It's a good thing the Autobots, Decepticons, and the rest of their ilk are sentient robots. It would be an absolute nightmare to pilot them if they weren't.

Three years have passed since the end of Revenge of the Fallen, and the human race believes that the Decepticons have left the Earth. The ensuing narrative takes place over seven chapters: the first three are Autobot missions, the next three follow the Decepticons, and the finale is an Autobot mission.

Developed by High Moon Studios, the team behind last year's successful War for Cybertron, Dark of the Moon shows the studio working this time within the boundaries of a movie tie-in, and this particular tie-in's most touted new feature is the addition of a "Stealth Force" form for the Transformers. Stealth Force is a hybrid form: halfway between the Autobots' and Decepticons' stylish vehicle disguises and their rock 'em, sock 'em robot forms.



As I hinted before, the most cumbersome aspect of the game is its control scheme. You have a Robot form, which consists of standard third-person shooter controls, and you can transform between that and Stealth Force at will by clicking the left stick. However, to get to the standard vehicle form—which you'll want to, as it's the fastest form by far and there is quite a bit of distance between some objectives—you have to hold the left trigger. The trigger also functions as your accelerator, so you'll only use vehicle form when you're going places, but the change from Stealth Force—where you move about at will in any direction using the left stick—to vehicle form where you have to steer with the right stick, can be rather jarring the first few times.

It's things like this—the failure to map similar functions to the same controls across all Transformer forms—that make trying to achieve your goal of protecting or destroying the planet much more difficult. I can't tell you how many times I used my cooldown ability when trying to zoom in on foes in Robot form because it's set to L1 (which is how you lock on to targets in Stealth Force) and I forgot that I had to use L2 instead because I was in Robot form.
Despite these difficulties, I did experience a rousing feeling of pride on two occassions. The first was during the opening mission when Optimus Prime finally showed up to fight alongside me; this was when I was being thoroughly kicked in the rear by Decepticon grunts. The second was about an hour after that, when I finally had a good grasp of the controls. Sadly, both of these high points subsided quickly—the former when I saw that, while my inspiring Autobot leader sure looked like he was fighting, there wasn't a whole lot of enemies blowing up because of him. The latter faded even more quickly when I saw how long it had been. This did wonders for my self-esteem, as you can probably imagine. On the bright side, I began to enjoy the havoc I could wreak now that I knew what I was doing.