'Til All Are One

There are certain touchstones of my childhood that I am reluctant to let go of; they hit me with nostalgia so deep that I get goosebumps, and my day is instantly a little better because of it.  One of those in the Transformers; I watched and re-watched episodes of them recorded on VHS tapes, followed the spinoffs, had chests full of the toys, and sold Michael Bay a small portion of my soul by going to watch his terrible movie.

That's why there was nothing on Earth that was going to stop me from diving into Transformers: The War for Cyberton when it released on Tuesday.  The only thing left to answer was would I love this game as a fun, nostalgic addition to Transformers lore, or would I be forced to hide it under the sofa next to my pirated copy of Revenge of the Fallen?

Fool me once, Michael Bay.  Fool me once.



One Shall Stand...

 War for Cybertron's biggest selling point for me was the story.  It takes place during the height of the Autobot-Decepticon civil war, and shows how the Decepticons got the upper hand and a soldier named Optimus became a Prime.  The story isn't the grand, sweeping epic some may want it to be; Megatron infects himself with a McGuffin called "dark energon" and uses it to corrupt Cybertron's core, dismantling the Autobot's defenses and leader Zeta Prime in the process.  Optimus steps up to assume temporary command and try to restore balance to the war and the planet.

You play as the Decepticons first, blasting your way to the dark energon while recruiting Starscream to your cause and threatening enemies and allies alike with pain and destruction.  The third-person shooting perspective felt a little loose, especially the targeting:  Megatron is a bulky brawler with a big cannon as his main weapon, and I found myself missing pretty frequently with both the regular and tight-focus aiming modes.

Transforming felt a little underpowered, since you have only one weapon and one special maneuvering option.  Megatron's single-shot cannon looks like it should punch holes through walls, but after watching normal grunts shrug off what I thought was a well-placed hit, I switched back to robot form and pummeled them with the melee attack, which did dismantle them quite handily.

However, flying as a Transformer turned out to be much more satisfying.  Starscream's missions flying into and out of Cybertron were fast and fluid, with a good mix of aerial and ground action.  I did find myself reaching for a non-existent missile attack, but at least the standard gatling gun felt like it was at the right level of destruction.

...One Shall Fall

What concerns me the most is just how quickly the story's being told in the game.  I played through the Decepticons' campaign in a little more than three hours, and the Autobots look like they have the same number of missions available to complete the story.  That seems woefully short, considering both how excited fans were about the story, and how much of a selling point it was for the game.  I didn't really expect a Halo-length saga... I had secretly hoped for one... but I also didn't expect to be as short as Halo: ODST's single-player campaign.

The replay value looks like it will come with the multiple difficulty settings (I'm playing on the easiest setting just to blast through the story), as well as the multiplayer and drop-in co-op.  I've been avoiding XBox multiplayer because in my time as a Halo player I experienced pretty much every stereotypical horror you can imagine, so I'm hesitant about dropping into a match with a bunch of other Transformer- and shooter-obsessed people just to justify buying the game.

Hopefully there may be some DLC for the game or multiplayer will wind up being a lot more fun then terrifyingly awful, because I would hate to see this wind up in the "should of rented" pile of games that will wind up being sold back to Gamestop for my next fix.