PixlBit

Mr. Perlman was right, war never changes, at least when it comes to video games, it seems. Take out the fact that the protagonist in Transformers: War for Cybertron are giant walking robots and one can easily believe they are playing any generic shooter that have graced us in the last twenty years, bad AI and all.

Transformers tells the story of the Autobot and Decepticon war while it is occurring on their home planet of Cybertron. This is interesting in that it is a relatively untouched subject of the Transformers mythos and Hasbro has stated that all story elements are canon, so those who own all the comics will likely want to play this just based on that fact alone.

The solo campaign of the game has 10 chapters, 5 as the Decepticons and then 5 as the Autobots. It is rather interesting to play just from the side comments and atmosphere that each side has. Megatron is a narcissistic jerk, but you do chuckle at some of his comments and the way he treats his lackeys. On the opposite side of the coin is Optimus Prime who has a desire to be everyone's best friend and to constantly keep their hopes up.

If it wasn't for the mechanical protagonist themselves, the game is about as bland as one can get. While each level does have its own interesting sections; including jumping pieces of wreckage floating in space or riding a giant worm, the vast majority of the game is gray, with gray textures and a splash of shiny and purple.This is not to be confused with the current game generation’s brown on brown with a splash of green. Because of this any uniqueness the game has, from a visual design standpoint, eventually gets lost as things blur together, in recounting parts of the game, I found myself constantly mixing up where I encountered a boss or certain scene.

The Transformer models though do deserve special mention for their excellence. Each main character, and to a lesser extent the other Transformer models, were designed with amazing detail. Pistons and gears constantly move on them, sparks form, and you can see parts of them in their vehicle models.

Of course, just because they look nice doesn't make up for the fact that they move as slow as, well, giant multi-ton robots, with the exception of the fighter jets, which you can only use in two chapters. You're main combat strategy is to move forward firing your weapon since cover or dodging were not elements someone thought would be needed in a shooter. This clumsiness is especially pronounced when fighting the cloaked opponents who constantly somersault around the room like they just smoked some energon laced meth.

Regardless, you are still able to get to each stage’s boss relatively easy though, thanks to the atrocious AI in the game. Every opponent faced would ultimately enter the room in some dramatic fashion, find a "good" position to shoot from and then stay there forever with no adjusting for what you are doing. This is especially comical against jet opponents who just hover wherever they enter from. They might as well just be holding bull’s-eye targets to help you out.

The AI being so bad is really the only way you can make it through the game, for in addition to the general clumsiness of your character, you have to deal with two inept companions. As far as I can tell, they never actually kill enemies and every time they land a hit, it only seems to cause their target to stumble around for a few seconds. Maybe Megatron gave them rubber bullets in case they turned on him?

Speaking of bullets, good luck finding them because this has to be one of the stingiest games I have played. I am by no means a perfect shot but I consider myself fairly accurate. Having to charge opponents with my melee attacks not by choice, but because I ran through my whole 40 shots total between two weapons, borders on the absurd. Especially for a twenty foot tall robot; you can't find one storage compartment for a box of ammo? Your laser can't fire off your own energy and maybe just need to recharge?

By far though, the worst part of the game would have to be the bosses. These things harken back to all the impossible arcade bosses designed just to eat your quarters. The ones where you pump round after round in with no discernible sign you are even doing damage before they suddenly explode. One boss was literally a rotating cylinder that would fire two different types of one-hit kill lasers that you had to slowly evade before it opened up its core for a few shots before repeating the same pattern.

This game had all the potential it needed to break the licensed game curse but its poor combat mechanics and antiquated level design crippled it. Next time they should just grab the Unreal Engine and focus on the story.