Ah, it's here again, the time of the semester when I'm neck-deep in exam preparations. What better time for a study break than right now?
My last review foreshadowed this, and after feeling like a little boy before Christmas for essentially the better part of a year now it's finally here - the first good Transformers game in six years! There's more to it than that, though, so stick with me as we take a look at the war that started it all...
My last review foreshadowed this, and after feeling like a little boy before Christmas for essentially the better part of a year now it's finally here - the first good Transformers game in six years! There's more to it than that, though, so stick with me as we take a look at the war that started it all...
Study Break - Transformers: War for Cybertron

Robots are awesome. Let's face it, along with ninjas, pirates and crime-fighting anthropomorphic reptiles with a taste for pop culture and pizza, robots are one of the things that are just too badass not to like, especially when you're a kid. At some point in the early 1980s someone in Japan with the presence of mind to realize that trucks, race cars and jets are also badass came up with the idea of combining robots and vehicles into singular entities, and thus was born a franchise that came to be known as "Transformers" - that is, as soon as Hasbro got their grubby fingers on the license.
Originally created for the sole purpose of promoting Hasbro's new toys, the cartoon about giant transforming alien robots from the planet Cybertron that debuted in 1984 and which was retroactively dubbed "Generation 1" or "G1" by the fans is one of the things from my childhood that will likely stay with me until they put me in the ground, seeing how it's the very first cartoon I remember watching in my entire life. Since those days the franchise has undergone its fair share of redesigns, reboots and spin-offs and evolved way past the admittedly goofy, overblown toy advertisement it used to be, acquiring a highly detailed collection of background lore and becoming a more mature, grown-up toy advertisement that isn't afraid to pull the arms, legs and heads off even its most beloved characters in order to make little children cry in disbelief and sell another repaint of a plastic figure that's already 4 years old.
However, despite all the awesome stories revolving around the Transformers the gaming community has rarely had the opportunity to experience a decent game based on the franchise, the only one I vividly remember being the PS2 game based on "Transformers: Armada" that was released back in 2004 (and which I already covered extensively in another review, in case you were wondering just how big a fanboy I am). After two highly rushed and unsatisfying movie tie-ins accompanying Michael Bay's ongoing silver screen endeavors, "Transformers: War for Cybertron" might have a difficult time taking off because gamers have been burned not once but twice in recent memory, especially seeing how many of us gamers are a cynical bunch - and who could blame us?
Transformers fans and gamers alike, gather round and let me put your concerns and fears to rest. "Transformers: War for Cybertron" is the game some of us have been waiting to play for over 20 years.

Typing might be a nuisance with hands like these, at least if you're a righty...
This game, developed by High Moon Studios, is the definition of "back to the roots", because it takes us back to roots of G1 not even die-hard fans quite knew until now. "War for Cybertron" is set at the end of the great civil war that has ravaged the Transformers' homeworld of Cybertron for aeons and fills in some of the gaps surrounding the conflict's central characters, and while the story isn't exactly of the calibre exhibited in games like Silent Hill 2 or Bioshock I've found little to complain about.
The game is split into two campaigns consisting of five big missions each, with the Decepticon campaign marking the chronological beginning of events. Megatron has discovered a new source of power: a highly volatile and unstable substance known to a select few as Dark Energon; together with some of his soldiers he attempts a raid on an orbital research station overseen by its chief scientist, the Autobot Starscream (yes, you read that right). After an arduous battle Megatron achieves his goal and, having bolstered his ranks with the addition of you-guessed-who and his seekers, proceeds to invade the Autobots' capital city of Iacon. The purpose of this attack is to crush the Autobot leader, Zeta Prime, and take control of an artifact called the "Omega Key" which will allow the ambitious leader of the Decepticons to access the planet's core and infuse it with Dark Energon.
The Autobot campaign picks up right where the Decepticon campaign leaves off: Optimus, a self-promoted field commander, is tasked with fixing the mess Megatron's forces have created, saving Zeta Prime and clearing Cybertron's core from the corruption that has befallen it; here we see how Optimus accepts the burden of leadership and grows into the stalwart hero we all know and love.
All in all, depending on difficulty setting and your personal level of competence the campaign mode clocks in at somewhere between 8 and 12 hours.
While the story doesn't suffer from inconsistencies, it does leave a number of plot threads dangling here and there, but they are easily dismissed. It's a straight-forward and uncomplicated setup that answers a few questions about character backgrounds and doesn't feel out of place amidst all the fast-paced action. The juiciest fact about this story - and probably a point of pride for the writers at High Moon Studios - is that Hasbro were apparently so enamored with it that they declared it to be the official pre-G1 canon for the entire franchise, which is twice as great considering that, as an origin story, "War for Cybertron" is an ideal jumping-off point for people who have not yet come into contact with the Transformers.
There is one thing that irks me, though. At the start of each mission, the immediate premise of the scenario is narrated via a read-aloud scroll of text, which feels awfully cheap in comparison to a game that looks and feels this good - did the cutscene animation department run out of money, I wonder...?

Considering proportions, this is probably what Grimlock's butter knife would look like.
Even though "War for Cybertron" is bursting at the seams with geek love, the gameplay is where it's really at. One of the fundamental concepts the developers had going into this project was not to make a Transformers game, but a solid and fun 3rd-person shooter and, once that was achieved, layer the Transformers bits on top of that skeleton... and it worked.
The game initially plays and feels a lot like the "Gears of War" series - in fact, I have come to refer to it in my mind as "Cogformers: Gears of Cybertron"; but while the game is evidently based on a tried-and-tested formula, I regard it as superior to "Gears of War" for one reason: It's a lot faster. Instead of using a cover system which results in stop-and-go precision shoot-outs, "War for Cybertron" uses its characters' ability of transformation to its full extent. Aside from a few cramped corridors most of the environments are extremely wide-open, resulting in a constant flow of motion and combat where transforming is not only an option, but often an outright requirement if you prefer not to be reduced to a talking toaster.
Converting into vehicle mode does not merely turn you into a speedy form to escape your enemies; every car, jet, truck and tank is armed with at least one weapon, which is at times more favorable than your robot mode loadout and, combined with enhanced speed and maneuverability, potentially provides you with a crucial tactical advantage.
Meanwhile, the gameplay in general is about as basic as it gets: Invade an area, throw a switch or two, maybe defend the area for a while and move on to the next playground. No keycards, no puzzles - just non-stop shooter action; sounds dull when you write it like this, but trust me, you'll spend too much time dodging rockets and splitting heads to get bored. The one change in the setup is a short section in the second half of the game that possibly qualifies as a giant vehicle rampage, in which you are anchored into a gun turret mounted on the back of a giant techno-organic banana slug/caterpillar thing. Just read that last sentence again if you're in doubt about the awesomeness of the concept alone.
The one thing about the simplicity of the game that disappoints me is that there are no collectible goodies to provide you with bonuses of some kind; the environments are often really pretty, but stopping to wander or drive around for a moment during a short combat break feels horribly flow-breaking because you know there's no benefit in the exploratory effort. The only thing you'll find lying around in abundance are marked boxes of varying shape, size and color containing health (Energon cubes), shielding, weapons and ammo.

This is my boomstick!
Speaking of weapons, you can have two guns at a time and despite the futuristic design they're pretty much what you'd expect: SMGs, shotguns, sniper rifles, miniguns, heavy MGs, rocket launchers, grenade launchers and hand grenades with various special traits and effects. A nice touch is that some of the weapons on offer are crossbreeds between weapon types, such as a 3-shot burst rifle with a 5x zoom feature, or the Energon repair ray that has both healing and offensive qualities.
What further enriches the endless firefights is the array of abilities. In the campaign mode each bot has their own combination of two abilities, providing a wide range of different bonuses: Dashing, cloaking, offensive and defensive boosters, barriers, sentry turrets - the list goes on, adding up to a total of 16 different abilities, and since at the start of each mission you choose between three different bots to play as the game does its best to accomodate for your very own personal style of playing.
The one thing about the combat I'm unsatisfied with is melee. It's strong and useful, I'll give it that, but it's mind-numbingly dull because there's only one button for it that always performs the same attack and doesn't allow for any kind of interesting combo; on top of that the melee system has the "Too Human" problem of your character pausing for a second between strikes, which makes the whole mechanic feel so stiff and clunky you might as well be having a slap fight on stilts.
As for boss fights, there are plenty of them and they all play differently from one another, making each battle fun and unique. Only some of these battles pit you against known characters from the canon, but they're all entertaining in their own way and, at times, quite challenging. My personal highlight was a fight against Soundwave, but then again that comes down to personal preference, I suppose.
Oh, and if you were wondering about having to prove your reaction time or mashing your controller into oblivion: Relax. There is not one single quick time event in the entire game from start to finish, not even in the cutscenes.

Do want. Nuff said.
The controls in "War for Cybertron" are a total rip-off from "Gears of War", which is a good thing in my humble opinion; still, it was a bit creepy to see High Moon's lead developer Matt Tieger going on and on in behind-the-scenes videos about his admiration for those games and their control layout, to the point where I half-expected him to start making sweet and passionate love to the controller if left to his own devices.
There are no response delays whatsoever and the controls are very tight and fast, which is good because you need to be able to react to threats from all directions in the blink of an eye; speaking of which, the camera is controlled with the right stick and rotates with the player, so your guns are always faced squarely at the enemy currently zipping across your line of sight.
In vehicle mode your controls are exactly the same as in robot mode, adding to the immersion and not forcing you to mentally switch between different control schemes. Upon transforming, you turn into a sort of hover vehicle by default, gliding around the same way you'd move as a robot, except for when you hold down the left trigger; this activates the vehicle's boost function, retracting the hover thrusters into your superstructure and making a set of wheels or tracks drop down, turning you into what you'd essentially expect a car to be - a means of quickly getting from A to B in a straight line. The controls can get a bit wonky here, but that could just be because they're actually physically correct, compensating for momentum and so on.
The one beef I have with the controls is that while transforming is quick and simple with a press of the left stick, in the heat of battle when things get particularly frantic it's easy to accidentally initiate a transformation when you don't want to, which can mean the difference between life and death - especially in the competitive multiplayer (but I'll get to that later).

See that guy over there, Megatron? That guy said your purple lightning looks silly!
The presentation of "War for Cybertron" leaves little to be desired, both visually and auditory. The one thing people constantly complain about with the Unreal Engine is the gleaming, shiny look it has, but in this game it fits perfectly because everyone and everything is made of metal.
The general look of your environments is very organic; even though they're made of metal, they convey the impression of a living, breathing world. The colors feel a bit bleak and washed-out at certain points, but I'd hazard a guess that this is intentional to add to the setting of a world ravaged by all-out war. Meanwhile, the characters look like a perfect marriage between the G1 design and an expo for concept vehicles; the major players are instantly recognizable, with a great love for details and moving parts on all bots, and yet the whole look is completely revamped (with a very liberal use of glowy bits and Tron lines). An especially cool touch is that everything you interact with transforms: Weapons integrate into your arm and adjust to your color scheme when you pick them up, your hands and feet are keys for using switches and consoles, and when you enter a mounted gun turret you literally become a part of it.
I did encounter a few slowdowns when things got very visually busy in big firefights with dozens of enemies, but not more than a handful. This goes for the X360 version of the game, by the way, I can't speak for the PS3 version.
The soundtrack isn't bad, but it's nothing special either. It sounds like what you'd get if you mixed ambient music with elements of goa and, in some firefights, metal; it never gets obnoxious and always remains in the background. The sound effects are universally good, from the booming and clattering of gunfire to the crunching and clanking of metal on metal. The most awesome thing about the sound are the transformations: every single Transformer has their own personal re-tooled version of the iconic noise from the old cartoon show which is perfectly tuned to the corresponding animation.
And yes, Soundwave sounds like Soundwave.

Hooray, I'm not a satellite!
While the campaigns are enough for the game to stand on its own, the game's online features are probably what will keep you coming back to "War for Cybertron".
First of all, the campaigns gain a lot of replay value by enabling the 3-player online drop-in/drop-out co-op mode, which is particularly well done considering that the game adjusts the amount and type of enemies it throws at you according to how many people are playing together; losing your connection for a moment isn't that big a deal because the AI immediately steps in to take over for you while you reconnect to your party.
In online multiplayer you get to choose between four playable classes, each tied to a specific vehicle mode: The leader (truck), the scout (race car), the soldier (tank) and the scientist (jet). Every class differs from the others in respect to its health/resilience, available weapons (4 each), abilities (4 each) and its general role on the battlefield (heavy booster, rogue, heavy hitter, medic). To add a bit of variety, the game offers several different chassis for each class and fraction to choose from and allows for rudimentary color customization.
Once you dive into the fray you'll probably detect select similarities to "Team Fortress 2" and "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2". The game is very team-based and most of the time you'll have significantly more success if you concentrate on implementing your particular skills and abilities into the team effort, while charging into the enemy base all by yourself will most likely earn you a fender bender you won't recover from. Also, the multiplayer has a leveling system for each class which unlocks additional abilities and a huge array of upgrades (72 in total) that provide you with passive traits as you progress through the levels; you're free to experiment with any number of loadout combinations, and the game lets you save three different bots for each class, allowing for on-the-fly change in playing style even within the same class. Furthermore, "War for Cybertron" has a killstreak system - but don't worry, they're not horribly overpowered; depending on what class you're playing as you might get a level-wide temporary positions marker to show where enemies are, instant repairs or ammo refills for your entire team or an especially devastating area-of-effect melee attack.
As of now, the multiplayer offers a stunning 6 game modes, all of them awesome, but only 8 maps, and the range of available chassis could be better, too... but seeing how these are issues which can easily be remedied post-release, my money's on one or two sizable DLC packages somewhere down the line. Also, that way everyone could get their hands on the few multiplayer bots which at this point are pre-order exclusives.

Omega Supreme laughs at your tiny fusion cannon, Megatron.
I've already heard people calling this game the "Arkham Asylum" of this year, rightly signifying that "Transformers: War for Cybertron" is not just license trash, but a game painstakingly developed by a team of people whose intention was to do both the "Transformers" and the "game" part justice, and in my opinion they've thoroughly succeeded. There are a few niggles here and there, but overall this isn't just a good Transformers game - it's a good game, period. If you're a fan of the franchise, you have nothing to fear, your childhood memories will be treated with the utmost respect... and even if you're not, if you're simply a shooter fan looking for one hell of a good time, this game is right up your alley. People, this is a must-buy.