Just Don’t Call Them Mechs

I’m one of the few people that enjoyed Michael Bay’s Transformers films. Yeah, they involved human characters, and you had put up with some kowtowing to middle America with stupid jokes and obnoxious characters from time to time.

Clearly, they weren’t perfect. But what the hell do you expect from a movie based on a toy line about warring robots that change into vehicles? Shakespeare? No. You expect lots of robot battles, ridiculous set pieces and—given that it’s Bay—dramatic slow motion shots of heroes going into battle. On those terms, they were fine.

At any rate, in the field of interactive entertainment, Transformers hasn’t ever really had much success, even measured in terms of Bay’s re-interpretation. There was a decent PS2 title based on the comics, but that was a long time ago, and I’m not even going to get into the movie tie-in games, because they sucked.

So when I heard about War for Cybertron, I was understandably skeptical. Licensed fare is tricky with video games, because you have to both make a good game that has the wherewithal to compete with the mechanics of competing original IPs, and you have to not piss off the legions of fans that are expecting a faithful, authentic and fun experience about their favorite series.

When working with a long-cherished franchise, the pressure that comes from dealing with this level of “fanboyism” might make some us just opt for a blindfold and cigarette, given that the fans themselves sure as hell wouldn’t allow such a luxury. But that’s not what High Moon Studios did.

It helps, of course, that the team members are all childhood fans of the series (and, incidentally, really nice guys). And given that they all knew and loved the characters, world and mythos already, they decided to craft the sappiest love letter ever written for a series about giant machines with sentient intelligence (and huge guns).

And boy, does it work. Rather than, say, throwing you down in the middle of Earth, or in some other universe, or whatever, High Moon decided to craft the Transformers‘ origin story, based around already existing series history (yes, that means the ‘bots more or less retain their classic ’80s-ish aesthetic).

The game tells about the war for the T-formers home world, Cybertron, from both the Autobot and Decepticon sides, which is great fun for fans. Even if you’re just casually acquainted with the series, you’ll still have a blast because set pieces are the name of the game—to wit, War for Cybertron opens big and only gets bigger.

Basically, High Moon took the mechanics of Gears of War and applied them to their own game, and the resulting third-person shooter adapts very well to the big noisy ‘bots and the often bombastic battle-style they engage in.

Everything about this game is big: the Transformers themselves are huge (though you’d never know it, since Cybertron itself is such a vast warzone) and the bosses and firefights are even bigger, louder and full of explosions. It engages with subtlety about as well (and as often) as Bay’s films, which for once feels appropriate for a video game.

Somehow, as you’re blasting your robotic enemies to bits all around you, the game manages to let you feel like you’re a kid again, conducting your war with some plastic toys and your imagination.

That’s how High Moon’s devotion to the franchise is really evident—the pure fan service of characters, locations, moves and storyline. It’s even got the same ridiculous (but not too ridiculous) Saturday morning cartoon dialogue.

Best of all? Unlike most past Transformers games, there’s no limit on how often you can transform. Hell, you could theoretically play the whole game, or most of it, in vehicular form. A welcome lack of regenerating health or unlimited ammo keeps things challenging, as well, particularly in some of the multiplayer modes.

So in case it isn’t obvious, yeah, the game is damn fun. And if we’re going to be whisked back to our youth to wage war with transforming robots, I’d say that’s a pretty obvious prerequisite.