The gems look bright and colourful, and the exploration screens look decent enough as well. The visual highlights are the hand drawn character/enemy art you’ll encounter when battles begin or you unleash a weapon attack, though there’s nothing here that flexes the Xbox 360’s graphical muscle.

Long before I submitted my first game review I had written tens of thousands of words on professional athletes, covering the gamut from opinionated pieces to the mundane — such as scouting reports and trading cards. Along the way I conducted numerous interviews and grew annoyed by an axiom athletes were using to answer questions. That popular phrase: “It is what it is.”

The vehicular modes tend to be hit or miss. I enjoyed transforming in tight quarters to zoom around the battlefield, but I didn’t think it held up as well during longer sequences. The pseudo on-rails elements of flying make it a bit confusing as to where you can maneuver, and it always seemed like the cars were hovering slightly above the ground without any feel for the road.