you would expect from the DS which aren’t terrible and the implementation of the stylus can get somewhat annoying.  Optimus Prime is able to throw his axe to activate certain mechanisms.  In order to throw you must trace a line from Optimus to the mechanism and that is the path that the axe takes.  The problem is it feels like you have to almost stop the game, grab the stylus and use it, then put it back to continue on.  It’s not as fluid as I would have liked but it’s still a neat concept.

Overall the game is good, children who are fans of the series will most likely enjoy the game.  There is very mild robot violence, no more than is on the cartoon.

Buy/Rent/Skip:

Buy