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Transformers: War for Cybertron Review

Posted on 23. Aug, 2010 by Freak_c in Games, News, Reviews

Autobots transform and roll out! Decepticons punish and enslave! These are your choices for fighting in the war for Cybertron. In New Moon’s new game they have taken the pure enjoyment and action packed essence from the cartoon and transformer them perfectly into a unique 3rd person shooter that fans and new comers will love.

Even though the game is set before the first series it still carries what the transformers cartoons brought to so many fans. Transformers: War for Cybertron tells the story of the final days of the Autobot’s and Decepticon’s civil war on the surface of their homeworld, Cybertron. Officially sanctioned as canon by Hasbro, War for Cybertron fills in some gaps in fans’ understanding of Transformers lore, explaining things like Starscream’s defection from the Autobots, Optimus’s succession to the position of Prime, and more.

The story is told, as most are, with cut-scenes using the in-game engine and during the missions with communications between the various transformers. It’s a good modernization of the original cartoon while remaining true to the characters and stories that fans have placed on a pedestal for decades. What I enjoyed from the game was that during each mission you are never along as there are three of you. You get to chose one of them before the mission, weather it be one of the famous transformers or one of the lesser known ones.

Rather than creating a typical cover based shooting title, High Moon has instead gone with a more immediate third-person dynamic that emphasizes up close melee combat just as much as shooting, with great results. With various types of gameplay popping up during missions literally transforms the gameplay from a run and gun shooter to a flying game. The controls are simply with no high learning curve. Weapons are great and you will be finding yourself swapping between various weapons as you fly through the levels. You will be able to choose to start as a decepticon or autobot right from the beginning allowing you to choose good over evil.

Now a transformer game would be a transformer game without some transformation right. War for Cybertron has some impressively detailed transformations, with the many small details like constantly moving pistons and gears on each Transformer in humanoid mode, as well as some great transformations. Better yet they are incorporated fairly cleverly into the levels requiring you to transform into your vehicular form to transverse further. The intense encounters are designed around the ability to shift at will between vehicle and humanoid forms, and from early on, a mastery of both forms and knowing when to use them is practically a requirement. High Moon has created a shooter that rewards both strategic thinking and heavy experimentation. The combat in Transformers: War for Cybertron is more satisfying than any third person shooter I have played recently.

Transformers is not only a single player experience, it comes with cooperative campaign mode as well as competitive multiplayer. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to test these as when I tried the lag on my line kept getting me kicked from the games and then my PS3 got a YLOD so the game is stuck in the machine until I can get it fixed.

Conclusion
War for Cybertron impresses with an excellent single-player campaign with full co-op support, and an inventive online multiplayer component. Transformers: War for Cybertron has taken the magic of playing with plastic and metal toys that turn into cool shit both alone and with friends and have transformed that magic into the video game that will please fans and new comers a like. That is something special that few games have managed to do.

8/10

A huge thank you to Megarom for supplying the game for review.

Tags: Review, Transformers, Transformers: War for Cybertron