Transformers: War for Cybertron (PC)

Release Date: 06/22/2010
Developer: High Moon Studios
Publisher: Activision, Steam
Genre: 3rd-Person Shooter

This is actually a good game.
Wait, come back! I'm being serious!

Some background: a group of people (High Moon Studios) who actually are fans of the Transformers IP got a chance to make a Transformers game, and Hasbro even agreed to consider the game "canon" for the timeline involving the recently released movies. That's a pretty big vote of confidence for a brand that's ripe for milking from the likes of the publisher, Activision, who has driven quite a few brands into the ground as of late (See: Rock Band).

Now, I'm not the type of dude to mince words, so I'll boil it down like this:

The Good

• The graphics are great. I played on PC with no slowdown using a system I put together over two years ago. The game is capped at 30 FPS on PC, which will upset PC-gaming purists, but people who don't typically notice or care...won't.
• Co-op campaign for up to three people. Not available via split-screen, but it's in there! Oh, and difficulty scales with more human players, in addition to the difficulty you set at game start, so "Normal" with solo play is easier than "Normal" with two buddies.
• Class-based multiplayer with multiple game modes. This is what will give the game life after the single-player campaign's death: a Call of Duty style multiplayer game with abilities and templates to unlock, and a leveling system for each class.
• All multiplayer modes support live hop-in and hop-out, so if your power surges (like ours did the first night) you can rejoin a friend playing a game in progress. Just click their name and click join. Done!

The Bad

• The PC version doesn't let you change control schemes - you're left with finding third-party programs to rebind keys or gamepad controls. The default keyboard layout will probably be hell for lefties.
• Poor video options for the PC version; your choices are limited to texture quality, vsync, and resolution. No anti-aliasing, no effect customization, nada. It runs well though, so this might not be as important as it feels.
• Multiplayer has no host migration, so if the person hosting leaves, the game is over and your points gained for that match are gone.

Honestly, the "goods" very much outweigh the "bads" on this one. The game plays and handles well, the voice-overs are great, and I'm liking the story so far. For PC the game is only $40 too, so the price is right. If you're some kind of hardcore Transformers fan, you shouldn't even be reading this. You should be playing the game.

I'll close with some video of us playing multiplayer: our first match. The video ends where our power died, cutting our umbilical to the internets.

And a bonus video: all the class transformations for the multiplayer portion.