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| - "Time for a delicious, cool...What? Pepsi?!"Blackout started things off by shooting down an MH-53; confusingly, this happened in Qatar right near the military base, rather than in Afghanistan as might reasonably be expected. At Starscream's command, he then proceeded to the local puny human military base to wreck it because that's just how Starscream rolls. "Damn it Scorponok, that is NOT my Powerlinx plug!"Sadly, his plan to wreck stuff up all day was foiled by some human communication vehicles, and rather than destroy them himself he deployed Scorponok, as the slower, less powerful Decepticon would be much better equipped to deal with the situation. Blackout busied himself destroying some communication arrays in the meantime, hoping to steal their vending machines mainframes and grab some data. Scorponok, having succeeded in destroying the communications trucks, returned to Blackout, whereupon Starscream revealed he had in fact failed to do that and some human reinforcements were on the way to make Blackout's life miserable. Blackout instead made their lives miserable, and the end of level screen helpfully explained the entire level had been pointless. No, really. Mission 2: The Hunt For Sam Witwicky Barricade's protoform landed near a local donut store, and he promptly copied the nearby Saleen S281 (a police car near a donut store, see what they did there?) and got in contact with Starscream. Starscream informed him he was there to find Sam Witwicky, for some reason forgetting he was only supposed to know Sam's eBay username at this point. By finding Sam, Barricade would be able to get hold of a pair of glasses he owned that held the key to the end of the game. You're better off forgetting about this conversation entirely, it'll prevent later sanity loss. This is what is technically known as a bad idea.Starscream's plan to find Sam's location entailed Barricade driving to a more or less random part of town, where he was set upon by Autobot Drones, then driving to a different random part of town where he was set upon by Autobot Drones again. This incredibly important objective fulfilled, Barricade promptly teleported to a location he couldn't possibly get to during the actual mission, and was told to head to the power plant in order to find an irritating little abomination. Upon arrival, Barricade found himself faced with humans armed with rocket launchers, so immediately did the most sane and sensible thing and hid behind a line of propane tanks, which for some reason actually worked. Finding himself dealing with a magic Sector Seven SUV which could somehow hide itself inside buildings, Barricade was forced to tear down all the nearby buildings in his search for Frenzy as the small Decepticon's energy decreased, which, presumably, meant the humans were torturing (?!) him. In an SUV. In a building. After repeating this several times and watching the SUV at one point burst out of a non-existent building next to the local police station, Barricade cornered Frenzy's captors at the local shopping mall, destroying the entire building and letting the cutscene gloss over how the hell Frenzy got out from under hundreds of tons of collapsed masonry. From this he determined that a human named Sam was in possession of a "pair of ocular lenses." Which both he and Starscream knew at the start of the level. Argh. This is what you'll be doing for approximately 90% of the time you're in Tranquility, so get used to it.Bumblebee then showed up heading for the police station, forcing Barricade to brave his abysmal driving controls in order to stop the Autobot. The heroic Bumblebee then resorted to using a ridiculous shockwave attack that destroyed a huge area of town every time he did it. Unperturbed by this inexplicable display of Autobot villainy, Barricade vanquished Bumblebee, then chased him down to the local Bay Demolition site, where he was ambushed by Swindle drones and Dropkick drones that were blue in the cinematic, despite being red. Despite having no reason to stay there and every reason not to, Barricade defeated all of them. This led him back to the Police Station, which had impishly decided to reassemble itself since being destroyed in the second mission, as police stations are noted to do from time to time. Here he cornered Sam, but failed to walk the required two steps straight forward before Bumblebee smacked into his legs, picked up Sam and Mikaela and drove off. And then drove back or something, since the mission started with him in robot mode three hundred yards directly in front of Barricade. Barricade fought with Bumblebee. Then Bumblebee drove off, Barricade followed, and they did it again. This happened several times, with Barricade at one point somehow ambushing Bumblebee despite the Autobot getting there before he did. After entirely too many identical fight sequences, Bumblebee lay defeated, Barricade recovered the glasses, and Sam, Bumblebee and Mikaela were surrounded by Sector Seven vehicles. It is again a good idea to forget that the Autobots no longer have the glasses and so have no idea where the All Spark is, as the game will forget this shortly. Mission 3: A Gathering Force Starscream was next to take the reins, attacking a secret human airbase where Bonecrusher and Brawl had decided to hide out in a somewhat ill-advised manner. After discovering that he couldn't understand what the hell Frenzy was saying either, Starscream realised his radar was jammed by the local human communications equipment. A quick bout of destroying things later, this problem was solved, allowing him to locate Bonecrusher. "Brawl! You're a tank! Use your tank parts!" "I can't, I'm shy." "What?!" "None shall stand in my way!" "Your talking privileges are hereby revoked, Bonecrusher."Bonecrusher had stealthily hidden himself in the middle of a road surrounded by turrets firing weird electrical stuff at him, and proceeded to take a route through the airbase which cunningly didn't avoid any of the handful of checkpoints containing such turrets. Starscream, rather than reprimanding him for this idiocy, destroyed the checkpoints and escorted him onto the runway, then proceeded to a point near the runway for his next mission...Only to find himself standing next to Bonecrusher on the runway again. This somehow led to a mission to destroy drone aircraft, which upon careful inspection (which consisted of shooting down the aircraft, falling to the ground, picking it up and then throwing it away) had actually been made using technology based on Megatron's vehicle mode. Realizing this, Starscream no doubt viewed destroying these vehicles as useful practice. Following on from this (somehow), Bonecrusher and Brawl moved out... Right into human gun batteries firing weird electricity. Since they had somehow forgotten what all their weapons were for, Starscream was once again called upon to do everything himself, flying back and forth using his strange rocket launcher to save his rather apathetic comrades from self-imposed doom. Since neither appeared to do anything in the game after this mission, you have to wonder why he bothered at all, really. This was followed by an extended cutscene in which Starscream and Blackout arrived at the Hoover Dam and started trashing it, releasing Frank Welker's voice which declared they should probably stop screwing around and get to Mission City where the next mission was. Mission 4: City of the Machines Autobot forces arrived in Mission City despite having no idea of where the All Spark was (and Sam had it despite being arrested by Sector Seven), so, wary of stepping in any more plot holes, Megatron sent his Decepticons ahead of him. Except Starscream (who would not participate except at the very last battle in a cutscene), Brawl and Bonecrusher, who seemed to have gotten lost along the way. "I didn't touch anything!"Barricade found a redshirt protecting Sam and Mikaela, and found, moreover, that he lacked a stupid attack that made him invincible, making him easy prey. However, he reckoned without the Autobot unleashing the most horrifying weapon in his arsenal, the dreaded checkpoint race! Megatron prepares to unleash his impression of someone else.Somehow surmounting this horror, Barricade defeated Jazz again, leaving him dying at the foot of the large monument the race may or may not have ended somewhere near but probably didn't. Since Scorponok can't drill under roads and drilling is more or less his only ability, he was a clear logical choice to take over from the undamaged Barricade, and so did this, scuttling to Central Park (slowly) to kill a group of silly robotic crickets who were causing chaos, violence and confusion. Because that would interfere with the Decepticons' plans of causing chaos, violence and confusion. This somehow led him to Sam, who was about to hand over the All Spark when Ironhide rather uncharitably kicked Scorponok into the monument (which the dead Jazz had vanished from in the interval). Blackout was understandably angered by this mistreatment of his adorable pet evil robot, and vowed to give Ironhide the honor of dying by his blade. Ironhide pulled out everything he had: every drone type except Mixmaster and Dreadwing showed up to ruin Blackout's day, and Ironhide himself used the dastardly tactics of being invincible for most of the battle, unleashing a never-ending torrent of rockets which Blackout could do nothing about whenever he approached Ironhide too closely, ordering his troops to get stuck on the scenery behind him so they'd be impossible to reach, and making sure every energy-bearing human helicopter crash-landed on the roof of a building where Blackout couldn't get to it. Despite this, Blackout finally defeated him, allowing Megatron to return from whatever the hell he was doing all this time and commence the final battle. The penultimate final battle, as it turned out. This consisted of Megatron trying to coax Optimus out of hiding by destroying things at random, which would make the brave Autobot leader not appear in person as was expected, but made some drones appear, Megatron destroying them at random, and then this cycle repeating, with Megatron being forced to move to sectors of the city which had not been previously destroyed by his reign of terror and destroying those buildings in what seemed to last forever. 80 (!) drones later, Megatron finally got fed up with this and climbed the tallest building in the city, whereupon the programmers realised they'd driven the player character to suicide and hurriedly ended the level. Mission 5: Day of the Machines Having been affected by the same Apathy Radiation from the All Spark that kept Megatron from doing anything in the previous mission, Peter Cullen's voice finally got off his tin backside to have a final confrontation with Frank Welker's voice, just like the good old days. Logically, Optimus had decided the best way to confront the Decepticon leader was to wait for on top of the tallest building in Mission City. Back on the ground, the battle began. This largely consisted of Optimus fighting Megatron for a while, then running away while Megatron fought some drones, then hiding while Megatron flew around in circles and a not-even-slightly-explained timer counted down, while Megatron tried desperately to quickly find the Allspark while dodging the buildings which had been coated with an unknown substance that made him automatically revert to robot mode. After an alarmingly large number of repetitions of this, Optimus finally keeled over out of sheer frustration, allowing Megatron to absorb the All Spark. Megatron decided that the Lincoln Memorial would make a fine throne (again) as Brawl (who had been absent previously), Starscream and Barricade joined together to watch the eradication of the human race. Feeling tired after such a long battle, Megatron sent his Decepticons to finish the planet, since he never wanted to play again felt like saving his strength for his glorious return to Cybertron. Barricade felt like doing more work (in preparation for his amazing role in the final battle of the actual movie) and promptly got up while the others watched. Mission 6: Cybertron It was now time for Megatron's triumphant return to Cybertron, which apparently consisted of fighting a bunch of Autobot drones in a big arena while the plot hid in a corner and pretended it wasn't there. Fans can hope that future game designers will have a more G1 inspired look for Cybertron, as this level doesn't even resemble the opening cinematic or the scenes from the movie. Maybe next time.
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