Game Review: Cube me I am a transformer

Cube me I am a transformer (sic) is a game that's trying hard to be delightful, but falls more than a little short.

Which isn't to say that it isn't a good effort.

The story seems to be a lighthearted jab of sorts at the MacGuffin of the first live-action Transformers movie, the Allspark Cube. The gray stickblob is running with a yellow cube, the green one is chasing him, and then the gray one trips and a chip comes off the cube. The green one picks the chip up.

Then the gray one shoots the green one dead.

The chip from the cube turns the green stickblob into a more rectangular stickblob (and brings him back to life, obviously).

If left alone, your character will jump rope.

Gameplay is basically the ancient Super Mario Brothers paradigm-run, jump, squish, and no hitpoints (although the game's "respawn" system is lazy and your lives are more like hitpoints most of the time)-but by pressing a certain combination of keys, you can turn into a tank, which you can acquire ammunition for.

Sadly, this doesn't make you any tougher-the same things will generally hurt you for the same number of lives.

If you acquire fuel, then you will gain the ability to transform into a helicopter, which can fly.

Sadly, you lose even minimal offensive capabilities (despite what looks like a rocket pod on the side there) and can't move very fast, although that balances it out quite a bit-or it would, if you didn't have such a strict time limit.

I can't get past the second level, which is intended to be the first "real" level.

Why not?

Well, there's a timer.

The ammo and fuel supplies are quite limited.

Fuel lasts for far too short a time.

If you run out of ammo and fuel, the enemies and environments-which include gigantic helicopters that hover over enormous crevasses-are such that they would make even the most hardcore of gamers cry to face them as a functional Mario clone, even if the game had some kind of oneup sampo, which it doesn't. The game is just literally physically impassable if you're not using these skills which have super-limited durations (and since the durations are so short, you won't be using these skills for long enough).

It's a game with quite a bit of potential that I want to like, but I can't. Play it for a couple of minutes, but don't get too furious when it gets to be a pain in the butt.

-Signing off.