Transformers crash land on Android OS

Glu Mobile has released a port of its Transformers G1: Awakening iPhone game to the Android Market this week. Awakening is a turn-based strategy game starring 23 of our favorite robots in disguise from the 1980s cartoon, including Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron, and Starscream. The story loosely follows the animated plot with players taking control of the heroic Autobots as they wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons shortly after crash landing on Earth.

After the initial download and installation, the game prompts you to download an additional 7MB of data to either the SD card or internal memory. On each subsequent start-up, the game prompts you to enable sound or not, which is a nice touch for those of us who like to sneak a round of gaming into the occasional meeting.

You take turns with the game's AI, moving characters around the game's playing field, capturing power pylons, and harvesting energon to fuel your Transformers' actions. Different characters have different attributes: some are healers, others are fighters, and still others are builders that create new 'bots on the battle field. Battles feature cell-shaded animation that is quite nice to look at, but aside from positioning your bots and issuing commands, you don't really have any control over the action of the individual fights.

With only 17 levels of what ends up being fairly repetitive gameplay and a $2.99 price tag in the Android Market, we hesitate to recommend Transformers G1: Awakening to anyone but the most hard core of Transformers fans. That being said, I've got to get back to trying to defeat Trypticon.