Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen opens in cinemas in two days time, and conveniently enough, there’s a movie tie-in game that just happens to come out tomorrow too. What a fortuitous series of events! I had a chance to preview the game – it’s much better than the first one.

As with most movie tie-ins, the game is based on the events of the movie. I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t tell you much about that. What I can tell you about is how the game plays:

There are single player campaigns for both Autobots and Decepticons. Rather than a linear story mode, you get to select missions from a hub of sorts – finishing missions will unlock new transformers and missions.

Controls are much improved from the first game. Firstly, those weird camera problems are gone; it now stays nicely behind your character with a sort of Dynasty Warriors feel to it. The controls themselves are fairly straight forward: move with the left analog stick, melee attack, jump, climb buildings and special attack with the face buttons, while the top two triggers control your ranged attacks. Actually, now that I think about it, it feels a lot like Dynasty Warriors.

One quirk is that you transform into vehicle mode by holding down the right, lower trigger. At first, this might seem strange, because you’ll find yourself letting go of it, but it does serve a purpose. All those cool moves you see in the movie; you know, where the transformer is driving along in vehicle mode, then jumps up into robot mode over a bridge or whatever, then lands on the other side in vehicle mode again? You can do that in the game (press jump, release the trigger, then press it again when you land). It actually makes the game surprisingly fluid and gives some purpose to transforming, other than just because you can – something sorely missing from the first game.

Combat felt a little mindless, but it was fun just because of the sheer number of cool moves you can pull off. It helps that all of the different transformers you can play as handle and play differently too. Speaking of which, Autobots get: Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Jetfire, Iron Hide, Breakaway and Ratchet (and maybe some more), while Decepticons get: Devastator, Starscream, Soundwave, Sideways, Grindor, Long Haul, Megatron (back from the dead) and possibly The Fallen (don’t quote me on that last one).

The missions themselves are objective based, as in, go here, kill this guy, then head to this spot and find this item, then go here etc. It’s nothing novel, but it works – completing a mission gets you graded with a medal (bronze, silver, gold) if you did well enough, which unlocks new stuff – so there’s some replay value there.

So far, the game looks good. It captures the “ooh! cool sh*t!” essence of the Michael Bay movies a lot better than the first game, and it’s quite playable too.

The game comes out on all platforms tomorrow (Tuesday).