Summary [8.0 out of 10]

Filling in the back story of why the Transformers had to leave their home world, War for Cybertron fits snugly into the official cannon of Generation 1. The ten chapter campaign gives you five chapters from the Decepticon point of view and five chapters from the Autobot point of view and showcase such moments as Starscream becoming a Decepticon and Optimus becoming a Prime. The game is chock full of inside fan service and the whole thing feels very authentic. The multi-player mode is fairly robust and engaging and the included co-op rounds the package off nicely. While it is generally a fun time, the lack of variety and unbalanced difficulty does hamper enjoyment a bit but not nearly enough ruin the first successful Transformers game in history.

Introduction

Like just about any male of my age group, I loved the Transformers when I was a kid. I had (and still have by way of my Parent’s storage) an impressive collection of G1 Transformers and I ate the show up like it was every tasty treat on Earth (because it was). I loved a lot of cartoons and toys when I was a kid but Transformers was the be all end all for me. That being the case it has been really discouraging that video games have failed to capture the magic of the show and toys. It seems like it would be easy given that there are driving and flying games and there are running around shooting games but the marriage of the two play styles has always been difficult given that you have to accommodate both on the fly. One or both of the mechanics would be screwed up and they were probably based on whatever new iteration of the series was on TV (or in theaters) at the time. And it wasn’t so bad that it was based on other iterations necessarily it is just that you had to make allowances. Prime’s voice not being right and being a different semi or whatever. Not the end of the world but wouldn’t it be nice if we had a G1 game? A game where we could just have it be the series we knew and loved? Now we do. Oh sure, it takes place pre-Earth so it is Cybertron vehicles but whatever. The game is super faithful and it was a great time. Here’s hoping they do more.

The Great

• Character Design: As mentioned above, the characters are cannon G1 characters so while they are on Cybertron, they still pretty much look exactly as they are supposed to in robot form. In vehicle form they are a bit different but the vehicles are all of similar type to what they will turn into on Earth and they look really good. It is very nice to see the classic looks of the characters running around again, particularly Soundwave who has gotten the short shrift in the movies so far appearing only as a satellite with a voice that sounds wrong. He is in all his glory here voice and all. He transforms into a truck as opposed to a boom box but that really works out for the best in an action game. The characters look terrific and it feels like coming home again.

• Gameplay: The gameplay is mostly in the Gears of War vein with a greater emphasis on running and gunning than hiding behind cover. There are plenty of moments where you have to duck behind something but you aren’t going to spend the whole game hiding and the popping off shots and then ducking back in. The play is much faster paced and gets pretty chaotic especially once you throw the vehicles into the mix. The gameplay integrates this aspect in perfectly and when to switch forms is very much a strategic decision as opposed to previous efforts where the two forms had distinct sequences or you just used the vehicles to run away or get somewhere more quickly. Here you switch on the fly and it provides a whole new variety of tactics. This keeps battles from getting slow and stale. Adding in class specific abilities also helps with this as you have a lot of options on how to tackle encounters. If one isn’t working for you it is really easy to just change your tactic until you find something that works. The classes themselves help this out a lot as they offer distinct strengths and weaknesses to fit in with different styles of play. This game pulls off the Transformer experience from a gameplay perspective so flawlessly it makes you wonder why it took so long for anyone to come up with it. I think the answer is love and it is obvious that the gang at High Moon Studios are big fans who really wanted to see this work.

• Control: I touched on this a bit above but it really goes hand in hand with the gameplay. Given the inherent complexity of what the game is trying to pull off the controls really have to be great or it just isn’t going to work. Here the buttons are all utilized to allow you to do all the things you need to do and it is pretty easy to do it. The really amazing thing is how tight the driving controls are. I expected those, particularly the jets, to be flawed but with the exception of some minor drifting I found the vehicle controls to be very tight. Regardless of the form you choose you will always be in total control.

• Graphics: The game looks really great. The backgrounds, characters and overall animation looks really good whether you are playing the game or in a cut scene. In fact, the cuts scenes are fairly indistinguishable from the gameplay and it just always looks awesome. It is very cool to see the accurate designs, fluid animation and have it just look straight up better than the cartoon did. It just looks really, really nice.

• Detail: Again this piggybacks slightly with the graphics point but it deserves its own entry just based on how much effort went into it and also because it extends beyond just the graphics. First of all, everything is very intricate and alive. The environments look alive, which is pretty amazing for a planet that is all a machine. The Transformers themselves are super detailed and you can see the parts moving even when your character isn’t. Second, the detail extends to the events of the game as they throw in a lot of things that only big fans would catch but make the whole game feel that much more authentic. One of my favorites of these are the between chapter narration. It was very much in the vein of the cartoon and the voice sounded very similar to the one used back then. Nice. You can also expect to hear a plethora of familiar and iconic lines from the show and animated movie. These may not have impact on a casual or non-fan but I loved them.  I said it earlier but it bears repeating, there is a lot of love for the Transformers in this game and you can tell at pretty much any moment while playing that everyone involved cared a lot. It is very cool for it to be taken so seriously and with such care. This is not just some quick cash in and nothing bears that out more clearly than all the detail put in for no other reason than they were fans and it deserved to be there.

The Good

• Story/writing: The story itself is a little light and very straight forward. There aren’t many twists and turns and it doesn’t really feel all that epic. What it does really well though is handle the moments in the game of ‘historic’ significance and the interplay between the characters is spot on. Also, honestly, the story is better than the average episode of the cartoon so that is nice as well. If the game were to be recorded and watched it would really fit right in with the show and the animated movie and really that is all you need out of something like this. One draw back though is that it does skip around a little bit and that can be kind of jarring. I am not sure if that was the intentional story flow or if they ran out of time or money but either way it feels like there are gaps here and there that you have to fill for yourself with context.

• Voice Acting: Generally the voice acting is really good and you can tell that they tried to find people who’s voices approximated the original actors. Peter Cullen is on hand as Optimus Prime which was very nice of course and Soundwave sounded perfect. There were a few missteps as I thought Starscream and Megatron sounded off.  I get that Frank Welker’s voice wouldn’t have fit the live action movies but he can still sound like Megatron and it would have worked here. As for Starscream, his voice isn’t terrible but it doesn’t have enough of that trade mark whiny sound to it.  Original Starscream voice actor Chris Latta is sadly no longer with us but back when Starscream showed up on Beast Wars Doug Parker provided a voice so authentic I would have sworn to you that it was Latta. According to this article: http://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/war-for-cybertron-leonard-nimoy-and-doug-parker-among-new-voice-actors/18171/ Parker was supposed to do the voice. I don’t know if that was official and if so, what happened but it would have been way better. Even with these hiccups, the voices sounded good and true to the source material.

• Multi-player: The suite of multi-player found here is pretty good. You have full co-op for the campaign (although no local multi-player), a grip of competitive modes and a mode called Escalation where you and a team take on increasingly difficult enemies. The modes all work well and you can create your own transformers in the competitive modes that follow classes and allow for leveling and customization. What is really fun with the competitive matches is just how fast and furious it is. With the ability to run and gun as a vehicle or shoot it out in robot form you have a very fast past multi-player experience that has a bit of a learning curve but is just really fun. There is a lot left to do once the story mode is over.

The Bad

• Difficulty: The sad side effect of offering full campaign co-op here is that the difficulty was not scaled for a single player. You still have your AI companions with you even if you go it alone and they are remarkably good at handling themselves but you will die a lot. A lot. I went through the first time on easy just to see the story and I was taken aback by how many times I ate it in the first chapter. It is really tough for one player going it alone and if I hadn’t been so invested in the story I might have given up in frustration early on. This is a real misstep because with lack of local multi-player they have really screwed players with no internet on their system or a Gold account. Hopefully in future sequels this will be balanced so the single player is more manageable.

• Lack of Variety: One glaring issue is that even as good as the game looks and how fun it is to play the environments are recycled a lot and there are like four or five enemy types that show up over and over again. I am not all that into just shooting faceless drone Transformers and while I understand you can’t be killing established characters  left and right it would have been nice to see more familiar faces popping into battles. Likewise with the environments where you are going through the same sorts of tunnels over and over again. It would also have been cool to have more options in terms of which Transformers you can play during each mission. You only get to choose from three each time and it would be cool if you had more variety here.  Mission structure suffers from this a bit too as you tend to have to do the same things over and over. Generally the things you have to do kick ass so it isn’t too bad but mixing things up next time would be very nice indeed.

Conclusion [8.0 out of 10]

Transformers: War for Cybertron is the game fans have been waiting for and have done for many years. It isn’t perfect and there are things that could be fixed and tweaked for future sequels but it does most of it very right. It is fun to play, exciting and will bring back a lot of great childhood memories. It might also make you want to scream at the TV and throw things but anytime you start feeling frustrated or annoyed the game does something bad ass to draw you back in. This is a great start for what I hope will be an awesome franchise and I can’t wait to see what is next.