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Some concepts just seem too perfect. If I were to imagine a license that would be ideal to bring to the world of video games, if only for commercial viability, it would be Takara’s classic 1980s giant shape-changing robot fad Transformers, as presented to the US by Hasbro. As veterans of licensed gaming, we aging gamers know all too well how badly such things can go, though. The first Transformers video game I ever played was on Commodore 64. Let me be as clear as I can: the publication of that game by Ocean was a criminal act.

I’ve shied away from all the subsequent Transformers video games. You see, I was a huge fan of Transformers in the 1980s. I had a large collection of the toys, a complete collection of the Marvel Comics series (which I think I may still have), and even a very large cardboard Transformers fortress with a break-away wall that would probably be worth quite a bit of money if I still had it today. My love for the brand kept me away from the reportedly terrible recent movies and all the tie-in games, but I was excited to play War for Cybertron. Why? Because it sounded like it had more to do with the classic stuff, both the 1980s cartoon and the 1980s comic books, than that more recent desecration. So let’s see how this played out.

What is it?

Transformers: War for Cybertron is a third-person squad-based shooter developed by High Moon Studios and published by Activision. The game is available for Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows PC. Different Transformers games, also published by Activision, are available for Wii, DS, and other platforms.

What’s the story?

WfC is set before the events of the original TV series, and takes place across ten chapters which are split into two sets of five. The first five chapters cover the Decepticon campaign, in which Megatron strives to capture and harness a powerful and dangerous force called dark energon to take control of the entirety of the planet Cybertron. The last five chapters cover the Autobot campaign to recover from Megatron’s attack and free Cybertron of this threat. Players can choose to begin the game on Chapter 1 or Chapter 6, but in order to play the story in order, you’ll need to start at 1.

Whoever had the idea to set this game in the distant past made an excellent decision. By setting the game millions of years ago on Cybertron, Half Moon Studios was given the opportunity to substantially add to Transformers canon, rather than having to work around it. There are some conflicts in the story with established Transformers lore. For example, Optimus Prime has the name Optimus before he becomes the Autobot leader in the game, while he was Orion Pax in the TV series. He inherits the leadership role from Zeta Prime in the game, but from Sentinel Prime in the series. I’ll leave it at this, because most anything else would be a spoiler. That said, the game provides reasonable explanations for a lot of things in the established canon, while expanding upon it in a way that shows a great respect for the brand.

Keep in mind I’m not being critical of the story here. The stories in the TV series and comic book had discrepancies as well, and we won’t even touch the recent movies.

How does it play?

Each chapter features three main characters to choose from. These three are the fixed members of the squad for that mission. For example, the squad in a Decepticon campaign might consist of Starcream, Skywarp, and Thundercracker. You can choose to play as any one of these three, taking advantage of their varied weaponry and abilities, and the computer will take control over the other two in single player. Multiplayer has other human players online taking control of the others. Every character can transform at will by clicking an overly sensitive L3, swapping a maneuverable running form for a speedy vehicle form as desired. When I say at will, I really mean it. Except when you’re too close to a wall, you can do this. That includes mid-air, which means you can blast yourself over a ramp at an enemy, transform in mid-air, then smash them in the face with a melee attack. Trophy unlocked.

Each chapter is played mission by mission, and missions tend to be a skirmish-to-skirmish affair. Enter a room, kill everything, hit all the switches, maybe kill some more enemies, transform and roll out to the next section. There are also a few escort missions, missions where you have to keep characters safe so they can complete a task, things like that. Destinations and goals are marked with a blue overlay arrow, complete with distance, so you know generally what direction to go. With destinations often around corners or at different elevations, it wasn’t always easy to know which way to go. I found following my computer-controlled squad mates invaluable in these situations, but I would worry about playing the game with people if they hadn’t already been through the campaign.

War for Cybertron is a very, very challenging game. Even discounting the fact that ammunition is frustratingly limited and the characters feel shockingly fragile, the enemies take a lot of hits to destroy, and there are often so many of them attacking at once that it’s hard to know where to begin. There is no true cover system apart from walking behind things, which causes some real problems when facing large and highly mobile groups. Fortunately, eight of the ten chapters have ten missions each, and two have two. Each mission has a number of checkpoints within it. Any checkpoint that has been reached can be resumed from infinitely without penalty, and load times in-game are really short, but after reloading dozens of times in the same place, you may find yourself adjusting the difficulty level from normal down to easy and restarting that mission. Once I pushed the difficulty down to easy, I found the game’s difficulty level much more acceptable and more aligned with what I expected. It had its moments, though, even on easy, that made me wonder if I’d ever make it through. Some of the trophies cannot be obtained on easy difficulty, but most of them can.

There are many types of weapons in the game. One of my favorites was the mounted turret. These can be machine guns or cannons, and while they’re mounted, they have infinite ammo, something that normally only flying transformers enjoy in the game. Sometimes this is impractical, so what you do is tear the gun off the mount and carry it with you, sacrificing the infinite ammo for the portability of a heavy weapon. These tend to be dropped when you transform though, which is a bummer if you’ve been knocked off a ledge and need to transform to get back up. I spent a surprising amount of time using my melee attacks however, because I would be the only one left in the room without any bullets left. This is not surprising, as on medium difficulty it feels as though nobody else is able to kill enemies except the player. It also seems as though your allies are unable to die.

There are lots of reasonable trophies in this game. A number of them just come from completing certain sections. Others are for more elaborate (and fun) stunts like the one mentioned above: taking out a flying enemy with a melee attack. Still others require multiplayer and survival mode attempts to obtain. The trophies have great names as well, referencing lines from the animated movie as well as its soundtrack, with names like “You got the touch,” and “First we crack the shell…”

How does it look and sound?

The first run of Transformers: War for Cybertron on PS3 takes an exhausting half hour of setup. This includes the initial boot time, a very cool but skippable intro cinematic, an unbelievable 5GB install, and the usual wave of logos we tend to see on games nowadays, as well as a plain black loading screen with a spinning Autobot/Decepticon logo that takes a good five to ten minutes the first time you see it. Once the game starts, load screens are rare and very short, which is much preferred to the Mass Effect 2 way, which is almost no boot time and then 30-second load times every time anything happens, including deaths.

Subsequent boots are pretty bad too. Each time you start the game, you have to wait through a dialog box that says “checking” which counts up to 100%. While the first boot takes more than half an hour, the rest will only take about a minute if you skip the things you can. Again, I’d rather have this than load times in-game, but it’s still surprising. I’ve never seen anything like it. Add to this the fact that the game actually locked up on me once, and it’s really a pain in the ass.

Visually, the game is very good. Most of the “wow” moments I had came not from the visual quality but from the big set pieces, like Omega Supreme, but the visual detail is nicely balanced out as well. Frame rates are pretty solid, with only the occasional drop when I made the mistake of running into the middle of a firefight without shooting anyone from the sidelines first. There were a couple of very short (like less than a couple of seconds) delays with a “loading” message popped up when I pressed too far ahead too fast. Overall, the optimization was nicely handled. Chapters are largely seamless.

The music in the game is unremarkable. I have as much appreciation for thrashing guitars as the next guy, perhaps more, but this isn’t what I expected of Transformers. I doubt anything from the animated movie soundtrack would have proven acceptable to a 2010 gaming audience, however. The voice work is better than average, especially that by Peter Cullen, the man behind Optimus Prime’s voice in almost every incarnation over the years. The one exception in the quality of the music is the ending song, which is highly derivative of the animated movie’s soundtrack. The optional subtitles are very sloppy, with typos and misspellings.

How’s the replay value?

It’s going to take a serious investment, not just of time but of patience, to complete this game on the normal difficulty to grab that handful of trophies. There is online multiplayer, and the campaign can be played with up to three people taking on the roles of the three robots in your squad. There are other modes as well, such as deathmatch and team deathmatch. This will also be necessary to fill out your trophy collection.

Unfortunately, the multiplayer menus are very clumsily designed. Paul and I spent several minutes trying to figure out how to start a match with our custom built transformers. The system is simply not intuitive.

Your ability to keep playing the game will come down to how zen you can be while dying over and over in the campaign.

Is it worth it?

I really enjoyed the game once I pushed the difficulty level down. It was completely unmanageable, taking me hours of effort to get past the first mission and I was barely able to drag myself through the second. The third was when I finally gave in. I was able to restart the mission at the beginning at the lower difficulty level instead of having to start the campaign or chapter over, which was a huge relief. I’ve never been much of a trophy hunter anyway, just preferring to get them by accident in most cases.

Transformers: War for Cybertron is a well written and excitingly executed game with a punishing default difficulty level. There is so much here for fans of the lore to appreciate, and for these, it should not be missed. This is the only game I’ve ever played that let me feel like a Transformer, changing form whenever I want, shooting and punching enemies however I see fit, interacting with some of my favorite childhood characters. Great, great stuff with a handful of nuisances sprinkled across, such as the inability to transfer your game saves.

Despite the issues, the game as an overall experience is really a lot of fun. I’ll give it a four out of five.