Buy Transformers: War for Cybertron

This is what a Transformers movie could be like if we can somehow rescue the IP from the clutches of Michael Bay. And you even get to play a few scenes in it!

Ok, snideness aside, what you have here is a decent, solid 3rd person shooter, a bit shallow on the tactical side but then again, rather stingy with the ammo for a pure relaxing glue-the-mouse-button-down zero-skill bang fest. The difficulty settings are sensible, easy does mean "you can let your 5 year old kid who is a huge Transformers fan play it and he'll make it", while hard does indeed cause a lot of headaches. Mostly 'cause the controls don't really allow a lot of tactical maneuvering and damage avoidance.

That's maybe also my biggest problem with the game. There isn't really much "skill" involved. And the basic material was really offering a lot of options in this area. There could be some moves where you could transform from robot to vehicle and back for some sweet actions, you could probably, I don't know, climb on walls, run down the wall, transform in mid air, kick up the speed, go over a ramp, transform in mid air again and grasp on a ledge ...

That WOULD be awesome.

Not going to happen, though. Transforming is a rather tedious and static process, don't expect to use that as part of a tactical move. You can drive, which is fast but limited in maneuverability, or you can walk as a robot, which gives you more precision over your movements but makes you slower.

So what's left is a decent 3rd person shooter. Nothing great, nothing fancy, but certainly something everyone who grew up with Transformers will want to play. The story is quite predictable (so it fits perfectly with the old Transformers cartoons) but very well told, the voice acting is, well, not great but most of the time at least decent (again, fits perfectly with the old cartoons), with the usual overacting of the minor characters (again, like the cartoons). The only thing missing is the cheesy intro.

Bought this for Multiplayer

Servers won't connect.

This is one of the most gratifying things about being an older gamer: when fans of popular franchises grow up and get jobs in the video game industry. A lot of uncharitable things can be said for media culture's habit of remaking, rebooting and rehashing old stories, but when it's done from the heart like Transformers: War for Cybertron plainly is, the result is very often a damn good time. See Joss Whedon's "Avengers" or Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" movies: both are exuberant love letters to their source material and it shows.

If you have fond memories of the 1980s iteration of The Transformers cartoon up to and including the 1986 movie, High Moon Studios' first TF outing is a high-octane shot of finely-tuned nostalgia. From the minute you start up one of the game's two single-player campaigns (one for the Decepticons, and one for the Autobots - just for story's sake, I recommend you play them in that order, although the game gives you the option to choose), you will feel like a kid again, plopped in front of the TV after school watching the Autobots smash the bolts out of some Decepticreeps. Peter Cullen voices Optimus for the umpteenth time and hits it out of the park of course, and while he is, I believe, the only voice actor present from the original series, the rest of the talent is excellent and written in exactly the same style as the old cartoons. So you get the familiar banter of Megatron/Starscream, Megatron/Soundwave (the original bromance), Soundwave/everyone, Starscream/Skywarp/Thundercracker, Optimus/Ironhide, Bumblebee/everyone, but also some not-so-familiar characters like Air Raid & Warpath, both of which are hilariously scripted and voiced and really feel like they could be right out of the show. The story is a straight prequel of the cartoon: Cybertron is a war-torn mechanical planet, the Decepticons want to grab all the power they can, the Autobots kinda don't want them to, someone gets a little too Dr. Strangelove on things and oops, we have to leave the planet because we broke it. You're not gonna get Spec Ops: The Line or Bioshock Infinite out of this -- it's robots beating the crap out of each other, innit? But it is a pitch-perfect story with a delicious topping of fanboyism and if you're the target audience even a tiny bit, you'll love it.

So what about the game itself? Well... I hesitate to say too much because my inner kid loves the theme-park-ness to pieces, but it is unfortunately a rather average third-person shooter. That's not to say it's badly done, it's not. Technically it's spot-on, it looks good and plays well, but does it do anything new? Not really. It should have a cover system, it doesn't. You can transform into whatever vehicle your chosen robot is, which is awesome, but it doesn't really matter other than stretches of levels where it's either transform or run a lot (and you run slow, but okay, you weigh ten tons). The controls for vehicle mode are kind of frustrating (game devs: no one enjoys driving with a mouse. It was new and weird in Borderlands, it's old and annoying now. It really is. Stop doing it) and it's disappointing that you don't get a greater sense of speed when you're in "boost mode". The guns sound great, but they could have more variety. The world certainly looks like Cybertron, which again: awesome, however all the metal-on-metal-with-the-occasional-sky motif can be a little boring. But Cybertron is basically Coruscant with less trees, so I'm not sure what else they were supposed to do. There's not a lot in the way of exploration, either for collectibles (there are some, but they very much feel like an afterthought) or just because, and it can't be called anything but a very linear experience. But that's more or less okay since it really tries to be an extended episode of the cartoon, and in that, it succeeds. Hugely. But... all of that does sadly mean that in my opinion if you have little to no desire in watching a bunch of robots shoot each other while making snarky comments, you will probably not miss much by giving this game a pass. There are much better shooters if that's what you want.

But if you are a Transformers fan at all, grab this. Grab it grab it grab it. It's fantastic, and I can't wait to play Fall of Cybertron.

(Quick note on multiplayer (and a quick note is all it is since I have no experience with it): it's supposed to be good. Fall of Cybertron is supposed to be even better. That's it! There are plenty of other reviews for the multiplayer side and the consensus is, again, "good". "Fun", even. I don't know what else to tell you.)

To be honest, I have actually written a pretty long review-ey type thing talking about the many things this game did right and whatnot but halfway along the way, it didn't seem persuasive enough to recommend people to play the game.

So instead, I'm just gonna list 30 awesome things/moments I can think of off the top of my head as to why you should get this game and play the heck out of it:

1. It has Transformers
2. It is amazing
3. It uses a lot of G1 influences meaning all the characters are their loveable and awesome selves, just as you remember them as a kid
4. The robots have all been redesigned with a modern look but still manages to capture the essence of the cartoons
5. Peter Cullen
6. The gameplay is awesome
7. The transformations are seemless
8. The shooting is incredibly satisfying
9. The voice acting is god damn great
10. Megatron is so gar, you can't help but follow him
11. Optimus Prime is as gar as Megatron
12. The world building and the atmosphere in this game is so effective that you do actually feel like you're in a war in a dying planet filled with robots
13. You fight a boss so big and so powerful that you have to enter himself, disable him from the inside, escape his inside before he crushes you as he transforms, plummet from space to the planet below WHILE fighting the boss and then watch him crash land like a comet into the ground...
14. AND THEN fight him again cuz he's such a badass and that crash land was apparently just a 't'is but a scratch' situation before you can finally take down this behemoth
15. Incredible boss fights not limited to the one above
16. Scenery Porn (especially if you like metal-themed environments)
17. Memorable Characters
18. Bumblebee is voiced by Lelouch vi Brittania
19. Multiplayer Co-op
20. Catchphrases, One-liners, War Banters and Transformer Jargon are all music to your ears as you play
21. Did I mention the voice acting is great?
22. The voice acting is friggin' great
23. You can fly
24. You can drive
25. You can shoot stuff
26. You can shoot stuff while flying
27. You can shoot stuff while driving
28. You can shoot stuff while flying, transform to a robot and proceed to shoot more stuff, transform into a jet and zoom past the baddies and into a sniping point, turn around, shoot stuff, transform and shoot stuff with your sniping weapon :D
29. You can shoot stuff while driving, ram into the enemies, shoot stuff while reversing, transform and shoot them in the face, run up to them and melee them in the face, transform and drive away :D
30. This game made me realise how incredibly bad the Bayformers were.

If you are a true Transformers fan, then you will love the game. A neat feature about the game is that there are 10 chapters; the chapters are LONG. The first 5 chapters you will play as the Decepticons and the last 5 chapters, you will play as the Autobots.

A cool thing about War for Cybertron is when you select a chapter, you can decide if you want to be Megatron, Barricade, Star Scream or even Sound Wave and a few others. My all time favorite Decepticon to play, would be Megatron. Megtron's main weapon is a huge cannon, which knocks an autobot down in one hit! Star Scream is also really sweet to play, he is quick and has a deadly weapon.


On the Autobot side, you can play as Optimus Prime! (like we didn't know already lol). He is really cool. His main weapon is a awesome assault weapon. A few characters you can play on the Autobot side, are Optimus, Bumblebee, Ironhide, Jetfire and a few more. Probably my two favorite are Optimus and Ironhide.

The campaign is pretty good. I read the book, "War for Cybertron" a year before I played the actual game. I enjoyed the game because it explained things better than the book. There were only a few things I didn't like; one was when you played as the Decepticons, the Autobots sometimes acted like bad guys when they shouldn't. For exmaple - autobot "I am going to destroy you!!". That seems like something Megatron would say. lol.

The graphics are pretty decent. The only downfall to the game, which is biggest issue for me, is that it's capped at 30fps so you won't be able to go past that (unless you download programs which I don't recommend). Since it's capped, it's best to keep the settings on low so it will run smoothly. There are times that my PC stuttered because of the 30 cap and it's not because my PC isn't good. My PC can run alll CoD games on High-Extra.

Other than the 30 cap, my next issue is that the last chapter was a little "lame" as for it was similar to the Autobot's campaign. I won't reveal any more info than this as I don't want to ruin it others. :\

As a side note, when I first launched it on Windows 8.1, it wouldn't load. If you expenience this issue, move the Physx file to desktop and launch the game, (it will give an error, after that, put the Physx file back where you found it), then launch it again and it should run.

Overall, good story, fun Decepticons/Autobots characters, decent graphics, = Worth it!

Transformers: War for Cybertron is a good Transformers game. Wrap your brain around that. High Moon Studios clearly cares about the franchise, and went to some lengths to include a large number of popular Transformers, as well as lesser known ones. This game is not related to the Michael Bay movies. Even if the action is a little repetitive, it's a bold move to make a three-player coop, no cover system, third person shooter nowadays. The voice acting is fantastic, and the last couple missions are really awesome. If you like Tranformers, It's a solid A. For everyone else, it's a decent action game.

Giant robots. With guns. Coop. They turn into things. That also have guns.
10/10
Better than the movie.

This game has nothing to do with the horrible Michael Bay movies.

10/10

A few reasons to consider whether or not to get this:

1.) Any fan of the original will go nuts for the Nostalgia alone; worth full price.
- Totally awesome and original story with great voice acting.

2.) The combat is beyond insane.
- Runs FAST and flawless while looking gorgeous on ancient hardware (35 fps 1080p 2xAA Core2Duo 2.5GHz. NV:240GTS)

and Number 3:

A perfect 'excuse' / 'valid reason' to get that Garage Door size HD projector and Dolby Digital 7.1 Surround Sound setup you always wanted deep down in your heart. ;D~


A review before me summed it up perfectly:
"IT'S AWESOME!!!!"

Transformers: War for Cybertron is an exciting game which allows you to experience the time before the films as one of three Decepticons or Autobots. You take part as an important member of Decepticons or Autobots and have to destroy a lot of Transformers shooting at them or hitting them with your melee weapon.Thankfully, War for Cybertron impresses with an excellent single-player campaign with full co-op support, the included Horde-alike Escalation mode, and surprisingly deep and inventive online multiplayer component.After years of uninspired movie-licensed games, we finally get to run, fly and drive around with the Transformers and be happy about it. The lacking AI and unvaried fighting sections kill some of the fun, but the game does have a lot of redeeming factors and with a second player you'll feel right at home.A little bit more polish could have made this game a blockbuster title.