Hands On: War For Cybertron

The new Activision game ‘Transformers: War For Cybertron’ has been billed as ‘the game every Transformer fan always wanted to play’ and I have had a chance to test their claim. Developers High Moon took the clever approach of crafting a fine shooter first and then adding in the Transformers elements and recently those lovely folk at Activision let me play both the single player and the multiplayer.

The single player side of things is split into the usual Autobot and Decepticon campaigns and I played a section of the Autobot campaign. You have the choice of three characters for each mission and I was playing Optimus at a point around mid way through the game. As soon as the game started it just ‘feels’ right, the controls are laid out sensibly and your character has the right ‘weight’. The last couple of TF games felt very clunky and slow, I seem to recall that when you jumped in the first Transformers Movie game you appeared to float in slow motion. In the new game the bots ‘feel’ heavy but are agile and quick so I decided to give the game the ultimate Transformer test.

The test is: Can you drive at top speed, jump off a ramp, transform in mid air, blast an opponent and then transform back in to vehicle mode before you hit the ground and race off?

The answer is a resounding OhMyGodYesThatIsSoF*ckingCool!

In fact, everything about the game is cool. Cybertron looks amazing, as do the bots. The sound design is perfect with the original G1 transformation sound and the one and only Peter Cullen voicing Optimus. What did surprise me is the amount of in-game chat in single player. Voice overs are not limited to cut scenes and the bots chatter and joke as you are fighting.

During my brief time with the single player I attacked evil Decticreeps, battled a mid game boss, discovered the planet was being corrupted by ‘Dark Energon’, stormed a stronghold and most memorably, raced across Cybertron on a twisting, curving track. I enjoyed every single moment.

Activision finally prized the controller from my hands (it took six of them, as well as a couple of shots of sedative) and it was time to try multiplayer. I carefully customised my Soldier class tank a nice shade of Warpath red and headed to the battlefield.

First up was a team Death Match which plays much the same was as any other death match. What is noticeable is the arena design, it has ramps, jumps and tunnels and as you can play as the scientist class which transform into jet fighters, the play area opens out into large caverns for dogfights. The battles are fast and furious and racking up kill streaks enables special abilities and these teamed with your characters enhancements can swing the battle. My tank had a rather nifty perk in which he would (in robot mode) jump up and hover in the air thus giving you a clear shot across the battlefield.

The other game type we played was ‘Domination’ in which a random node on the play field is selected. The first team to arrive gains control of the node and the opposing team has to try and capture it back. This means all players on the map converge on one spot for an intense fire fight.

I had one minor niggle during my hands on and it’s really is a just a personal opinion rather than a major problem. Having Optimus Prime constantly telling me “We’re loosing node A!” “We’ve captured node B” kind of ruined the atmosphere. Just renaming the nodes Alpha, Beta and so on would have made the voice over sound ‘more transformery.’

So is Transformers: War For Cybertron as ‘the game every Transformer fan always wanted to play’?

Hell yes.