I’m not really sure what I thought I was doing when I decided to pick up Transformers: War for Cybertron. Besides checking out a couple YouTube videos, I had no prior knowledge of the game. However, the videos did look promising, and I had some birthday money to spend, so I decided to take a chance.
I don’t know how many games are based on the Transformers series, and frankly, I don’t really care. They’re probably all bad anyway. How often are games based off of cartoons or movies good? Almost never. Thankfully, that wasn't the case with this game. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s not a movie tie-in game that they rushed out to cash in on the buzz.
The story in this game takes place before the first cartoon series from the 80’s. It’s about the Autobots and Decepticons back on their home planet at the beginning of the war. Their planet is what you would expect; everything is electronic and there are lots of shiny energy cubes. All of your favorite Transformers from both sides are represented here as well, and you even get to see how Optimus became a prime. But what’s even more awesome than that is they got his original voice actor. It was a little hard for me not to squeal with girlish glee whenever he said, “Autobots, roll out!” Speaking of voice actors, if you’re into that anime stuff, you’ll recognize a lot of the voice talent in this game: Steve Blum, Crispin Freeman, and Johnny Yong Bosch are the ones that immediately spring to my mind.
The game plays like your typical third-person shooter with a couple tweaks on the formula. For one, since you’re a Transformer, you can transform! I know, weird right? There are two transformations--car and jet. When you’re in vehicle mode the controls change up a bit and you're much faster; however, the weapons you can use are restricted. Your goal in every level is to kill everything on the screen, and there are a variety of weapons to help you accomplish this. You have your standard machine gun, shotgun, missiles, grenades, and sniper rifles among others. There’s really nothing here that’s going to surprise you. One complaint I have is that other than the type of car or jet they transform into, there’s not really that much of a difference between robots. There are different classes that play a little differently, and I guess they look different too. Other than that, a Bumblebee will play the same as any other scout type Transformer.
The first player campaign is 7-10 hours long, which is pretty standard for a third-person shooter. You play half as the Decepticon and half as the Autobots. There is also the option to play the campaign co-op with your buddies, but I don’t know anyone else that has this game, so I haven’t messed with it yet. The multiplayer is broken up into two sections--escalation and competitive. Escalation is like horde mode from Gears of War 2, with waves and waves of enemies that get progressively more difficult. Competitive is everything else--team death matches, free-for-alls, and capture the flag.
Would I recommend this game to people that aren’t at least remotely interested in Transformers? Probably not. It is a competent third-person shooter, but there’s nothing new or fresh to make it unique. This is a game for fans of the series, and nothing makes that more evident than when you beat the game and the credits roll to a kick ass 80’s rock tune. If you like shooters and the Transformers, you’re not going to regret picking up this game. It’s really your only option if you want to play a good next gen Transformers game. And remember, when Optimus tells you to roll out, you better fucking do it. He’s Optimus Prime, man.
[pro-player width='530' height='353' type='video']http://www.fightbait.com/videos/transformers.flv[/pro-player]
You can purchase Transformers: War for Cybertron here
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