First Look: Transformers: War for Cybertron

I’ll admit, when this assignment was passed across my desk I screamed and almost attacked my editor. But then I remembered that I don’t have a desk or an editor, and the only thing I was screaming at was the shade-demon in my mind that constantly torments my every waking moment. My laptop shat the bed and died last week, so I couldn’t submit anything to this fine website then. And between the funeral for my Dell and a very bad fallout with my girlfriend, this week was just awful. But there’s no time to talk about that now, because holy crap, Transformers WFC is amazing. Only the online multi was available to demo, and that may be all anyone needs. Good lord, this game holds the key to our salvation, and it is our job to take hold and unlock it.

If you’ve ever played Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and/or Team Fortress 2 you’ll feel right at home here, if your home is an unfamiliar and horrifying place filled with gunmetal gray walls and giant Transforming Transformers. If it is, let’s hang out sometime. Back to the game: T:WFC uses a class system with 4 classes, 2 of which were available to use: Scout and Soldier.

I won’t detail the other two because I couldn’t use them, and in this instance lying to you might leave a bad taste in my mouth.

The Scout is a speedy little bot that employs agility to be quick. What I’m trying to convey here is that the Scouts are fast. They are supposed to be used for hit-and-run attacks, but I found running up to things and shooting them till they died worked way better. Just like how my healers in MMOS can all tank mobs by themselves. The Scout has abilities like Dash (a dash) and Cloaking (a turn-invisible). He also gets certain skills, like one that allows him to do higher melee damage on an enemy if he hits them from behind. So he’s like a rogue, only he has a shotgun and turns into a car. So that’s different.

The other playable class is the Soldier, for those of you who enjoy a lack of control in your games. Seriously, the Soldier is the most out-of-control class I’ve ever seen. He has a rocket launcher with rockets that disappear (although maybe that was lag?) and two skills: a melee skill that makes him spin in a circle forever with an axe, and a movement skill that gives you the power to float around in the air like a big Transforming target. Oh, and he turns into a tank, whereas Scout turns into like a Zipcar or some stupid thing.

The only real problem I encountered in the demo was lag, which crippled almost every match I was in to the point of unplayability. So hopefully that’ll get fixed soon.

In conclusion, go buy this game when it hits shelves (the 22nd of June I think) and bask in the Transformy glow of awesomeness.

-Benji