Summary [8.5 out of 10]

Direct sequel to 2010’s War for Cybertron, Fall of Cybertron picks up right as that game left off with the Autobots  trying to escape their dying planet through the space bridge to find another planet to inhabit while Cybertron repairs itself. The game once again offers players a chance to play as a variety of different Autobots and Decepticons as they battle each other in an attempt to be the only ones to make it off of Cybertron alive. Again the game play is third person shooting with the ability to transform into ground vehicles and aircraft at will and again these mechanics are tight and seamless. The game maintains the same standard for graphics and animation that the previous one set forth and this time there are some tweaks to make a more consistent experience in terms of difficulty while re-balancing the variety of game play to something that will keep you on your toes and engaged. Unfortunately, you won’t be engaged long as the single player experience is pretty short despite having more levels than the first game. It is a two steps forward, one step back situation that tells us that there is still room to improve this series but it is definitely on the right track.

What Is It Like?

Transformers: War for Cybertron: Kind of obvious but if you dug the first game you will find a very similar experience here with some improvements thrown in that make the play experience even tighter.

Gears of War Series: This one is a bit more of a stretch than last time around but with solid third person game play coupled with pretty solid spectacle moments and unique game play sequences, there is a bit of cross-over.

The Great

Graphics: The first game looked really good but Full Moon Studios figured out a way to squeeze the hardware even tighter to get some extra juice out of it because this game looks pretty gorgeous. The amount of detail to characters and environment is stunning particularly when you take into account how many parts are constantly moving. The transformations look great as well and visual effects pop. This isn’t the best looking game on consoles or anything  but it looks pretty great.

Character Design: Once again the character designs are spot on. These are still the pre-Earth Cybertron designs but the elegance of how well known characters look the way they should even with the variations is impressive. The live action movies would do well to take note because not only are the designs proper throw backs to the beloved G1 designs but they are also clean and functional. When you are watching cutscenes of fighting or doing the fighting yourself, the designs don’t make anything look cluttered or lacking in smoothness. Also, it is pretty badass to see the G1 designs.

Game Play: The game play here is once again an impressive juggling act that keeps third person shooting, flying, dirivng and melee combat all moving smoothly with very few hiccups. This is really key because getting just one of these right proves to be too much for some games to manage. Getting all of them is REALLY hard. Getting all of them all at the same time is pretty damn amazing. This requires roughly as many moving parts as it would take to transform a vehicle into a robot as it isn’t just a question of the mechanics or the physics or the targeting or the driving or flying but also a question of overall stage design to allow for that. This is incorporated into the boss fights as well which are dynamic and fast paced because of the ability to transform and maneuver in interesting ways. All of the elements come together here and it makes for a very engaging and fun experience.

Controls: Piggybacking off the last point, the controls have to be spot on to support spot on game play. There are a lot of things to do between switching weapons on the fly, using special abilities, melee combat and transforming and even with all of that stuff to try to deal with in a dynamic environment where you need to call on any one of those things at a second’s notice the controls are never a problem. I had my ass handed to me more than once but it was never because I couldn’t do something I told the controller to do. The controls are easy and comfortable and help make the experience that much closer to seamless.

Wow Moments: Moreso than the last game, Fall of Cybertron offers several big moments that, as a Transformers fan, it is hard not to be excited about. I won’t spoil any here but from early on you are treated to badass cutscenes and quick time events that will take your breath away. There are also some quoted moments from the series and the animated movie that are awkwardly rejiggered to fit here that may not fit well but are still fun to see. Over all the fan service continues here and escalates quite a bit. High Moon knows the audience and gives them what they want.

The Good

Customization: An added feature this time around is a pretty robust suite of upgrade features for weapons, boosts and performance bonuses that you can tweak throughout your adventure using money collected throughout the game. This is done through the Teletran stations scattered about and the upgrades purchased for loadouts and your transformer maintains throughout the game. So if you upgrade Optimus Prime’s shields that upgrade will be active when you play Megatron later. This is a pretty awesome feature and allows for improvement as the game moves forward so you aren’t just stuck with whatever character’s stats you happen to be playing at the time.

Multi-player: Just like last game the multi-player is pretty solid and goes far to make up for the story length. The modes here are pretty standard with variations on capture the flag and team death match. Escalation makes a return here and is pretty much the same as last time. There is no story mode co-op here which makes for a more balanced single player but kind of sucks to lose a feature and multi-player option.

Voice Acting: The quality of the voice acting has thankfully carried over from the last game with Peter Cullen again providing Optimus his voice. The other voices all sound pretty spot on although I am still wanting a Starscream that sounds more like Chris Latta. Not sure what Doug Parker is up to but I am still annoyed to find he is not doing Starscream’s voice. Fred Tatasciore does a respectable Megatron but there again I miss Frank Welker. We have original Grimlock voice actor Gregg Berger on hand here for the character though so that is pretty awesome. Nolan North does a great job with the characters he voices particularly Cliffjumper. There are some issues I have but in general the voice acting is solid.

Character Variety: Even though last game gave you a choice of two different characters at the start of each levels, those characters were pretty similar and tended to just be place holders for co-op. Fall of Cybertron offers up a much wider variety of game play styles with the characters it offers. From Cliffjumpers cloaking ability for stealth to Jazz’s grapple laser or Prime’s ability to call down an air strike to Soundwave utilizing Rumble and Laserbeak as an extra ability, there are a lot of different things you can do as different characters. That doesn’t even get into the game play as the Combaticon construct Bruticus. And then there is Grimlock.

Grimlock and the Dinobots: Grimlock is such a cool addition that he deserves his own bullet point. Sure, the dinobots being dinosaurs on Cybertron doesn’t make any sense but given the badass melee attacks that Grimlock has and his T-rex transformation that is so awesome that it is a special ability I don’t care about broken mythology. This is Grimlock as he is deteriorating as well so you see him go from intelligent and capable to the more caveman like brute he was in the G1 series. A DLC pack lets you play as the dinobots in multi-player as well and that is pretty incredible even if Swoop flies pretty weird.

The Bad

Story: It is a little shocking given that the story in the first game was really good but the story here is pretty much non-existant and appears to serve no purpose beyond driving the characters from one stage to the next. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if the original game hadn’t delivered so much story but as it is the whole thing feels a bit flat and truncated. Here’s hoping the third game (if there is one) marries this back up with the action.

Length: The single player experience is pretty much a blink and you’ll miss it experience. It is fun while you play but it is over so quickly that the player is left feeling a bit empty. Sure there is the multi-player and some replay incentives but I really wanted more and not in a ‘always leave them wanting more’ sort of way. It is kind of a compliment in a backhanded way I suppose that I wanted the game to be longer but given that it isn’t it is hard to look at that as a positive.

Glitches: Holy shit the glitches. In the final stage of the game I had to restart my console three times to be able to make it to the end due to the game freezing. This was VERY annoying and looking around the web is not the only one floating around. Rather than gouging us for on disc DLC they should really work this out.

Conclusion [8.5 out of 10]

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron fixed a lot of issues from the first game and created some more of its own making this installment more of a push than an improvement. Still, the improvements do elevate the game a bit and it is still pretty ridiculously fun to play alone or with friends. If you are a Transformers fan at all this is a pretty safe bet just don’t expect a deep story to get you through.