Platform: PlayStation 3 (also on Xbox 360, PC)

Developer: High Moon Studios

Publisher: Activision

# of Players: 1 (Online 2 – 12)

ESRB Rating; T (Teen)

Official Site

Score: B+ (85%)

High Moon Studios swings hard for the fences with Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, and while not quite a clean home run (it’s more of a hard rocket shot that clangs off the correct side of the foul pole into the stands), the game manages to be a fantastic follow up to Transformers: War on Cybertron, despite the loss of co-op play and the twin campaign structure.  Previous experience with the last game isn’t really necessary for any player to hop in and have a blast, but A true Transformers fan will tell you that you’ll need to know where the story began before tackling what’s here. It’s definitely going to help in terms of understanding what’s going on in all the chaos, as the game assumes you’re playing it because you’ve been around for the first installment. FoC is also packed with fan service in the form of in-jokes, references to the cartoons and the animated movie and more hidden goodies than you can shake a Minicron at.

(Although, shaking a Minicron would probably not be a good thing to do unless you were really mad at it for knocking over a vase onto that napping cat by “accident” or something…)

You’re thrown right into the action as Bumblebee with a brief tutorial prologue that gets you up to speed with the basic controls while delivering a bit of exposition (and a lot of explosions). On the PS3, you may experience a crash early on and later, one around the midpoint or so, but thankfully, they’re going to most likely be (based on the three times I went through the game) right after checkpoints.  Don’t run screaming back to that clueless clerk at your favorite game shop, though. Just eject the disc, pop it back in and hit “Continue” when the title screen pops up. Once you’re back in action and done with the learning stage of things, prepare to hop into levels as a nice variety of familiar Transformers starting with the mighty Optimus Prime. His parts of the game are a fun chunk of run ‘n gunning, minor puzzles, turret sections and battle-heavy scenarios that for the most part, feel great to play.

The nice variety of playable Autobots and Decepticons all shake up the gameplay considerably and keep things fresh and interesting throughout. While linear in design (save for some of the path goodies worth tracking down), maps are solid and challenging because with some characters,  you’re forced to play silent but deadly and with a lot more precision than you would as Optimus and his louder metal-bashing ways. There are also some fun vehicle sections that keep the thrills coming from a different perspective.  As you blast and smash through the campaign (which should take about 6-8 hours or so depending on your skill level), you’ll find Energon shards that can be used to purchase weapon upgrades and enhance the stats for all the playable robots in the game. Combined with the dynamic, compelling cut scenes that drive home the story of the doomed metal planet, this makes the campaign highly replayable (and trickier with each bump in difficulty).

What works throughout is the scope of and variety in the levels that reveal the overall impact of a metal world going to molten hell as it’s in the stages of being decimated by a truly powerful enemy force. There’s always something burning, exploding or collapsing in the backgrounds and the Unreal engine is getting a workout here that sometimes leads to some technical hiccups (and visuals in the PS3 version that aren’t quite as good as they are on the 360 or PC), but FoC never fails to impress in the level of detail and amount of enemies displayed on screen. Granted, some of the better encounters in the game are those where you’re up against smaller numbers of larger enemies or you get brief opportunities to play as a larger character (what, me Grimlock?). Music and sounds are suitably as good as it gets and of course, all the voice cast is spot on (even after all this time, it’s good to hear some voices still holding out).

Save for the inability for any sort of offline or split-screen versus play, the multiplayer modes here are superb for a few reasons, the main one being the ability to create your own Transformer and use it in any of the online modes. It’s too bad you can’t use your custom ‘bot in the main game, but High Moon is keeping their narrative as they wish it (thankfully). That said, I hope that the next game they’re doing allows for user-created Transformers to exist in the campaign, as that personal touch would make more than a few fans really happy.  I’m not a huge multiplayer fan, but hoofing it over to a friends for some fun on his PS3 made for a few hours well spent. There was a bit of lag happening, but I’m gathering the game will get a patch that fixes certain pesky bits of rogue code that are keeping the game from being prime and optimized (har har).

If there’s a TINY sore spot here for me, it’s that the game doesn’t feature as much transform-ability as what’s found in to date the best Transformers game for my money (well, the best one released in the US, at least), Melbourne House’s still spectacular 2004 PS2 game simply titled Trasformers. Granted, that game was solely single player, had a mere three playable characters and was based on another version of the series entirely. But in going back to it again after playing FoC, I still found some of the stages in that “old” game more of a blast to go through. Of course, I’m not discounting the work done here one bit, folks. I’m just noting that High Moon can jump a bit higher over the bar in the next Transformers game they make.

In the end, for me its the story and setting that counts and Fall of Cybertron delivers the goods as one of the best uses of the license to date. With powerful cinematic storytelling, mighty visuals (OK, almost mighty on the PS3) and gameplay pacing that keeps the levels flowing and the twists coming until the finale, no true fan should pass this one up. At the end of the day, High Moon isn’t reinventing any wheels here, but they’re packing all sorts of heat in terms of what action gamers expect. Of course, if you can’t get over the idea that you’re playing a game where machines “die” and a war is required to destroy them (when maybe pouring a continent-sized bucket of water down the planet’s core and watching the resulting fireworks would be faster), you’ll be wondering what all the fuss is about. Again, High Moon is clearly well versed in the world of Transformers, knows what they’re doing and for the most part, has succeeded greatly.