If you're here to see some Overwatch review, well, you just got jubaited! Welcome to
Transformers Online.
Tencent announced the close beta test two months before the release of the upcoming Transformer movie The Last Knight, for a wonderful celebration and promotion of the film. In comparison to the last close beta test, the CBT offered a redesign of the abilities of all the Transformers and the combat system, so it’s a pretty huge upgrade. Now an open beta is on stage.
(new character Arcee released in open beta)
Before I go on any further about this game, let's begin by asking you this:
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I want you to tell me which one is Transformers OL and which one is Overwatch?
And the answer is...yep you’re right, I'm not gonna tell you.
Now behold, this is not an Overwatch vs Transformers Online comparison article. This is a first impression review on Transformers Online’s gameplay during its close beta test. I will leave you to figure out what the differences are between the two games on your own...
..for the rest of your life.
Let's take a peek at the specs:
Guess what, like any other upcoming Unreal Engine 4 games (Dark and Light, Age of Wushu 2), you need 16gb memory! Haha! RIP memory.
Nah, Tencent just wanted to scare ya xD, I can run this baby on an 8gb toaster alright. Hmm, do you smell something burning?
Characters:
Now, most of the character designs is based on the cartoon version:
Bringing back any old childhood memory of yours?
(“Well, I’m too old for this s***!”.) No you’re not! Keep reading!
However, there are a few Transformers that come with both movie and cartoon skins like Optimus and Ratchet. They will eventually release more movie skins for the rest of the… aliens. Yes, it’s a fun fact that Transformers were depicted as extraterrestrial living beings.
There’s a preview button on the character screen that allows you to switch the transformation back and forth from bot mode to vehicle mode.
Now, I know what you’re thinking - "I can smash that s*** as many times as I want! That will be enough for the entire gameplay!"
Game Modes
They have different game modes along with different maps:
Escort, Control Points, Death Match, and Assault. You can choose between Quick Play, Play vs Ai, Competitive Play or Custom Game.
Don’t those options remind you of…
Ok, alright, let's not go there.
The matchmaking takes about 20 seconds during the close beta . There is a quite number of custom games you can find. So I’d say the player population is fairly good. The open beta would be even better.
Prematch stuff: Settings: you can adjust your graphic, sound, and controls. This game has decent amount of options provided like you can adjust low, medium, high, ultra along with other detailed graphic options and decent list of screen ratios.
Besides from choosing different skins for your character, you can equip runes to make your character stronger. There’s a rune page, you know, something similar to League of Legends. During the CBT, you can store up to two presets and you choose one of them during the character selection stage before diving into the game.
Examples of the runes: Increase in melee attack speed, range attack strength, armor penetration, shield cap, energy pool, energy regen rate, etc.
Gameplay
Classes:
Besides how they are divided into different classes, each character’s strength varies in different range attacks. Some are stronger in long range, short range, or melee attacks, etc.
Character abilities and controls:
During battle, each transformer can transform into vehicle mode, melee mode or FPS mode.
Depending on which character you use, some come with 4 abilities, while others come with 5. By default, left click for normal range or melee weapon attack, right click for special ability that is unique for each transformer, E is your ult that is also unique, Shift for mobility skills – some transformers have teleportation while others trigger speed buff, so it depends. Q is a switch between FPS mode and melee attack mode. Abilities have cooldowns, especially your ultimate skill’s CD is pretty long just like You-Know-What made by Blizzard.
(a transformer going invisible)
Each transformer is equipped with unique weapons, range and melee - shotgun, machine gun, lazor with slower projectile speed, electric laser, hit scan, and so on.
(Scope view of a sniper rifle - 2x level magnification.)
Your shield is your first layer of defense followed by your actual HP. Shield has quick auto regen while HP doesn’t. And noobs, don’t blame your heal support if you rushed to the front line trying to 1vM.
For all you Autobot die heart fans out there, sorry but Decepticons come with an extra gun with their vehicles. While Autobots still want to leave their fans an impression that their aesthetic is cooler looking on their non-military vehicles, well, prepare to increase the cost of your car insurance.
There are different buffs you can grab in the field. If you plan to save them up, they’re gone for good :D
Post Game
You can keep track of your scoreboard, Win Rate, KDA, number of kills in all games in total, etc.
There are Daily Quests and Progressive Sidequests, which you can earn rewards like currency, supplies, and player XP. Reward items are sent to you as attachment in your mail in the lower right corner.
Cashshop:
You can purchase runes, different character skins and weapon skins.
Sometimes Tencent hosts prize or activity events with free stuff:
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My thoughts on this game... Pretty fun game overall. When it comes to gaming, I’m kind of picky in graphics. For this game, the graphic is not bad, pretty optimized for those who have a lower end pc.
I don’t think however, they have fully made use of the functions in Unreal 4. Their art design concept on the other hand, looks a bit confusing in terms of the objective - are they going for a cartoony style like Overwatch, or rather a realistic style, or even surreal? I think character modeling could’ve been better with more details but again it has to do with their art design concept in the first place. The color rendering is fairly good speaking relatively as a cartoon based game. Lighting and shadow effect, not at the top of the line but decent enough if you’re not looking for anything cinematic. As I said, I’m kinda demanding on graphics.
I don’t really like the distortion they have for those vehicle models, it could be caused by the FoV but it doesn’t look natural, not to mention the presentation of its partial coverage unless you really have to lower your camera angle to make out its wholeness. It only applies to large vehicles, smaller ones like racing cars are less problematic.
Now diving into the gameplay, 9 maps for a MOBA game is pretty decent.
In terms of impact and hit effect…
There's room for improvement for more particle effects, as well as the animations of a character’s or object’s reaction when being hit. Although there is knock back effect spotted a few times, it's not enough to be thrilling.
The sound effect of explosion and object contact is pretty neat. As a FPS game, if they add in normalization of sound relative to changes in distance for any gun shot, it would've enhanced the overall gaming experience. The voice over is a little weak though, it needs to be more dramatic and volatile imo, it sounds sloppy sometimes, that those transfomers are like they have just gone through hibernation.
Pathing: Vehicle movement and the vehicle’s pathing is a little awkward but it’s not a huge deal to me, the physic doesn't seem quite normal there but it doesn’t affects the gameplay much.
If you ask me about the character balance, such subject matter is hard to discuss, as I would probably need to spend hours and hours in this game before I can sort what each character is really capable of and give a fair judgement. However, just based on what I experienced so far, there isn’t a huge DPS gap between each character unless like in a situation where a sniper is going in for some easy kills while the opposing team clustered a bunch, or… if you’re John Wick, headshotting Transformers..for the entire game. As for the balance in matchmaking, occasionally there are few situations where a heavy leaning on one side, but most of time the score gap is pretty flat and steady. It also has to do with your skills as well, so debating on a player’s level on paper vs a player’s actual skill will put you in a misery of discussion.
My Evaluation:
Graphic Quality: 7.0/10
Art Design: 7.0/10
Sound/Music: 7.3/10
Gameplay/Content: 7.5/10
Story Illustration and Lore: N/A
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Overall Score: 7.2/10
My note: this article is not sponsored nor paid, and completely self-voluntarily written. The personal views and opinions from this article is not related to the standpoint of the Official or the media.
Recently I got the opportunity to play the China pre-open beta version published by Tencent Games. Car control feels the same to Need for Speed Rivals, and the graphics isn't compromised. What's more the Item Battle mode is intense for it not just challenges your driving skill but also your brain — you have to make the right and fast decision on when to use an item to attack or counter your opponents.
