Transformers: War for Cybertron

[blackcatgrowl]

Call of Duty 4: Robots in Disguise.

They could have seriously used this as the title. Which isn't a bad thing. CoD4 is a damn good game. And Transformers are damn cool too. The two go together... well... pretty darn good too.

If you are a fan of G1 cartoons, you'll enjoy this game. It is a prequel for the original cartoons. The venues and characters are basically updated versions of the originals. Imagine the technical look of the movies meshed with the basic designs from the 80s, and you wouldn't be too far off. What I've seen of Cybertron is very, very cool.

And the missions themselves can be very emersive. They explain why Cybertron is trashed at the start of the original cartoons. And there's lots to do in each mission. There's one mission where you are flying around as Starscream and the two "jets" which is awesome.

The graphics are amazing. The controls are clean (even on the PC!). There's even a little multiplayer "leveling" system which is nifty.

But there are some negatives... the game seems very short. I've owned it for 6 hours, played it for 4, a hour of which was online, and I'm more than halfway through the Decepticon Campaign. At this rate, I'll have beat the single player game in 6-8 hours.

Multiplay also has some drawbacks. You don't get to choose if you are an Autobot or Decepticon. Think Terrorist/Counter-Terrorist in CS... you're put on whatever team randomly for balance. As such, you're leveling a "class" which can be either good-guys or bad-guys depending on what the game decides.

All in all, its a fun game, and is a tremendously better of an offering than the previous games based on the movies (which isn't saying a lot). If you like Transformers, it's a must-buy. If you like shooters... eh... it's cool... but isn't going to dethrone any top FPS games anytime. It definitely shows a TON of potential. There's lots of x-pac potential for it.