Review: Transformers – War For Cybertron

Well, let me just say, as a child of the 80′s I grew up on The Transformers.  Back in the glory days when Soundwave was a cassette player and Megatron was a gun.  So needless to say, over the years I have had periods of excitement about new upcoming transformers projects (games, movies, etc,) only to be let down in the end due to the poor handling of, what is to me, a beloved franchise.  So when I heard about a new Transformers game based on Cybertron, I was extremely skeptical.  I saw the trailers and started to get excited.  Yet when my game came it sat, out of fear of having to sit through another crappy Transformers.

So the game tells the story of the war on Cybertron that ultimately leads to Optimus Prime and Megatron the leaders of the Autobots and Decepticons respectively.  There are two separate campaigns that can be played as stand alone or as a whole story.  They even added a co-op mode which I played with our own Powermacattack.

The game is fun, I won’t lie.  Transforming is so fluid and feels like a part of you.  Rather than a whole process to get from robot to vehicle and back, it now only takes about half a second.  It makes for a lot of fun when you come up on an enemy while driving and instantly transform into a robot and melee him to death.  Very satisfying.  So far in my gameplay I have had access to many of the old favorites in their Gen 1 (cartoon) forms.  Not Megatron, he is now a tank (I can buy that more than a jet) but close enough.

The game play is very similar to Gears of War.  It uses the Unreal engine so the controls felt really familiar from the get go.  The controls are pretty damn tight with one main exception, the transforming button is clicking the left stick.  Quite a few times I was flying through battle only to transform in midair and fall to my death because I pressed a little too hard on the stick.  You can remap it, which is a plus, just bad placement in my opinion.  But overall, the game play felt real solid and the scenery was beautiful.  Some smash-able boxes melted into the scenery, but you adjust and start looking for them everywhere.  The boxes usually contain Energon which can be used to replenish health, ammo, or used for a special ability such as Megatron’s health drain power.

Co-op is were this game will shine.  It is, in essence, Gears of War.  You can play along with at least one friend and run through the entire campaign.  If your buddy goes down, you can revive him, just as in Gears.  You have to pick the right character to use and they all have different skills.  I chose Optimus (he is not yet Prime) and Powermac chose Bumblebee.  This proved to be a little detrimental to us as the computer had control of Ratchet, who can heal.  The AI characters are dicks.  If one of us went down, Ratchet would only heal us to the point where we were up off the ground (which is about 1/4 health) then continue on his merry way as if he had somewhere to be.  Not nearly as bad as the AI partner in Army of Two but a little frustrating none the less.

In addition to the campaign I tried out a little multi-player.  Again, it plays a lot like Gears of War.  It does have class setups like a bastard hybrid of Battlefield and Modern Warfare 2,  but it still plays like Gears with one exception, this is fun.  I didn’t care much for the Gears mulit-player because for whatever reason things just always felt wrong.  But this game, the maps are big enough where you can drive or fly around until you find someone, then come out of vehicle form at full speed and shoot at your target.  A lot of fun to do.  I only had hands on time with Team Deathmatch and Regular Deathmatch, but the game also includes several other Gametypes.  Conquest – a domination type game where you capture nodes and gain points.  Code of power – a sabotage type game where you capture and plant the node of power.  Countdown To Extinction which is also a planting type game.  The final being Power Struggle – a HQ type game where you gain points for having control of an active power node.  As I said, I played only deathmatch and enjoyed it.  The only problem being that in a few weeks I see players dropping off for something new.  Since there are achievements tied to MP, I suggest if you plan on getting a copy of the game do so soon, as in a month or two it will be difficult to get games going without friends.

Lastly there is one mode I didn’t get to play.  Its called Escalation.  Its basically horde mode from GOW2 with Transformers.  It seems promising with the right group, because there is one thing I have learned over the years, you don’t go into horde mode alone

All in all I was a lot more impressed with Transformers-WFC than I thought I would be.  As a fan, I am pleased with the work they put into this game to make it as close to what I grew up on as possible.  As a gamer, I found it solid all the way around, solid.  The campaign is exciting, the MP is a fun departure from the norm, but most importantly I had fun with it.  Even if by fun I mean laughed hysterically while I jumped and transformed at every possible chance while saying “lets roll out”.  I’m a nerd.