- Awesome Music: While it takes a while to kick off, the BGM in the map screen is rather catchy. The in-level tracks are also memorable, particularly the Pig City theme. Vince DiCola at work
, gentlebeings. - Catharsis Factor: Remember all the times when a single pig survived their lair collapsing around and on top of him? This game allows you to use weapons of mass destruction against the darn pigs. Missiles? Check. Kill Sat? Check. Air Strikes? Check.
- Demonic Spiders:
- Missiles. They can be tough (or impossible, depending on the character) to shoot down on their own, but they often get spammed to the point it's impossible to shoot them all down even by the best shooters. This can be devastating as it makes players incapable of shooting down enemies, dodging falling monoliths, or shooting down other missiles (which can create an unfortunate cycle).
- Shotgun pig bots. Their shots do a lot of damage and if there’s a lot of them they can bring your character to half health in less than a minute. The only thing that balances them out is that they don’t have the best accuracy, and even then they're still nightmares to deal with. Especially with Heatwave and Sentinel Prime, whose long firing times force you to eat the damage in order to kill them. Even worse, higher difficulty levels massively buff their damage, enough to bring your transformer down in just 2 to 3 shots. They're at their worst in Challenge Run, where they can sometimes be underground and impossible to hit if you're not using Menasor or Devastator.
- Walking Mortar Towers can become especially deadly on higher difficulty levels. They fire lava globs which hit hard, and are tanky enough in this stages to the point dodging is your only option. This is difficult enough if you're using normal characters, as they come in groups and adjust their aim to account for vehicle mode, but is somehow even worse if you're using Combiners, who aren't able to evade and thus have to soak up damage. They're at their worst in Challenge Run, where using Combiners is mandatory.
- Fanon: The unnamed Seeker that appears when using the Strikebot Energonicon is assumed to be Needlenose.
- Game-Breaker:
- Energon Grimlock has a much faster vehicle mode than his Gray Slam and Goldbite counterparts, and his beam is 5 times as powerful as both of them, destroying any enemy, block, or mortar tower in its way. His only weakness is his defense, though with how powerful his beam is, chances are most enemies won’t live long enough to fire the first shot, and he can heal damage back with energon.
- Thundercracker has an accessory called the launchers, which grant him explosive rounds. However, this turns his Death of a Thousand Cuts method into a death by a million cannon shots, the explosive shockwaves the shots now carry destroys everything in a small radius, from glass to stone, nothing is safe. And since he shoots at least a hundred shots per second and doesn’t need to reload, levels just become shooting ranges.
- While more expensive, Energon Starscream has the Shoulder Pads. While it does force you to not pick the Null-Ray, which grant 10% bonus damage, it allows Starscream to be just as strong as Thundercracker with extra damage granted from being an Energon-fueled character. Furthermore, Energon-fueled characters heal when they absorbed energon, giving him better long-term survivability.
- Menasor. Just... Menasor. Words can't describe how over-the-top overpowered he is. By combining the abilities of all the Stunticons, he sends out salvos of energy that ricochet all over the place. With the Sword upgrade, these explode, allowing you to near instantly clear all obstacles on the screen... and off-screen too. He can clear entire biomes before he's even walked into them. It's entirely possible to just make him fire vaguely off into the distance and then just leave the game running without him sustaining much damage from anything. The only things his weapon can't destroy easily are missiles... which he's immune to due to being a Combiner.
- Goddamned Bats: For Terrence, Sharkticon-hogs, flying hogs, and the balloon hogs. They show up in large numbers, but they're more or less impossible for Terrence to shoot down on his own.
- Good Bad Bugs: Rarely, upon completing a level when you have sent in your buddy at least once, they will look invisible... until they show up from the right side of the results screen shortly as they're circling around.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: A few years back, Justitoys made a downscaled version of G1 Grimlock colored green just in time for Christmas. Now there's Hal as Grimlock, who's a smaller version of Grimlock from a game released just in time for Christmas.
- Low-Tier Letdown:
- Red as vanilla Optimus Prime. Even TF Wiki used to make fun of him for being good at precisely nothing. Chuck as vanilla Bumblebee is similar. As the first characters introduced, the most iconic are used... and as the first characters introduced, they are the weakest.
- The majority of Transformers based on Corporal Pig are just, really really bad. They generally follow the same pattern of high-damage but low-aoe attacks, which are rarely useful. Then there's Motormaster, who has mild aoe but very low damage. The crowning loser is Scorponok who overheats really fast, leaving having caused little damage at all, and the cooldown takes a century. In general, if it's based on Corporal Pig, it's probably gonna suck. Except Menasor. Because He's Menasor.
- Older Than They Think: This incarnation of Soundwave has been criticized for being fused with Chef Pig, and thus Soundblaster being The Starscream even more than the actual Starscream and Soundwave also being a literal treacherous, despite Soundwave being known for his Undying Loyalty. However, Bob Budiansky's original bio for Soundwave depicts him as an opportunistic blackmailer, with much of Chef Pig!Soundwave's bio almost being 1:1 with the original. In a way, this incarnation is Truer to the Text than most incarnations of the character.
- Player Tic: It's common for players to finish a level by going into vehicle mode right before they enter the Astrotrain for extra style points.
- That One Achievement: The achievement "Slow Motion = Cool" for dodging 50 falling monoliths without getting hit as an Autobird. This is particularly difficult for the Autobirds, as their ranks include Terence, who has very little ability to defend himself against the scrambler missiles, which in turn makes dodging the monoliths impossible.
- That One Attack: Earthquakes. They can destroy a Transformer very quickly, are almost impossible to notice (other than a character's hearts disappearing), and have no known counter other than hoping they stop.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- The Combiners make an appearance, such as Devastator, but many of them are comprised of characters not currently in the game. For example, Volcanius is comprised of Grimlock, Slug, Swoop, Snarl and Sludge, but only Grimlock is playable. The Constructicons are absent entirely (likely due to being represented by Minion Pigs, who are all Seekers, while the Constructicons are construction vehicles) and only appear as Devastator.
- Speaking of Combiners, while Brawl is in the base game, his fellow Combaticons and Bruticus are absent. This is an even bigger missed opportunity because the Combiners are unbalanced, with only two for the Deceptihogs, Devastator and Menasor, but three for the Autobirds, Superion, Optimus Maximus and Volcanius (which can be bumped up to four if you include Omega Supreme). In particular, Swindle seems like a rather large missed opportunity given how well he meshes onto Chef Pig's model.
- Stella's flock don't make an appearance, despite being referenced in a Mythology Gag. Many feel characters portrayed by Stella and Matilda would've been better suited to being portrayed by Stella's friends instead.
- Starscream appears, but rather than being portrayed by Chef Pig, established to be scheming against King Pig, he is portrayed by a generic Minion Pig, while Chef Pig is relegated to the role of Soundwave.
- Unexpected Character: Bludgeon and Heatwave. The rest of the early Transformers are either huge names or tied to the films, while Heatwave is a Canon Foreigner originating in the Transformers: Rescue Bots (a preschool TV Show) and most of Bludgeon's appearances have been in comics, aside from his toy releases (and he hadn't had a main-line release since the "Hunt for the Decepticons" sub-line).
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/AngryBirdsTransformers
Go To
