Getting in some quality time with my family (of Decepticons) OR: The road to better mental health is paved with big explosions

lAST sATURDAY night my wife had a regional Toastmasters competition in Deadwood, SD which is about 50 miles northwest of here. So as a supportive husband I volunteered to stay home and take care of the baby, which really means play with the PS3. Besides eating stuffed animals, the Prince of Macrocrania loves to sleep. Just as I figured, he conked out early and that left me with my other baby-the Transformers The Game. Over the next five hours I thoroughly thrashed every Autobot level. I hunted down every last little yellow cube, I completed all the challenges, I got all the Autobot icons and I accomplished all the skills. What is left to do after beating the Autobot levels? Play the Decepticon campaign and beat the Autobots themselves.

Space alien helicopter robots vs stealth bombers is the new pirates vs ninjas

I never thought that the first level of the Decepticon campaign could be so therapeutic for me and help me work out some long standing resentment of fixed wing aircraft I had built up. When I joined the air force I dreamed that I would have a job working on the runway and getting to see awesome fighter jets launch off into the sky with their afterburners blazing. But all I ever got were crappy army assignments and those guys only fly helicopters. There I was in my little tower building for 12 hours watching helicopters go up and down. It sucked. Then I developed a sort of Stockholm syndrome where I began identifying and idolizing my helicopter captors. I was so crazy that at Fort Hood they when were rumored to have been testing the Apache I was always looking for it in the sky. I would look with bug eyes at the sky, searching for the elusive new helicopter. On rare occasions like when I actually got to see a stealth bomber land at Davis Monthan I resented the airplane because I never got to work at a stealth bomber base. But guess what you get to do as Blackout the alien helicopter in the final chapter of the first level? You get to hunt down and destroy a buttload of F-22 Raptors and B-2 stealth bombers. Oh sweet, sweet rotary winged aircraft revenge.

Also later on I got to blow up an air force base as Starscream. I was pretty impressed with the layout of that level. It's just like a real air force base with a front gate and base housing and a runway and recreational area and everything. I think this is partly due to the game designers creating this level by combining buldings from the Autobot suburbs level and Blackout's SOCCENT base level. Some people might say it's a cheap way to come up with a new level but the resulting mashup of civilian buildings and aircraft hangers is a quite accurate portrayal of an air force base. Sometimes living on Ellsworth I get pissed off at the occasional roar of the B-1s but instead of cursing the sky, now whenever that happens I can play Starscream level and go on an air force base rampage and get out some of that aggression.

After Blackout's stage you get to play as Barricade in the same suburbs area that Bumblebee starts out in. Having already cleared this level as the Autobots I was at least hoping I wouldn't have to search for all those yellow cubes again in this area I've already beat. So that sucks but having to essentially reaccomplish everything in the same level evens out because as Barricade I get to beat Bumblebee's ass. It is so gratifying when I bodyslam Bumblebee. I wish that fight would go on forever. Every problem I have with the movie from the ugly robots to the mischaracterization of Bumblebee gets worked out when I pick up Bumblebee and body slam him into the gas station or hit him upside the head with a giant hot dog.

Is this a) two giant robots locked in furious combat or b) a breakdancing car accident?

This game has me even more convinced that all of reality is a fabrication of my imagination and I am actually 10 years old in a coma in 1984. There is simply no other explanation for the existence of a game that lets me simultaneously work out my frustrations against the two biggest sources of angst my life: the air force assignments system and Michael Bay. This game is like having a team of Decepticon psychiatrists I look forward to going to. Why hasn't there been a Decepticon psychiatrist anyways? You could go to him and tell him all your frustrations and his advice would always be, "Have you tried blowing shit up?" Considering the state of chaos the world is in, maybe that's exactly what's going on.