Dave's Transformers Artifact Rant Transformers Autobots and Decepticons Battle 1-on-1 LCD game Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/LCDgame1 Okay, this was sitting on a pile of stuff since I picked it up about a month ago on a whim, I figured it was about time to actually open it and give it a try. :) I will state up front that I am not much of a gamer in the electronic or computer sense, but this really isn't aimed at the hardcore electronic gamer anyway. CAPSULE As cheapo handheld games go, it's not bad, but it's still fairly lame in absolute terms. Neutral. $14.99 at K-Mart RANT This comes on a roughly Scout-sized blister card, pegged with the rest of the cheap handheld games at stores like K-Mart, Target and Wal-Mart. Unlike a lot of cheap handhelds, it has a pixel-style LCD screen instead of the standard "several dozen line art images" style, which is the main reason I didn't leave it on the shelf. Line-art LCDs are just too limited to engage my interest longer than a minute or two. The unit is mainly made of bright red plastic in the shape of movie Optimus Prime's upper half, with molded head and bas-relief arms and torso details. The chest is replaced by the display screen. There's white rocker buttons on the shoulders, a white D-pad on the right shoulder (his right, your left), and white A and B buttons on his left shoulder. The belt buckle is yellow plastic with an Autobot symbol molded into it, and there's two yellow plastic headlight buttons on the abdomen (ON and START). The belt buckle button is used to "Morph" in a couple of the levels, really just a glorified "push the button to acknowledge you've reached the end of a sub-stage" thing. There's a good paint job in dark blue, silver, dark gunmetal and black. The head does not turn, but wiggles a little because its made of softer plastic. The game takes 3 AAA batteries and turns on as soon as the battery cover is closed...there's no off button, it just sleeps after two minutes of inactivity. The game has two modes. Regular mode takes you through a series of levels that combine top-down driving games, side-view platform scrollers, side-view "Street Fighter" levels, and one shooter level. Battle mode lets you skip to just the fighter levels, either one at a time or all four in a row ("Endurance" game). In all games, you play Optimus Prime, although other characters appear in the brief "cut scenes" between levels. Also, in the regular game, you have the option of starting anew on any level you've been to since last time the game was reset. I will say at this point that I didn't beat the game, I gave up at the end of Level 4, for reasons I'll go into shortly. I did try all the Battle Mode fights, and was able to beat everyone but Megatron, who is totally cheaty. A general note, while disguised as more of a twitch game, this is actually more of a puzzle game. The controls are laggy and insensitive enough that you really need to know what to press before the threat even appears on the screen to make it past some of the harder challenges. Fighting Megatron, in particular, seems to require knowing in advance exactly when to block and when it's safe to attack. Level 1 involves driving around a map to find four pods, which you turn into generic Autobot allies (who don't help at any point in the game, it's just scorekeeping) when you hit the Morph button. Barricade wanders the mape getting in the way, and any damage he inflicts while you're driving is taken off when you start the fight against him at the end of the level. Pretty simple level, even my limited button-mashing skills got me through it without dying. Level 2 has you going to Hoover Dam to get the AllSpark, fighting against Sector 7 missile trucks (which just sit there firing missiles until you kill them), while trying to get through energy barriers and jumping the occasional bottomless pit. Yes, that refuge of the unimaginative game designer who wants to make absolutely sure you pay for any defects in your D-pad, the pits are auto-kills if you don't manage to get up and to the right exactly correct. At the end of this level, you face Megatron, who kills you (this doesn't cost you a life) and flees with the AllSpark after a brief and one-sided fighter level. Level 3 involves trying to escape Sector 7, with more of the same (and a LOT of pits), only now going to the left and having an unhurtable Scorponok show up every so often to assign Wandering Damage to you. Once you get through all of this, you have the regular fighter game against Scorponok. Level 4 starts with a Spy Hunter sort of thing, only you need to dodge the oncoming cars with your insanely sluggish controls for a little bit before Bonecrusher (who looks more like Payload from above in these graphics) starts killing you slowly just by gently touching you. You have to manage to get past his lethal rear bumper and shove him into the buildings to either side of the street several times before the "MORPH" warning flashes and you have to hit the belt buckle to go into the next stage. In this stage, you shoot at Bonecrusher's robot mode while he randomly (and unblockably) attacks. The key here is to shoot then scoot so you're not there when he attacks, but again the sluggish controls mean you'd better know the actual timing pattern or you die pretty quickly. Supposedly once you kill him at range, you get to kill him again in the fighter game, but after several tries I gave up on the game. According to the instructions, the next level involves more driving, and dodging bombs that Megatron is dropping. Presumably you need to memorize this pattern too, since there's no way the driving controls are going to magically get any better. Granted, slow response at least makes sense for a semitractor. Finally, you get to be killed repeatedly in the fighter game by Megatron until you learn the pattern of his attacks and pauses. The Battle Game at least lets you do all the fighting without dealing with the tiresome platforming and unavoidable damage assignment first. And except for Megatron, they're sufficiently vincible that there isn't a single optimum pattern required to win (although I found that "Duck and block" followed by mashing the "slash" button repeatedly worked pretty well against all but Megatron). Pixels are about half a millimeter in size, for pretty crude graphics. The screen isn't backlit, so you need decent lighting in order to see what's going on. Dave Van Domelen, got about 20 minutes of amusement out of the game, plus five minutes of frustration before giving up and writing the review.