Yes. Yes! YEEESSS!!!

There is little question that 2010′s Transformers: War for Cybertron was both a genuinely good game and the best Transformers game ever made (not exactly the highest hurdle to cross of course, but still true all the same). This is not to say however that it was perfect and probably the biggest flaw the game possessed was a distinct lack of variety. Ranging from the overly same looking visuals level to level to missions that tended to not make enough use of the various characters unique abilities and transformations, War‘s main campaign rarely managed to rise above the level of decent. And while decent is better than many licensed video games have ever managed to achieve, it clearly is not good enough for the developers at High Moon Studios, who were responsible for both War and its upcoming sequel Transformers: Fall of Cybertron.

More than anything, I walked away from my hands-on experience with Fall of Cybertron impressed by the level of variety High Moon has managed to bring to the game. I played through three complete levels, each of which put me in control one of three different bots: fan favorite good guys Grimlock and Bumblebee and the Decepticon helicopter (and member of the Combaticons combiner sub-group) Vortex. Right from the first very few moments of each level, the differences in both the style of play of each character and the in-level designs was apparent. I started with Bumblebee’s level, which ended up feeling the least changed (both in terms of level design and the character himself) from the first game but this made sense seeing as the bots with ground based transformations where already the strongest part of War. I will say that I noticed more of an effort to actually encourage and justify using Bumblebee’s vehicle mode this time around and he also served as a good primer for some of the overall tweaks to combat in Fall. These include the addition of an energy shield to the health system, with the shield regenerating over time while health does not, along with the ability to customize and upgrade each bot’s weapons in a variety of ways. The developers have also been more generous with the placement of recharge stations (which refill both health and ammo) this around, which helps to address one of the bigger design flaws of War that often left players struggling to have enough ammo to complete a level.

I am not normally one given to enjoying playing as bad guys (Paragon all the way baby) but man Vortex was hella fun to control.

While playing as Bumblebee was enjoyable enough, it was my time with Grimlock and Vortex that really showed off the most dramatic new additions to the game this around. Vortex’s level (which sees the Con helping to spearhead an attack on a truly massive bridge, with its own transformative capabilities even, alongside some of his fellow Combaticons and all in an effort to hijack a massive Autobot convoy of (increasingly rare) energon), for example, was built heavily around his flight abilities. Over the course of the level I participated in fast speed chases (Vortex has a boost mode that retracts his blades and dramatically increases speed at the sacrifice of finer control), intense aerial dogfights, and battles with ground forces in both wide open outdoor locales and more cramped and confined indoor settings.

It was these clashes with Autobot forces (which featured everything from standard Autobot troops to multiple large quadruped style mobile artillery platforms to the Omega Supreme-like level boss) in particular that showed off how Fall is making better use of vehicle modes for combat purposes this time around. Instead of feeling like the fairly pointless additions that they were in War, vehicle modes in Fall come across as far more vital by giving players a wider range of options in battle. During Vortex’s level, for example, I employed tactics ranging from bombing runs using powerful, but limited-in-quantity, missiles to relying on Vortex’s chain gun in midair for hit and move tactics to unleashing several of the characters powerful (and exclusive) ground moves in robot form in conjunction with a cover-based style. Additionally, the level itself also stood out far more than was often the case in War and it really did a nice job of bringing Cybertron to life in a way that showed, rather than just tell, why these characters are all fighting tooth and nail for control of the planet. To put it simply, Fall looks gorgeous and even after just three levels, the improvements to visual variety level to level, especially in comparison to War, was impressive.

Grimlock prepares to show this unfortunate Insecticon just why his most beloved catchphrase is ‘Me, Grimlock — BADASS!‘

By the end of my time with Vortex (which came via a Metroid-esque escape sequence that saw Vortex fleeing through the interior of the bridge in helicopter mode even as it was exploding and collapsing around him), I was already convinced that High Moon had a much better handle on changing up gameplay and the feel of combat from level to level and bot to bot. However it was my experience getting to control one of the ultimate all-time Autobot warriors, Grimlock himself, that really showed me just how much more ambitious the developers have become with their design choices in Fall. In regards to those of you who might only know the character from his animated appearances, do not expect the same silly and goofy Grimlock that often showed up in the original cartoon. This is very much the Grimlock of the comics: a hard-bitten fighter whose rage and love of fighting would put even Kratos to shame (the fact that Grimlock also has far more personality in one finger than the Ghost of Sparta does in his entire one-dimensional and boring body does not hurt, but that is an editorial for another day). This is also the Grimlock who disagrees vehemently with Optimus Prime, on both a personal level and in the larger context of leadership of the Autobots. Grimlock and the other Dinobots apparently start out the game not in their classic dinosaur-based forms (even running under the pre-Earth moniker coined for them in the most recent comic book version of Transformers, the Dynobots) but by the time of the level I got to play, things had clearly changed.

Said level opens with Grimlock breaking free of confinement at the hands of Deception second-in-command Shockwave (who in Fall also makes use of comic devised persona of mad scientist supreme along with his long time comic rivalry (dating all the way back to the very first comic series from Marvel Comics) with the Dinobots), who has been performing assorted experiments on the Dinobots since capturing them earlier in the game. The results of these experiments have left Grimlock a character that controls wholly unlike any previously seen in the current series of games. For one thing, Grimlock has no built-in long range weaponry (though at various points in the level I was able to find explosive containers of unstable energon that I could hurl at both ground and air-based foes) and instead relies, in robot form at least, almost exclusively on his over-sized-to-the-point-it-would-make-a-Final-Fanasty-character-weep-with-joy sword for his combat needs. Grimlock also has a front facing shield, of the physical variety as opposed to the standard regenerating energy-shield (though Grimlock has that as well), that he can use to block attacks even while moving. In short, Grimlock is a big and bad bruiser who truly towers over his foes (which mostly consisted of Insecticons in the level I played, characters who in Fall also owe their animal-like alternate modes to the experiments of Shockwave) and almost at times felt like he stepped out of a completely different game altogether.

We’re sorry, your regularly scheduled caption cannot be completed at this time due to the sheer levels of awesome currently present.

While Grimmy did indeed have his classic Tyrannosaurus Rex inspired alternate mode by this point, he was not able to transform at will. Instead, the character made use of a unique rage meter that built with every attack made against enemies (with special, and gruesome, finishing moves such as impaling cons on his sword causing the meter to fill even faster) and that once full gives players the ability shift forms for limited time. Both modes control relativity similarly, which is to say slow and cumbersome in a way that really gets across the sheer size and power of Grimlock perfectly, but as a T-Rex, Grimlock’s strength and endurance grew to almost ridiculous levels, truly turning the taciturn warrior into a one-bot army of destruction.

And yet my time with Grimlock was not all brawn over brains, as at several points I had to solve a number of simple yet engaging environmental puzzles (of the kind one would expect from the kind of third-person melee focused action-adventure game such as God of War that clearly inspired High Moon’s take on Grimlock) in order to proceed. Again, this was an aspect of gameplay that made my time with Grimlock stand out from the pack and it points to how fully High Moon has embraced the idea of each bot having their own play style. Overall, Fall really did do an impressive job of getting across the sense of both rage and power driving Grimlock by this point in the game; with the glimpses of other story developments I got throughout the level (which unless I miss my guess was set on a prehistoric Earth) being equally intriguing. It also made me even more excited for High Moon’s much hyped opportunities to control the massive combiners that have long been a hallmark of the Transformers franchise or the literally city-sized Autobot Metroplex who has been among the chief components of Fall’s advertising campaign.

With a greater focus on story this time around (both Bumblebee and Vortex’s levels, for example, featured various hidden audio logs and Teletran-1 data files to find for even more backstory), the promise of a stronger overall single player campaign (which, unlike War, will be dived into three acts that have players in control of the Autobots in act one, then changing over to the Decepticons in act two, before returning to the Autobots in the final and third act) with greater attention to visual and gameplay variety, and a refined class-based online multiplayer mode that High Moon is promising will give players more customization options, both visually (according to developers there will be hundreds of pieces and thousands of paint jobs to select from) and gameplay wise, Fall of Cybertron certainly seems well set to be the Transformers game we have all dreamed of. If I was only mildly interested in the game before E3 (I liked, not loved, War while High Moon’s following game, the movie inspired Transformers: Dark of the Moon, left me completely cold), then my hands-on time with Fall left me genuinely pumped and excited to get play the full game once it hits later this summer. Transformers: Fall of Cybertron is set for release August 28 on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. Stay tuned to Blistered Thumbs for continuing coverage of the game and be sure to share your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron Review

By Austin Yorski

ME GRIMLOCK. ME REVIEW.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron Review - ZGR

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