Supplemental Sunday - The Death of Transformers: Reactivate Is Just Another Notch in the Nostalgia Market's Belt

I just finished the two remastered Soul Reaver games on my Nintendo Switch. I typically don’t buy digital only stuff…but this was a special case. The Legacy of Kain games have been out of circulation for so long that if this is what it takes to get a reboot or further remasters, then hey, I’m happy to buy it twice. And sure enough, Limited Run is offering up pre-orders for physical copies now…which they will certainly be getting my money.

But this got me to thinking: When was the last time I was really excited for a game release?

Easy, Metroid Prime Remastered.

Okay, so when was the last time I was really excited for a NEW game release?

This is where it gets complicated. Sure, I was like everyone else when it came to the excitement over Sony’s Spider-Man 2…but with it locked to the PS5, well, this new generation of systems has had a really hard time selling me on the upgrade. Especially when you’re asking for an upfront investment of $500. The other time…and the game that likely would’ve sold me on the upgrade…was Transformers Rise Reactivate…which was only recently cancelled. Granted, rumors of its demise had been in the air for some time, but it was only here in January of 2025 did the video game coroner call the time of death.

What came next is what inspired this opinion. The Transformers game community shifted immediately to the warcry of “remaster the War for Cybertron games!” Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly of that mind too. While I still have my Xbox 360 still connected so it’s not difficult for me to load the games up…well, it is in my messy ass den, the rechargeable batteries I have for the controllers have certainly seen better and longer days and other trivial first world problems prevent me from really diving into them. Whereas if they were available on Switch or Xbox One or PS4, sure, I’d probably pick them up again. And this is where I have to stop myself…because I’m doing what everyone else is doing: we’re asking for the old stuff. What we’re NOT doing is challenging the current games market to give us the NEW stuff. The War for/Fall of Cybertron games are great. Transformers Devastation? Also great, albeit very different. But think of everything Reactivate was going to give us: current generation graphics, open world and, most importantly…a new story.

Part of what was so endearing about the Full Moon Studios games was their different take on the beginnings of the epic war between the Autobots and Decepticons and how it hurled them to Earth. We learned how Optimus became a Prime. We saw how the previous Prime, Zeta, had become corrupted. We discovered a new energy source, Dark Energon…the very lifeblood of the Chaos Bringer himself (Unicron, for those not thoroughly steeped in the lore)…and how it played into the scarcity of energon throughout the planet. Full Moon Studios seamlessly merged solid gameplay mechanics with a solid story. THAT’S why we remember those games. Platinum did the same thing, in a very different way, with Devastation. A lost repository of Cybertronian culture in the hands of the Decepticons being used to cyberform the Earth ends up posing a moral quandary to our Autobot heroes: Do they save these humans and their planet at the cost of losing the very heart of their homeworld? Just like the previous two games, you have solid writing here, from one of the authors of the IDW comics run at that, married with action/beat-‘em-up gameplay from one of the masters of that genre. And it’s no wonder that it too is enshrined in the Parthenon of great Transformers games.

Stop and think for a second: Is ANYONE clamoring for remasters of the games adapting or tied in with the Michael Bay films? Are fans in an uproar that Rise of the Dark Spark seems to be forgotten. No. Not at all.

Here’s what I’m trying to get at though, in spite of all my tangents, Reactivate offered us a story where the Quintessons have invaded Earth, massively overwhelming any resident Cybertronians to the point of near extinction all the while forcing humanity into an underground resistance. These fledgling cells scramble to get their hands on Cybertronian tech in the hopes of reviving what might be their last chance at salvation: a handful of Transformers that are more than willing to take up the fight. We got just this smallest little glimpse of this plot from a trailer unveiled back in 2022. My question to you, dear reader, is this: Doesn’t that sound like a story you want to know more about?

While we’re running into this not just in video games but throughout the entertainment industry, be it films, TV shows or what have you, is it not disturbing to anyone else that the market is crying out more for old stories than new ones? If we start wondering why the game industry is treating players like saps and marks to be taken advantage of, unfortunately, our first step has to be in front of a mirror. Take a good hard look. Turn your gaze to your recent system of choice…how many remasters have you bought? What about sequels? Or even just games with the current year slapped on the end of the title to make you think they’re up-to-date but the old, trite, flawed gameplay still remains? When was the last time you stuck your neck out, grabbed a game, looked at the back and said, “You know what? This looks interesting, let’s give it a shot.”

On to our next hurdle: the combination of the games market and the economy doesn’t give a lot of room for the luxury of that ‘choice’. Let’s face it, you can’t exactly make a blind jump and risk the game sucking for the impact that such a cost is going to make on your budget. And no, this isn’t an argument that games need to be cheaper, hell, they’ve always ran $50-60 for a new game on the current generation of systems, going at least as far back as the old NES. Here, we come to a fork in the road in our discussion, both of these complicating matters, just in different ways. First, again, while the price hasn’t changed, the impact to budget has. Money is tight these days…and while $50-60 might not have been so impactful in the PS2 or PS3 days, it carries a greater weight, and a greater sting, to our budgets. Down the other road, we have greedy-as-fuck game publishers wanting everything to be games-as-service, monetized microtransaction filled, free-to-play-but-pay-to-win investments. To get back on track, this latter issue ended up playing a big part in Transformers Reactivate’s downfall. What triggered the death spiral was when developers switched from this broken model to more of a single-player focused experience, the leadership became directionless, going through concept after concept after concept, not pleased with anything all the while continuing to consume more and more money and resources.

As gamers, we find ourselves in a difficult position right now, and I can’t say I’m above it either. We do have a fondness for the more classic games and their stories and as such of course we want to see them get a new coat of paint…to incorporate the quality of life upgrades that current games and gamers enjoy. But we have to remember that these are nice supplements…snacks…in our gaming diet. We need a meal. We need NEW material…NEW stories…NEW games and NEW mechanics. For us Transformers fans, the fall of Reactivate shouldn’t be when we turn to older games. With Hasbro publicly stating that they’re shifting their focus from movies to video games, we shouldn’t be letting them off so easy as to just shovel out rehashes of what we already know. We should demand more and we should demand better.

Holy crap…that sounds like such a perfect ending paragraph…I really ought to end there. But there’s one last aspect we need to talk about. You see, the games landscape hasn’t been completely devoid of Transformers games in the current gaming landscape, be it the Xbox One/PS4/Switch generation or the newest Xbox Series X/PS5 generation. Not at all. We’ve gotten games rooted in the previous two Transformers series, Cyberverse and Earthspark as well as one positioned in the ‘Evergreen’ continuity. You can see my review for Transformers Cyberverse: Battlegrounds here, but the short version is that it’s a tactics game that both embraces and limits everything that makes Transformers special…and definitely geared toward younger gamers. Earthspark Expedition is a step in the right direction, playing like “My First Open World Game” with plenty of hidden cards to find or mini-missions like races and such…but again, feeling like it plays young. The most recent, Galactic Trials, offers a fun, F-Zero-ish experience but ends up proving to be not terribly deep (aside from trying to unlock other characters) and has a pretty steep difficulty curve for the last circuit. [Or, since you suck at racing games, it could just be you. – Ed.] And while you’re charged with racing to gain the coveted Artifacts of the Primes before Nemesis Prime can claim them…well, the only real story you get is that he shows up in a race from time to time. Here’s my seemingly belabored point: if Hasbro is wanting to switch their focus to games…and all we’ve gotten from them so far has been poor to middling budget to AA games or the promise of remasters of past games…I can’t say that my confidence is very high, especially in light of the cancellation of Reactivate.

While my larger point is to demand original stories, new concepts and new ideas throughout your media diet, as we zoom in on games…and Transformers games in particular, we as fans really need to stop settling. Yes, we’ve tasted greatness before, but those old games should not be the length and breadth of our vision. We need to push for new visions, new stories and new gameplay in our Transformers games. I get that the typical thing for me to say here would be to encourage you to “vote with your wallet” and not buy any of these budget games…but I get it. If we don’t buy those, Hasbro may never see it profitable enough to up the stakes and go for the AAA game we’re craving. So maybe this is the best way to put it: as a fandom, our first move in light of the cancellation of Reactivate…calling for Full Moon Studios remasters…was the wrong step. Instead we need to be reminding Hasbro that we want something NEW. Yes, remind them of those past successes, but only as a tool…a for instance to say “This made you a profit back then, imagine the money you’d make if you did something BETTER.” I don’t know if this is the solution, but if we keep our eyes trained on the past and not the future, we’ll never truly be free of the problem.