Each bundle comes with an Elite console and an extra controller. What it doesn’t come with is an actual DVD — the “movie” part of the bundle is on a USB stick. Additionally, the Star Trek bundle includes 800 Microsoft points “to download Star Trek PDLC.”

MCV also reports:

Pricing is not yet known, nor is the exact release date or price. it is assumed the packs will appear once the respective movies’ DVDs are released, which are November 16th for Star Trek and November 30th for Transformers.

We’ve got a query in with a Paramount Pictures representative on whether or not the US might be getting one or both of the bundles. Mind you, Revenge of the Fallen is already out Stateside and Star Trek doesn’t hit shelves ’til November 17. Which would you rather see in your living room?

New UK 360 bundles revealed [MCV]
Image Cred

Perhaps the thumb will be to Miss Fox’s advantage in Saturday’s Game with Fame session, during which she’ll be challenging Autobots and Decepticons alike if multiplayer matches of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the release of the Character and Map Pack Plus downloadable content than adding “Megan Fox 2009″ to your Xbox friends list, logging in around 3PM Pacific on Saturday, August 29th, and weeping quietly as everyone but you gets to play with her.

For more information, head over to the Xbox Game with Fame page, or simply turn off safe search and browse Google images.

The launch trailer for the new maps and characters in the first wave of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen downloadable content gives an old bot fan happy little chills.

I actually watched the second Transformers movie last night for the first time, and I have to say…wow. The game is definitely better than the film, and while that’s not saying much, hardcore fans should feel at least a little rewarded by this batch of new downloadable content. Is classic Starscream really able to wield classic Megatron as a pistol? If so, then that’s all I’ve ever really wanted in a Transformers video game. As long as no one mentions the words “hive” or “hatchling” I’ll be fine.

Like who? Like Megatron.

Joining the Decepticon leader in Revenge of the Fallen’s upcoming DLC pack are old-school favourites Starscream and Optimus Prime (who we knew were coming), plus “G1 Sunstorm” (which is a bit of a stretch) along with some G1 “colour schemes” for Ratchet and Sideswipe.

The pack will also introduce three new maps, and be out on August 27 for 800MSP/$US10.

The Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 pack, which is being developed by Luxoflux, hasn’t yet been priced.

Here’s the full break down:

More than ten new multiplayer characters including ultimate fan favourites such as G1 Starscream and movie favourites like Sideswipe.

Three new multiplayer maps.

Play new characters in both the Autobot and Decepticon single player campaigns.

New Expert difficulty mode with a fresh set of leaderboards to challenge more experienced gamers in the single-player campaigns.

New Achievements and Trophies to earn.

Never assume, people say, right?

Revenge of the Fallen’s Good Mojo Achievement, according to its official description, is awarded to players who “Make it into the Top 10000 on SP Leaderboards – Either Campaign.”

An Activision rep informed me via e-mail that the Achievement is awarded to anyone who achieves a score that is among the 10,000 best scores currently listed. If multiple people have the same score, that score counts as just one of the 10,000 tracked for the Achievement. Therefore, more than 10,000 people can be eligible for this Achievement at any given time.

I had won the Achievement after completing a single level of the game’s Autobot campaign a full 10 days after the game was released. That lead me to surmise that I earned the Achievement for barely doing more than having turned the game on. I believed that the fact that I could earn it without having played much of the game meant I was one of the first 10,000 people to connect the 360 version of the game to Xbox Live. So… it must be a sign of meager uptake of the game by consumers, right?

I was wrong.

A check of the Revenge of the Fallen leaderboards this morning — a check I regret not having made yesterday — shows that I am ranked 82,628th in the world. So a lot of us must be sharing the same scores.

Gone is any impression that the game is selling slowly or not being commonly connected to Xbox Live. In its place I have a new understanding about what making it into the Top 10,000 really means. It’s not the trophy of high-level performance that I read it to be. Good Mojo may be a more easily achievable accolade than I originally thought, but it is no sign of a flop.

In my story yesterday, I said that my winning of Good Mojo was a sign of “slow sales, low online adoption or some other peculiarity.” That third choice was correct.

When does an Achievement reveal too much?

The Transformers Revenge of the Fallen game was released on June 23, but it was 10 days later, on July 4 that I started playing the game. After completing one level, I earned the Good Mojo Achievement.

The description for the Achievement: “Make it into the Top 10000 on SP Leaderboards – Either Campaign.”

In the long run, that Achievement will be a badge of accomplishment for people who managed to rack up a lot of points while playing this game. But, by definition, the first 10,000 people to both get the game for the Xbox 360, finish at least one level in single-player and connect to Live will earn the Good Mojo accolade.

So, 10 days after the game was released, 10,000 people had not yet done that. Does that reveal a slow start in sales? A low percentage of active Xbox Live connections among owners and renters of the game? Or an ignoring of the single-player campaign?

I’m not sure and have asked Activision for comment. If anyone out there is getting the game now and earning the Achievement with as little effort as I did, let us know.

The game’s first online meta-game battle did end with owners of the Autobot version of the game winning, having scored 48 million Energon points to the bad guys’ 40 million. This cast some doubt on claims I’d heard from Transformers experts that the Autobot and Decepticon consumer bases are split 50/50.

But the second and current battle waged by the games’ owners, owners of the Decepticon version of the game are beating their rivals 100 million to 93 million.

The conflicts are waged by players connecting their DS online to activate daily single-player challenges and then uploading their point tallies. Those challenges are associated with regions on a world map, and the battle continues until a faction claims all regions.

The balance might be even after all. And the growing numbers are a sign that the game’s online play is being adopted by consumers.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an action adventure game based on the movie of the same name, telling the story of the return of Megatron and the rise of an even more diabolical enemy from the dawn of time. After a sub-par product from Traveller’s Tales for the first film, Activision handed over development duties for the sequel to California-based Luxoflux, the team behind the video game adaptation of Kung Fu Panda. While the new developer brings much to the table, including robust multiplayer on top of the required single player mode, certain aspects of the game are a real pain in the arse.

Let’s tense up and roll out!

Loved
Big, Beautiful Bots: No matter what my opinion might be on the Michael Bay-bots versus the more traditional designs, I have to admit that Luxoflux has done an admirable job of recreating the movie machines for the video game adaptation. The developer knows this, kicking off every mission with a crane shot of your character so you can appreciate all the work that went into creating him before the firefight begins.

Heavy Metal Combat: Revenge of the Fallen does an admirable job of depicting giant-robot-on-giant-robot combat. Bullets, missiles, and fists all pack a seriously satisfying punch, and each robot has a different set of ranged weapons and special abilities than makes going back through missions with different characters to try and top your score a worthwhile endeavor. The combat may not be perfect, but it works for me.

Pimping Your Rides: An upgrade system allows you to convert Energon based on how well you complete your mission objectives into power enhancements for your entire team. The selection of upgrade choices is a bit strange – you can power up your melee damage but not your ranged, for instance – but the system does allow for the player to tweak their abilities based on how they prefer to play.

Massive and Multiplayer: Many licensed games are developed with single player in mind, tacking on a multiplayer component at the last minute to add to the feature listing on the back of the box. It feels as if Luxoflux reversed that trend, creating an enjoyable multiplayer experience and then adding the story mode as an afterthought. The multiplayer mode contains more characters (with more on the way in the form of DLC) and quite frankly more excitement than the single player experience. Sure, you’ll have to deal with listening to a bunch of early teen boys cussing up a storm…I guess that really isn’t that much different than any other online console game.

Unlockables: Despite the fact that I already own all of them on DVD, the unlockable episodes of the original television series may have contributed somewhat to the relative lateness of this review. Just saying.

Hated
Triggered Transformation: Luxoflux has managed to take the one aspect of the Transformers that every other Transformers game has gotten right, and do it wrong. Press a button, and you’re a car. Easy, right? Instead, the developers map transforming to the right trigger. Squeeze the trigger and you are a vehicle, with the amount of pressure you apply affecting your speed. Release the trigger and you are a robot. It’s the mechanical equivalent of clenching your arse cheeks, and while the special moves you can perform when popping out of vehicle mode can make the release somewhat enjoyable, all in all it’s just embarrassing.

We’ll Call Them Vehicle Physics: Revenge of the Fallen plays fast and loose with its vehicle physics. Ground-based vehicles aren’t so bad, with physics akin to your more arcadey racing games. Flying vehicles, on the other hand, are simply sad. Planes bounce off buildings in comical fashion, and maneuverability is quite limited, with even the simplest of aerial maneuvers out of reach thanks to the simplistic controls. Perhaps it is a matter of game play balance, but car should never be able to keep pace with a jet. An aeroplane moving at 60 miles per hour is an aeroplane on the ground.

Welcome To Dullsville: I suppose if I our planet actually did have giant robots doing battle in the streets on a regular basis, we’d probably pack up all of our interesting scenery and leave town as well. While the robots in Revenge of the Fallen look spectacular, the environments simply feel like a collection of random structures with different skins on them, which I suppose is what they are. There’s just no real character to the setting.

The Story Unfolding: I somehow managed to avoid seeing the film before playing the game, which might be why the story feels like a disjointed series of occurrences rather than a full, compelling narrative. Balancing telling the tale of the game while trying not to delve to deeply into the plot of a film is a tricky manoeuvre, and one Luxoflux didn’t manage to pull off gracefully.

Required Missions: Sam has been whisked away to a far off land where he could be in great danger! We should rescue him, but first, we need to clear the Decepticons out of one particular area, because we haven’t unlocked the rescuing Sam mission yet. Unlocking missions in Revenge of the Fallen requires that you complete a certain number of missions previously, which leads to telling your best human buddy to cool his jets while you rescue generic power plant A and B from the enemy.

Of all of the failings of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the transformation feature is the most damning. It’s the main focus of the property, and it deserves to be done correctly. Perhaps my main issue is that you can’t simply transform and then pan around the vehicle, admiring the details. Instead, triggering a transformation also triggers movement, so you never get the chance. Instead of alternate modes, they are simply travel forms that disappear when they come to a stop. Call me crazy, but I’d just prefer a Transformers game where I can press a button once and BAM – I’m a Camaro.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an odd title that manages to succeed in categories that licensed games generally fail, while floundering in areas that should have been easy to get right. It’s a movie tie-in that excels at multiplayer yet flails where the actual story is concerned. I’d use the term ass-backwards, but those muscles need a little rest.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was developed by Luxoflux and published by Activision for the PS3 and Xbox 360 on June 23 in North America and June 27 in Australia. Different versions from different developers exist for the Nintendo DS, PSP, PS2, Wii, and PC. Retails for AU$69.95 to $99.95. Reviewed the Xbox 360 version. Played through Autobot and Decepticon story modes to completion, and played multiple multiplayer matches across all game types.

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The new Transformers game, like its DS predecessor, has an online web-site-based metagame that pits its owners against each other. And, as of today, the Autobot side is winning.

A check of the official website for the so-called Battle for Earth, shows Autobots earning more than 26 million pieces of Energon compared to almost 22 million by Decepticon players, four days into a battle among all the game’s web-connected owners.

Like a Pokemon or Nintendogs DS game, the Transformers DS movie games come in multiple versions. Non-rich people purchasing the DS version of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen must make a choice:

Buy the Decepticon or Autobot version.

Whichever version a player has determines their faction when they connect their DS online and join to fight in the metagame battle. Players don’t compete in standard competitive multiplayer matches. Instead, connecting the game online unlocks new daily challenges. The challenges are single-player snippets of action set in the 3D enviornments of the DS game. Performance in those challenges is uploaded back to the official site and points are added to a faction’s tally. The battlegrounds are spread across six regions of a global map and the war continues until one faction controls the six regions. Currently, Decepticons only have a strong edge in the game’s Australia region.

This morning, I bought the Decepticons version of the DS game. I connected online and decided to help the war effort in Europe. My single-player mission involved trying to defend a region for about two minutes. I was terrible at it, possibly owing to how low-powered my starter-Decepticon is. I was able to hold off for about 15 seconds, earning 450 experience points (for rank) and several hundred bits of Energon. I’m the 784th-most valuable contributor to the Decepticon effort. Our top fighter has contributed 1,218,150 pieces of Energon.

The metagame concept used in these Transformers games assumes a close to even balance between those who will buy the Autobot version of the Activision-published game and the Decepticon version. It’s a safe guess, apparently. An Activision rep I interviewed about this metagame for the first Transformers DS game in 2007 told me that Hasbro has determined that Transformers fans are split 50/50 between the two factions (So nobody’s for the Quintessons? Thank goodness.)

Maybe the creators of hip-hop games should divide their games into East Coast and West Coast flavors. Or Gran Turismo could be sold in Democrat and Republican editions.

Whatever the case, the Decepticons could use some help.