The last Transformers tie-in game was really not very good at all. We're being charitable there, in case you never had the pleasure of it. And with the new film either being the best thing ever, or an exhausting mish-mash of special effects in search of a story, depending on who you talk to, there's nonetheless a second chance for Activision to deliver on the promise of the licence.

After all, Transformers videogames should be good: they are, after all, about big robots mashing seven shades of shinola out of one another, and that's what videogames have been doing to various degrees for decades.

The new game, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, has little pretence to it. You get a series of missions for either the Decepticons' or the Autobots' campaign - and you can tackle both so there's no worry there - with the game allowing you to jump between levels. Most of the said levels you'll be spending as a giant robot, with occasionally the need to adopt vehicular form. But bluntly, you arm yourself to the gills with weaponry and set off to wreak havoc.

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There's a bit of a learning curve to navigate in the early stages of the game (hence a fiddlier than usual tutorial level), as you get to grips with the slightly cumbersome controls. But once you've done so, the game settles down into an exercise in moving between locations, completing missions and moving onto the next. There's nothing radical either in the mission designs or what you're actually asked to do, and you'll find a few boss battles in there too. Because, simply, it's the law that games like these have to have them.

The missions themselves can involve escorting, destroying things, repairing, destroying things, taking skill shots, and destroying more things. Occasionally they can get a little annoying and repetitive, but they're okay for what they are. You can also earn the means by which to implement various upgrades, which is some form of incentive to keep going.

But the fun in the game comes down to controlling the Transformers of the title, and sometimes being rewarded with relevant goodies for doing well in the game. Simple pleasures like jumping off a building and causing mayhem below may have been done better in Prototype, but they're still a lot of fun here. It's as if the ground was supposed to shatter underneath you, and it's good fun putting the theory to the test.

The developers here have improved heavily on the last game to bear the Transformers name, with better - if hardly brilliant - visuals and a general feeling of actually caring about the licence. The single player mode, though, runs out of steam quite quickly, leaving the surprisingly strong multi-player options to pick up the slack.

This is where Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen lifts itself out of the cesspool of your average movie tie-in and transforms itself (sorry) into a game that deserves more than a life in the bargain bin. Gears Of War it isn't, but solid fun with big robots it absolutely is.

In all, it adds up to a welcome step in the right direction for the gaming franchise. Still, it does leave you yearning for the day when they cut loose from the timetable of the movies and attempt a genuinely ambitious Transformers videogame, free of the demands of a tight deadline. That's the one we're waiting to play. For now, take this latest game as a solid improvement, albeit one that had to happen.

Much better than last time, but a limited single player experience doesn't help it. The game's worth it for the far more fun multiplayer options, though.