If you grew up in the 80’s then you’re probably at least familiar with Transformers (“G1”, as it’s now lovingly known). Science fiction doesn’t get a whole lot better than a bunch of giant robots duking it out over a planet that they really don’t have any reason to care about.

Transformers G1: Awakening ($4.99; FREE)

When I heard there was a Transformers game coming to the iPhone I got excited, and even more so when I read it was one of the best Transformers games made to date. Of course, given the track record of the property that doesn’t mean too much, but still… As it turns out, not only are the reports right, but in this case “one of the best” actually translates to “pretty good”. It probably won’t satisfy nitty-gritty strategy fans that love loads of details, but for simpler folks like myself it hits the spot just right.

Presentation

The graphics are cool in an 80’s sort of way. The intro and battle scenes are the highlight of the visuals, as they look like they were ripped straight from the animation cells of the old cartoon. For a fanboy like me, that’s just perfect. The game board itself feels planted firmly between the 8 and 16 bit eras of the Nintendo, which again works well. The characters are easily recognizable, especially when the playing field is zoomed in, and unlike the toys they look good in both robot and vehicle forms. The one thing I’ve noticed that’s a bit odd is that the robots seem real jittery when in vehicle mode.

I’m not quite as impressed with the sounds. The battle sounds are fine, and the transformation noise is great. However, the robots don’t make any sounds when they move! In fact, the world is pretty quiet when you’re not transforming or fighting. It would have been great to hear voices for the Transformers during the dialog sequences. Also, while the music is good and suits the game quite well, I’m disappointed that they don’t play the icon 80’s “more than meets the eye” theme. If nothing else, this would have been great for the intro or menu somewhere. It would have been fitting, too, since that’s the area that this particular game was based off of.

Controls

The game doesn’t use any shake, tilt or swipe controls, so everything works pretty well. To directly select a robot you can click on it, or you can use the “next unit” icon to cycle through all your available troops until you get the one you want. Once highlighted, the buttons related to all available actions for that robot will be highlighted. Just click on an action to perform it.

The only thing that’s sometimes an issue is picking a square to move to, but that’s only a problem if you’re zoomed out. Just zoom in and the destination squares will be big enough to select with ease. Zooming in and out requires pinching the screen, which you should be pretty comfortable with if you’ve played enough games on your device.

Game Play

Game play is a pretty simple affair. In each mission you’ll be given a selection of Autobots to use, and your goal is basically to terminate all the Decepticons in the area. The game is turn based strategy, so you’ll get a chance to move and attack with all of your robots, and then the enemy will get to do the same. Each robot has a certain number of spaces they can move, which increases if they are in vehicle mode. Remember that you can’t attack in vehicle mode, though, so if you move next to the enemy like that they will get a free shot on you. Once you’ve moved (or instead of moving) you’ll have certain things that you can do. Most actions are standard, but there are a couple of things that only certain robots can do.

Any robot can attack if they are adjacent to an enemy and in robot mode. What’s cool is that any allies that are also adjacent to the attack add 25% to your attack. Of course, any additional bad guys in the area do the same for the retaliation. A Transformer starts out with 100 points, and when that gets down to 0 they are out of the battle. If Rachet is on the field he can heal one Autobot per turn, as long as he’s standing next to the Autobot. This will only recover a few points, however, as opposed to completely healing the Autobot. While you’re on the field you can capture energy stations that provide you with Energon. To capture a station you move on Autobot onto it an press the flag button. If you have enough Energon and you have Metroplex out on the field you can bring new Autobots into battle.

There are two other modes available in the game: Showdown and Arena. In Showdown you’ll play the Autobots and go one on one with a series of Decepticons to see who reigns supreme. In Arena mode you can play against either the computer or a human opponent. One side gets the Autobots and the other side gets the Decepticons. Once again, it’s a battle to the finish. Both of these extra modes play out just like campaign mode as far as the mechanics are concerned, the one exception being that there are no energy stations to take over.

Suggestions

In general it would be nice if there were some more sound effects. In campaign mode it would be nice if there were a way to rotate the board so you didn’t have to zoom in when there were a lot of robots huddled close together. Sometimes it gets hard to select an individual robot when everyone is close together. For the other two modes it would be great if you could select them in a submenu after selecting Play from the main menu, instead of having to load an in-progress game in order to access them. Also, the ability to choose your own robots in these two modes would make them a lot more interesting.

Conclusion

It’s nice to see that something I grew up with can still be entertaining and popular. It’s even better to see them start treating the property right. Don’t misunderstand me: I loved the cartoons and the comics of the 80’s. There was a pretty big lull where they didn’t do anything decent with the Transformers, however, and there certainly hasn’t been much positive activity on the video game front.

Transformers G1: The Awakening certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s a fun romp that captures the spirit of the millennium old battle and doesn’t make me think too much in the process. Hardcore strategists might want to steer away or at least try the free version first, but fans of the Transformers and more casual gamers should find a lot to like here. I just want to know where the iPhone Transformer was…