The Gaming Den

Goddamn, Transformers are expensive.

Let's see... while I'm wishing for ponies, I want a G1 Astrotrain, Starscream, Sixshot, and Shockwave, an Optimus Primal and a dragon Megatron, a Bayformers Bumblebee, an Animated Lugnut, Lockdown, and Blitzwing, a BWN Longrack and Big Convoy Optimus Prime, and an Autoraper Autorooper.

My wish list would be... BWN Elphaorpha, G1 Scorponok, BW Scorponok, Victory Deathsaurus, Grand Maximus, Brave Maximus, and Overlord. I also wanted the original Star Saber toy, but I'm getting the Masterpiece version of the toy.

Hm. All of the toys I want are either expensive or hard to find. In Elphaorpha's case, he's harder to find than... Some clever, topical and humorous analogy to compare him to. I think the only way I can find him is to either go back in time to 1999 Japan, or sell my soul to Haliburton Unicron.

Are the IDW or Dreamwave Transformers comics worth getting? I vaguely remember as a kid instantly disliking the Transformers comics for the same reason I disliked most comics of the 90s (too gritty, too much dialogue, too tryhard) so I don't know how I'd like those comics as an adult.

IDW comics are definitely worth getting. Especially More than Meets the Eye, written by the inestimable James Roberts. Dude's my mugga.

I personally think it's the best comic ever made. The best bit is that you don't really need to have read the rest of IDW's stuff in order to understand it.

As for Dreamwave... well, the stories aren't necessarily bad, but... Pat Lee was. And so is the art. See here as well.

If you don't want to take Shrapnel's word for it, Chris Sims does some entertaining (if spoileriffic) reviews of the IDW stuff under the tag 'The Transformed Man.' here's the first one. His response has been generally positive, though he calls out More Than Meets The Eye vol. 4 as especially good.

So what's with the hate towards TFA? I mean, overall it has a positive response, but the people who hate it seem to really hate it. It's not even a GEEWUN thing as far as I can see; the biggest haters of TFA seem to be TFP fans.

Do you mean Transformers Animated or Transformers Adventure, the Japanese dub of Transformers: Robot's in Disguise? Because if the former, Animated is actually generally well received by the fandom at large. Except for the some idiots, of course.

If the latter, that hasn't even come out yet. But since it's being dubbed in the same style as Beast Wars and Prime... well, that don't bode well.

Transformers Animated, I mean. The one with the human supervillains and weeaboo Prowl.

Ah. Well then. As tfwiki puts it

The immediate response to the earliest promotional materials from the online fandom was the painfully traditional one, with an added dash of overblown paranoia that the franchise would be far too "kid-oriented" for longtime fans to enjoy, based on nothing more than its artistic style. Attitudes took an eyebrow-raisingly sharp turn... after the debut of the show, [and] it was essentially only the most ardent "already-made-up-their-mind-to-hate-it" viewers who were speaking ill.

So really, the people who hate it are true scotsmans fans who will cry "RUINED FORRREEEEEVVVVVEERRRRR!!!!!1!" all the way down into the deepest, darkest bowels of the the Pit.

As to why some like Prime but not Animated... well, that truly is baffling. That's like saying you hate chocolate but like chocolate milk.

So, I finally got a hold of T4 and am watching it.

We are now nearly 10 minutes in and the following have appeared-
-a dinosaur I had to check Shrapnel's post for the species of
-two shmucks in texas who, what, salvage old movie crap?
-an ambiguously gay guy in a cowboy hat who hates his old dad who owns the bombed out theatre the above schmucks are salvaging
-a bunch of stereotypical teen girls in a jeep
-some news footage about transformers and people salvaging their corpses

Oh, wait, I forgot, there was a gooey robot arm in the first scene.

Why is it so fucking hard for Bay to make a god-damned Transformers movie instead of "Hard Up Idiots Eventually Get Inconvenienced By Robots."


Holy Crap! As I was typing this, the first fucking transformer showed up, nearly fifteen minutes in! IT'S A FUCKING MIRACLE.

edit- oh, and now they're showing off a merc company with minidrones that are softly implied to be salvaged cybertronian tech, but they basically look like that Nazi experimental plane that spun rockets around itself miniaturized.

You know what would have been a great opening after a quick prologue establishing the dinobots? HAVING OPTIMUS SEND HIS FUCKING MESSAGE. Have a scene of Optimus being attacked by humans and fleeing, sending his message to all autobots. Have him and a few other autobots returning to their base of ops after a mission, and attacked, Optimus tells the others to flee, not to fight, just run and hide, and sends a broadcast trying to escape the squad focused on capturing him.

That would have been a GREAT opening scene for a movie about giant fucking robots.

SPOILER: The human bad guys are part of the government. Because Bay fellates the military, but hates the executive branch.

I've said that AoE was better than the other three bayformer films. But then, it's not like Dark of the Moon and Revenge of the Fallen set a high bar to begin with.

Well, as you said, it gets points for not having the Beef or Megan Fox, but literally every other character is at best an idiot, and at worst, repulsive. With the possible exception of Lockdown, who is cool in a grim efficiency sort of way, and the faceless mooks, who are faceless and meaningless. Optimus was given nearly universally terrible lines, Drift, Crosshairs and Hound are... all fucking terrible... Fuck, Bumblebee is passable in comparison to those assholes, and that's saying a lot.

EVEN THE FUCKING UNOBTAINIUM METAL HAS A TERRIBLE NAME

edit: I would give the movie points for humans using the term "Decepticon" for all transformers because they've been sold the idea that all transformers are inherently deceptive and evil, if I thought it was intentional critique on wartime propaganda.

That is all true. Even though Bayformers 4: Bay Harder was better than the previous three films, it's still terrible. If you're going to watch a Transformer film, watch the one from 1986.

Or at the very least play some Stan Bush very loudly to drown out the soundtrack to the Bay films, because YOU GOT THE TOUCH!

And his guitar shoots lasers.

As stupid as the KSI CEO is, the scene with them escaping with the Seed after Galvatron rebels makes me wish he, his girlfriend, and the asian woman had been the human protags. Hell, put them in the lead roles and Joss Whedon on the script, and it could have been really entertaining, at least.

Lockdown was cool until he randomly picks up the stupid ball as soon as Marky Mark boards his ship. They decided they needed to make him become magically stupid when Marky Mark comes around. I seriously have no idea as to why Marky Mark does any of the things he does after the point he rescues his daughter who Michael Bay goes into great length about being jailbait (if the Beef has more reason to be going around with the giant robots, then you've done something wrong). They're really blatant about his plot armor and randomly give him abilities as the situation acquires. Typically in a mindless action movie this is glossed over by making the character be a badass (or at least competent in their field) from the start but in this movie Marky Mark is a bumbling inventor who goes from building malfunctioning robot dogs to hacking government drones and Chinese ATMs to hacking alien ships and knowing how to use alien guns with no explanation.

Asshole Businessman's whole problem was that they needed to 1. flesh him out as an anti-hero, 2. keep him as a villain, or 3. make him have a meaningful redemption/show that he's become a better person in some way than "I don't want my planet to be blowed up/Marky Mark tells me I'm a good person so it's OK that I'm a greedy, racist (against giant alien robots) prick with no redeeming qualities who doesn't seem to feel sorry about the whole genocide thing." Bay shoots for the worst of all worlds and has him be a shitbag who flaunts his power (even taunting Optimus with the whole "strike me down and your transformation to the dark side will be complete the CIA will hunt you down" when confronted by the Autobots) who we're supposed to feel sorry because he was only evil for the lulz money he was just following orders because he was an inventor.

So framing the movie in a manner where he was the human protagonist would actually have done wonders for his character since we wouldn't just have him literally taunting the good guys and be converted by Marky Mark saying "I know you have a conscience because you're an inventor like me" with no explanation as to how he reached him. If we see the dickish guy be set up as the selfish hero from the start it doesn't feel nearly as contrived when he's told that he's an OK guy but he's gotten out of touch and needs to cut out working with bad government people and evil aliens. Especially if you play up Kelsey Grammer forcing Asshole Businessman into the position more, and have Asshole Businessman actually made upset by the fact that he's using ground-up Autobot corpses as material for his product. You'd need to all but cut out Marky Mark and I Can't Believe It's Not Megan Fox and Irish Douchebag Boyfriend for this story to work but that's probably for the better. Spend some of the time writing out the actual fucking robots as characters. Except that little annoying one. I maintain that he should be stuffed up Michael Bay's asshole. But none of that is going to happen.

Actually, I figured it out. Michael Bay sees Asshole Businessman as basically being himself. A wealthy and powerful inventor with corporate backing who sells Thneeds Transformium movies, a product that all people need, and who's at worst a bit out of touch (apparently "unrepentantly complicit in genocide" is "a bit out of touch" in Michael Bay's book as he actually does present it in that way. I suppose that fits in with genociding sapient alien robots for human benefit being good in the previous movie, where Optimus literally blows up Cybertron, killing the majority of his race). So Bay figured that if he just said "hey I'm the good guy now, look at my cool friends" then everyone would buy it.

TL,DR: Bay4mers was too little, too late.

Removing Sheltering Dad, Actually-Legal-in-Texas Jailbait Girl, and Irish Douchebag would only improve Bay4mers. Hell, you could literally just remove them from any scene they're in, and it would be better simply by not having them, even as entire scenes are rendered character-less or leave characters talking to air.

A really simple improved script would be something like-

Open on Optimus and the autobots taking out a decepticon cell. Either isolated decepticon-aligned cube-formers that were left over, or people using scavenged decepticon tech/repaired decepticon shells. Whatever. Hell, go with terrorists controlling repaired decepticon shells like power armour so you can show that Optimus is unwilling to kill humans.

As they leave, choppers and apcs come in. Optimus assumes they're picking up the pieces after the autobots did their heavy artillery bit and lets them know that the human criminals/terrorists/whatever are incapacitated but alive. The military vehicles open fire with reverse engineered cybertronian tech and Optimus sends his autobots into hiding, telling them to flee while he leads them away. The CIA take out one of the autobots, a red shirt made for the movie, and while the bulk give chase to Optimus, some peel off to recover the red shirt corpse. Cut to a scene of Gramer talking to Chief Evil Officer, something like "you wanted more cybertronium. There you go."

Show Chief Evil Officer conflicted about the use of dead cybertronians for his pet project, but easily overcome with wonder over his first chance to examine a fresh, minimally damaged cybertronian. Take this opportunity to introduce Hot Asian Chick reining him in and taking notes, maybe pointing out things he's missing to show she's not just an assistant.

Optimus manages to lose the CIA somehow, possibly by flooring it and driving all night until he can get somewhere populated, and start weaving through traffic, rapidly scanning and taking new forms, to the point where the CIA can't keep straight what they're looking for anymore. In fact, that sounds like the perfect pacifistic way for a cybertronian to evade violent humans. Gramer eventually calls his men back when they're tired and making mistakes and doing more harm than good. Establish at this point that he has people thinking of all cybertronians as decepticons. Maybe introduce Chief Evil Officer's ex with her watching a news report about the military pursuing a "dangerous cybertronian."

The "big" problem with transformers is that they're fucking gigantic. They can't easily undertake covert missions in a human scale world. It's not completely unreasonable to introduce some form of mass shifting tech or a dedicated stealth ops autobot who is more human sized and can sort of pass for human if they put on a heavy trench coat and very dark sunglasses. A motorcycle would be a good alt mode if you're not doing mass shifting, since a rice rocket is going to approximate the same volume of material as a person. I suppose these could be minicons, but I'm not well versed in G1 lore.

Edit: There's no reason to open with the prehistoric scene if you're not going to bring in dinobots early on. A simple "We have been to this planet before, long before your ancestors even discovered fire" would explain them to people who don't know anything about them.

Hell, I would not be opposed to this proposed "T4 but better" centering around a search for the Ark.

Two things.

1.) How's the 2015 Robots in Disguise Cartoon? I've tried to stay away from promotional material and the TFWiki to avoid spoiling myself but the show has been on the air long enough that I think people here can form an opinion.

2.) I saw the 1986 Transformers movie for the first time again in ages and... I didn't like it. I'm a little baffled as to why I didn't like it, because I liked the 1987 GI Joe Movie and that particular movie went waaaay out into left field. But after thinking about it for a bit, I have an answer.

I guess what I didn't like about the movie is that it felt way too dark and oppressive. Don't get me wrong, The Transformers is not a good show, but it has its charms. The show is (usually) fun-stupid instead of stupid-stupid. And the movie was just missing that feeling of fun. It's neither fun-stupid or stupid-stupid, which would be a big improvement in some peoples' eyes, but I thought that the biggest redeeming qualities of The Transformers cartoon was the dialogue and the inter-character horseplay. Granted, there are some very cool moments in the movie such as Megatron conversing with Unicron but it just felt like the movie was missing something.

I guess the reason why I was cool with the GI Joe Movie (which had a lot of similar problems in terms of tone) was partially because that movie still remembered not to take itself too seriously and ended on a genuinely triumphant moment, rather than a bittersweet one. I mean, the Autobots reclaim Autobot City and passed the torch, but except for Starscream no Decepticon permanently died compared to the massive hero bodycounts and as we can see from Season 3 the Decepticons recovered rather quickly. Also, I really liked the Guyver-style aesthetics of Cobra-La. I kind of wish that they would've stuck with that because it was a very nice visual departure. The animation in the Transformers Movie is definitely better, but ironically the crisper lines and colors made things feel really disconcerting. The Transformers felt a little too smooth and lifelike compared to what I was used to. And while that works for, say, TFA it created a bit of uncanny valley compared to the more abstract, fuzzy animation of the cartoon.

A bit late but

Prak wrote: The "big" problem with transformers is that they're fucking gigantic. They can't easily undertake covert missions in a human scale world. It's not completely unreasonable to introduce some form of mass shifting tech or a dedicated stealth ops autobot who is more human sized and can sort of pass for human if they put on a heavy trench coat and very dark sunglasses. A motorcycle would be a good alt mode if you're not doing mass shifting, since a rice rocket is going to approximate the same volume of material as a person. I suppose these could be minicons, but I'm not well versed in G1 lore.

The previous bay transformers movie had not one but three autobot motorbikes that could combine into a "normal"-sized autobot for greater firepower.

Mind you, in some Transformer continuities autobots can transfer their minds to humanoid sized and looking bodies.





Ok, pink hair is not natural in humans, but most men won't notice Elita Seven's head when she's showing off her chest plating.

Prak wrote: The "big" problem with transformers is that they're fucking gigantic,

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Scale

Lago wrote:1.) How's the 2015 Robots in Disguise Cartoon? I've tried to stay away from promotional material and the TFWiki to avoid spoiling myself but the show has been on the air long enough that I think people here can form an opinion.

It's okay. I've seen a few episodes, and it's enjoyable, although the tone of it seems WAAAAY different from Prime, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

However, Bumblebee not talking entirely in beeps is awesome, though.

2.) I saw the 1986 Transformers movie for the first time again in ages and... I didn't like it.

GET OUT

It occurs to me that there's a d20 third party supplement for playing transformers. If someone wanted to run a play by post of that, it'd probably be a lot of fun in a terrible, terrible game fashion.

On the one digit, I'm terrible at TTRPGs...

but on the other, TRANSFORMERS!

So I'd be up for it. I'd just suck at it.

Prak wrote:It occurs to me that there's a d20 third party supplement for playing transformers. If someone wanted to run a play by post of that, it'd probably be a lot of fun in a terrible, terrible game fashion.

Are you talking about d20 Mecha?

Mechamorphosis. I'm working on a review of it at the moment.

I've decided to turn this thread into a general discussion place for everything Transformers. I'm probably the only one who will ever post here, but c'est la vie.

I'll kick this off with what is probably the most AWESOME and EPIC Transformers toy EVER MADE.



THEY'RE MAKING A NEW GODDAMN FUCKING SKY MOTHERFUCKING LYNX TOY!

This is, quite possibly, the Jurassic World of toys. You literally have no idea of how fucking excited I am about this. In fact, I don't think I've ever been this excited for a Transformer toy in my life. And I've been plenty excited in the past.

See, Sky Lynx is one of my favorite Transformers, probably my most favorite, so the fact that Hasbro is MAKING A GODDAMN NEW TOY OF HIM just set's my testes quivering. But it gets better! HE CAN FUCKING COMBINE!

HOLY MOTHER FUCKING JESUS MARY GOD FUCKING PETER IN THE ASS

Y'know what? Hasbro may not care one shit about D&D fans, but they fucking love Transfans*. So SUCK IT.

I cannot wait to hold this toy in my hands and stroke it's subtle contours. I mean, I literally, physically cannot wait. Life will seem dull and pointless until I have it, each and every day filled with both mounting listlessness and ennui. And I have to wait a fucking year until it comes out. I mean, fuck man. I want it noooooooooooowwwww!!!!![/whining]

*Yes, I know how that sounds.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Don't get me wrong, The Transformers is not a good show, but it has its charms. The show is (usually) fun-stupid instead of stupid-stupid. And the movie was just missing that feeling of fun. It's neither fun-stupid or stupid-stupid,

Ahem