Product Description
Experience the legendary battle between the Autobots and Decepticons before their exodus to Earth in the untold story of the civil war for their home planet, Cybertron. Two distinct and intertwined campaigns chronicle the Autobots heroism in the face of total annihilation and the Decepticons unquenchable thirst for power. Play both campaigns in team-based online co-op, or go head-to-head in several online multiplayer game modes. Battle as your favorite Transformer characters in the war that spawned one of the most brutal conflicts of all time…. More >>
I wanted to love this game. I drooled over screenshots of the heavily G1-influenced characters and of the Cybertron landscape. I pre-ordered WELL in advance. I read previews. I read interviews with the artists and developers. I could hardly contain my anticipation.
When the multiplayer demo broke on XBOX Live, I hurriedly downloaded it and fired it up. I was shocked by how unpolished and poor the gameplay was. It played like a MUCH older deathmatch game. Think Daikatana, not Unreal Tournament. But, I reassured myself, I’m not really looking for a Battlefield X replacement or anything like that. I just want some good old fashioned campaign gameplay with my old G1 buddies, Optimus and Megatron.
I was only marginally annoyed by Megatron’s new voice. It’s more like Bay’s Megatron than the dude from G1, but his voice was pretty annoying I guess, so I can let that slide. His character design probably diverges more from G1 than the other characters as well, but not TOO much. OK maybe slightly too much.
There’s lots of compromises like that in the game. The artists took liberties on some characters, but not others. It will irk fans of G1 if they’re anything like me. Bumblebee is nearly perfect. Megatron is just a little too modified. Optimus, not bad. Etc.
The Cybertronian locations are all EXCELLENT. The textures, the art direction, the feel of the place. It’s all more or less exactly what you’d expect a next-gen rendering of the place we’ve only seen in comics and cartoon series thus far to look like. Stainless steel all over the place. Neon highlights. Massive engineering towering over the heads of the already massive Transformers. It’s all eye candy.
But all of that matters not if the gameplay is there, so let’s look at gameplay:
It ain’t there. It’s horrible. The transformations are horribly implemented and you’ll basically just turn into a floating or rolling gun platform with very little in the way of anything I’d call “vehicular gameplay” like was present in the movie-based XBOX games. You don’t really feel like you’re driving a tank, you’re just piloting a floating gun with almost none of the characteristics of a tank. Ditto the cars. There’s no sense of speed or of “driving”, just of directing a big rolling blob of polygons around.
Robot form gameplay is little better. It plays like a third person shooter or beat ‘em up from 3 or 4 generations ago. Think Turtles in Time, not Tomb Raider. It just doesn’t play well. Many of the weapons are useless. The gameplay conventions they decided to borrow (as all developers do) are the wrong ones. Aren’t we all tired of the mini-boss that can only be damaged from the rear? It’s especially annoying in a game where the characters don’t have a “dash” type move, or at least they don’t have one right away (but you need it from level one).
I agonized with this thing through a few campaign missions last night and really tried to convince myself that I liked it, but I just don’t. The art and character design is ALL this game has going for it. It makes a flashy and drool-worthy screenshot for any fan of G1 who really thinks Michael Bay ruined everything (count me in that group), but that’s as deep as it goes.
Save your bucks and pick this one up as a discount platinum or bargain bin title. These are not the Transformers you’re looking for.
Rented it from Blockbuster, glad I rented it and did not buy it. Game is mediocre.
Feels like a 3rd person hack and slash.
Story is weak so far and feels like they are trying to turn 15 minutes worth of story in 6 hours of game play. Come on this is an origins game. 15 minutes of story should be 1 hour of game play…..
Over all I hope no one got a hard on when they heard of this game. If you did I feel really bad for you.
Just as last years Batman: Arkham Asylum proved that makers could dish out a great Batman game where others have failed, Transformers WFC follows in those footsteps. I’ve been a fan since I was intoduced to G1 by my uncle back in the day and have stayed a loyal fan ever since and I’m so glad they kept most of the key characters looking like they did from the original show, save some minor differances. From first glance you can easily identify each autobot and decepticon, Optimus looks like Optimus, Starscream looks like Starscream and so forth the only minor changes are to the alternate forms of Soundwave who now transforms into a truck, Megatron into a tank, and Shockwave who turns into a jet but all are well designed (I think Michael Bay should have come to these guys first yeesh).
Now for the actual gameplay I’ve only played the first couple chapters of the Decepticon campain which if you want to play the game in “order” this one is first, but I’m just a bigger Decepticon fan anyways. The game is smooth and controls work fine, kinda reminds me of Gears of War minus the cover system which would have been nice but not a big deal. You can basically carry two guns at a time which range from machine guns to missle launchers to healing rays and one choice of grenade along with a melee weapon and in vehicle mode you have just one weapon which varies which each class. Along with the weapons you also have abilities like a fast dash, invisibility, hover, and a awesome melee move called whirlwind, to name a few. Levels are beautiful and well designed and play out with your basic point a to point b objectives but still manages to keep things fun and had a lot of cool moments but I’m not one to spoil the fun for others.
Multiplayer on the other hand is very fun but I feel it could have been a little better. First off are the game modes which are your standard shooter modes: deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, ect and a mode called escalation which is basically Gear of War’s Horde mode. When I heard about character customization in this game I was a little ify because I knew it sounded better then it would probably end up and I was right. You can choose from four different classes which are scout(cars), soilder(tanks), leader(trucks), and scientist(jets) from there you can pick which model you want to use which are characters from the game (Optimus, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream, ect) then pick the color you want them to be. I was dissapointed in the fact that the models were unbalanced like autobots tanks you could only choose Warpath but decepticons tanks got Brawl and Megatron and Autobot leaders got Optimus, Ratchet, and Ironhide but decepticon leaders got just Soundwave, so I was kinda disapointed that there wasn’t that much diversity (hopfully there will be dlc for this soon!). After you do that you choose your weapons, abilities, and perks but most are obtained through leveling up *cough Call of Duty cough* and everything again varries from class to class. Now my biggest gripe with muliplayer is how many games I’ve been disconnected from and or how many times there a connection error occured but there were a few games that ran great until I left them. But those things didn’t take away from a great experience and didn’t make this anyless of a great game. Transformers fan or just fans of shooting games should not pass this up, its this years Arkham Asylum after all.
This game is simply awesome. The two people above me must have been playing Viva Pinata too long. This game isn’t based off of old school Transformers or the new movies, it’s completely seperate so of course the voices and look will be different. Graphic wise, they are terrific. Lot going on so you don’t have much time to sit and look at everything. Let me break the actual gameplay and not complain about stupid things such as the voice over or how they look (they all look awesome BTW)
GAME MODES:
-Escalation
Waves of enemies come at you (4 player online) and after each kill you get credits to be used to health, ammo, guns, or unlocking doors that lead to bigger areas. You get to play as real Transformers in this game mode. It’s a lot of fun helping your teammates, reviving each other, pooling credits together to unlock a room. Def a lot of fun and pretty difficult.
-Multiplayer Death Match, etc.
You get 4 classes (Scout, Scientist, Leader, Soldier) and get to customize each class (Autobot and Decepticon form). You get to choose their colors, so for Autobots you get red, blue, green, etc. while the Decepticons get purple, cyan, pink, grey, etc. You pick from 1-3 different looking chasses which is cool. Get to customize both Autobot and Decepticon form. Each type is VASTLY different from the other. Anyone who says they can’t tell the difference between a solider (tank) and a scout (car) must not be very good at games. The tank is slow with a lot of armor while the scout is quick with low armor. It’s so much fun to fly around the map as the scientist then drop it right on people. You get points for getting kills, assists, doing specials, etc. Also there are kill streaks (3, 5, 7) which are different for each class and can change the score really quick. As you level up you unlock more abilities and specials. 6 game modes so there is a lot to play.
-Single Player
Haven’t even touched it. I am excited for the online 3 player co-op. Beating the single player campaign unlocks items for online multiplayer so it gives some purpose to play.
GRAPHICS:
Anyone who says the graphics are not polished or good, please get your eyes checked. The game looks beautiful and I’ve yet to see any lag or frame rate issues with 5 on 5 online. The levels look terrific and the detail on each Transformer is amazing. You can see the pistons moving, wheels moving, and the transformations from car to vehicle are awesome.
SOUND:
I think the sound is awesome. Peter Cullen is back as Optimus Prime. The noises when transforming are different from each class. Explosions, gun fire, its all very well done.
GAMEPLAY:
Transforming is easy and looks like it should. Whoever complained about the weapons being useless clearly is terrible at this game. Rocket launchers that lock on to cars, guns that heal team mates, grenade launcher that you can detonate grenades, mines that seek out the opponent, grenades that heal team mates, etc. Tons of guns, tons of abilities, and lots of fun. Driving the tank is much more difficult to manuever compared to the scount which zips around the map.
All in all, this is a fantastic game. Read the real reviews and you’ll see why this game is getting awesome ratings. Been a while since I had a game that I care about online and offline. If your one of these hardcore Transformer fans who know everything there is to know, maybe you won’t like this game. I like game cause its a blast, not cause Optimus looks different.
If you asked me what I wanted to be back when I was wee lad in 1985 I would have readily answered “Optimus Prime.” All these later and my answer has not changed.
The intellectual property that is the Transformers has been rehashed so many times over the years, and never (in my opinion) properly. That’s right…I’m looking at you Michael “Transformers 2″ Bay. Each time, be it movie, animated series, or video game… for reasons that I do not fully understand – every attempt has been made to move as far away as possible from the what made the Transformers so popular in the first place. Specifically, the original animated series and the animated movie. War for Cyberton does not make that mistake. From the little things like the Universal Greeting from the movie, to keeping true to the original characters and their mannerisms. It’s all there, and for me that’s almost all that matters. The story isn’t life changing, but it makes sense given the original series premise. On top of that I found it cool that the character designs are close enough to what I grew up with to also justify the way they would end up looking in the original series.
I was hesitant to pick this up, based on not having heard anything about it – and it’s one of things that you just know has to probably suck. But I am very happy to report that my fears were quickly put to rest as soon as I got into the game. On the surface this isn’t doing anything that something like “Gears of War” hasn’t already done, but the truth is….that’s fine by me. The gameplay makes total sense given the context of the game, and I gotta say the controls are tight and easy to pick up. Combat isn’t too deep, but it’s fast paced and fun. On top of that there’s a wealth of characters to choose from and really fun single player campaigns for both Autobots and Deceptacons. Graphics are also pretty nice, but again, nothing that’s too far from things that are already on the shelf (so to speak).
I would also venture to say that the “Transforming” aspect of the game is handled correctly. It’s locked into the left stick press and makes for some really smooth (and fun) transitions during combat.
If you’re one of those folks that’s not too keen on the ol’ Transformers one way or another, it’s tough to say how much you’ll love this. I play enough games to say that this here game is solid and tight enough to be fun regardless… but is this worth picking up if you are not pining for the nostalgia of the 80′s? I would venture to say “yes”. However, you’re not going to encounter anything mind blowing as far as gameplay goes – but it’s still works as a fun romp with a bunch of robots.
If, on the other hand, you were a child of the 80′s or just love the original series – stop what you’re doing and buy this swanky piece of radness. It’s super.