Transformers: Forged to Fight is the latest offering from Kabam!, a mobile gaming company that is best known for the highly popular game Marvel: Contest of Champions. They have made quite the killing by making arcade style fighting games for tablets and smartphones and have the right balance between playability and paying for incentives.
With the success of Contest of Champions, I decided to check out their latest offering to see if it passes the muster.
Game Play
The game plays a lot like Contest of Champions, simple controls but with some differences. Unlike the arcade-style of Contest, Forged to Fight has three-dimensional arenas, allowing characters to sidestep out of the way of attacks. This makes sense, since most characters transform into vehicles, having a side-scrolling arena makes that sort of function cramped. Additionally, the characters have ranged attacks, which makes sense considering the majority of Transformers have guns.
In addition, they have added bases which you can build up and guard and raid the bases of other players. A nice little feature.
The other noticeable difference is the map screen are three-dimensional maps. Which makes it kind of hard to get a good idea of how big the levels are, but at least things are marked properly. The game crashes on occasion, however, I'd attribute this to the fact that the game recently came out and I figure future updates will solve that planet.
Cast of Characters
There is a small variety of characters which will likely grow over time. There is a lot of focus is on characters who have appeared in the various live-action Transformers films. Something that is sure to rankle old school fans, but who cares about those whiney curmudgeons. Regardless of their inclusion, it is fun.
In addition, there are classic Generation One characters like Optimus Prime, Soundwave, and Starscream, although their designs have been updated. Also rounding out the cast is Windblade from the IDW Transformers comic book, as well as the IDW rendition of Bludgeon. The game also includes characters from Beast Wars such as Rhinox and Waspinator.
My hope is that with future character expansions include other Transformers series, such as Transformers: Animated, Super-God Masterforce, and Beast Machines. Giving the game a lot of variety of characters for every generation of fan.
Pay-to-Play?
Like any mobile game, there are incentives to shelling out real world money to get rare characters or advance beyond time limits, and so on. That's the state of mobile games these days, with games basically being complex slot machines. However, I will commend Kabam! for striking the right balance. At least when your energy runs out for missions, you can battle in the player vs. player mode, or raid another player's base.
You don't need to spend money to enjoy the game, as there is plenty to do in the game. This is much better than the last Transformers game that I had the displeasure to play DeNA's Transformers: Battle Tactics, which was heavily imbalanced and stacked the odds against you in order to force purchases.
All and all, Forged to Fight is a fun game as long as you don't mind the usual mobile gaming tropes. If it is anything like Kabam!'s other offerings, it will only get better with time.