DL RATING 6/10
PRICE: $65
GENRE: Action
PLATFORM: PSP

Transformers was the No. 1 movie last week according to Life! Movies.

But if you happen to have no idea of the goings-on in the movie, however, here's the gist: Transformers tells of two warring alien robot factions in search of a powerful object called the AllSpark, valuable for its ability to bring mechanical objects to life. This search brings them to Earth in locales like Qatar and Nevada, with plenty of weapons fired and buildings destroyed.

That is exactly what you will get to do in Transformers: The Game - fire missiles, blow up buildings and beat up some robots. The PSP version is a linear series of missions in which you will alternate between controlling the do-gooder Autobots and the evil Decepticons.

As varied as the missions are, they start to feel the same after a while, which makes the single-player game feel like a quest to unlock robots for the multiplayer mode - a better experience overall, as you can relish in beating up to three other friends in either deathmatch, king of the hill or capture the flag modes.

However, controls are atrociously bad no matter which mode you play. Not only are they loose and jerky, it takes so much effort to aim weapons at the enemies that I found it easier just to join the melee.

But the various control schemes - such as having to fire using the square button (in robot mode) and the right shoulder button (in vehicle mode,) are so confusing that it took some time to get reacquainted with them every time.

If there is one area the game succeeds in, it is that you can play as Optimus Prime (a truck built by a company called Peterbilt), or as Megatron (a jet from the Transformers' planet of Cybertron), or as any of the other 25 Transformers available.

The developers have managed to scale the robots nicely so that they appear larger than the surroundings.

A decent effort, but the small PSP screen fails to bring out the incredible amount of detail seen in the movie - a lot of textures, especially those of the robots, look blurry instead.

There are versions for other platforms too.

The consoles get free-roaming games that you can play at your own pace, while the Nintendo DS goes one step further - it gives two versions of the game and you play as a generic Transformer.

Despite the bad controls and lack of any outstanding features, Transformers: The Game is still decent enough to complement what was one great movie.

Kids and Transformers fans will like it, but those in it for the gameplay should look elsewhere.

- By Valentine Chua, a gamer and renewed Transformers fan.