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Strangely, the lumbering metal giants in T: TG are swift and capable pugilists armed with glorified champagne poppers. While an errant shot from your cannon might destroy an entire city block in one hit, it usually does little more than scuff the paint off an adversary. Most of the time you’ll be hammering on the melee attack button to pull off three-move combos.

When that doesn’t work, you’ll grab the closest object (be it a light pole, bus, or compact sedan) and hurl it through the air to stun your opponent…and then follow it up with the same three-move combo. You’ll race to locations, fight other robots, then race somewhere else, destroy some objects, then drive somewhere else, pick up a few collectible items on the way, and then initiate the next frustrating task, usually while under the constant threat of failure as a pointless timer ticks away in the corner.

Shoddy collision issues will hang up your Transformer on scenery as gangs of ruthless Decepticons hammer you repeatedly into the ground. Get familiar with that “mission failed” screen, because you’ll be seeing it a lot. But don’t expect to jump right back into the action. Instead, you’ll be forced to drive halfway across the world to find the hotspot that triggers the event. After skipping a few more cutscenes and staring at loading screen text, you’ll get your chance to fail miserably again until you get it right. Over and over again.

Not everything about the game is terrible, thankfully. From the highly detailed and expertly animated character models to the wild and plentiful explosions, the sights to be seen in T: TG will make your eyes smile even as your lips are curled in disgust. And the story, which is typical sci-fi boilerplate, is brought to life by competent voice acting and thrilling sound effects.

Perhaps that’s why Transformers: The Game is such a disappointment—the source material and underlying gameplay concepts ooze potential, yet the final product feels imbalanced and rushed. You’re not playing through a story but merely performing repetitive tasks to trigger the next movie. Couple that with a spastic camera, sluggish and nonsensical controls, and criminal overuse of needless timers and you’re left with a $60 torture device. Oh yeah, and the game has no online component.

So while diehard completists might be inclined to pick up every collectible to unlock every art pack and side mission, most folks will rip through the Autobot and Decepticon campaigns in a day for some modest Achievement points and call it quits. Everyone else should steer clear, as this poor excuse for a licensed tie-in appeals only to sadists.