Transformers: War for Cyberton is a first-person shooter, more along the high tech vein like Halo. You play as both opposing sides in the War for Cybertron throughout the campaign, and a variety of characters.
Gameplay: 6.0
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
This game is basically just a standard shooter with a Transformer's theme. The gameplay really isn't anything very special or innovative. It has typical game modes, such as campaign, multiplayer and a survival mode.
The campaign is divided between the Decepticon campaign and the Autobot campaign. You play both, rather than one or the other.
Before each level you can choose to be one of 3 characters among your squad. Each of them sort of have a varying role, but typically it'll boil down to using the weapons you find around the map, and every character handles each weapon pretty much the same way, so it doesn't really make much of a difference which character you select.
The unique thing about this game compared to most/all shooters is that you can transform into a vehicle of some sort and get added mobility, and sometimes added firepower.
While the game is pretty typical, it's at least a nice change of pace from all of the military or low-tech shooters running around nowadays.
Presentation: 5.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
The game itself looks okay. It's not terrible, but I wouldn't call it a very pretty game. Everything is mechanical/industrial, and it can often look dirty and stale.
Their animations are sub-par. They look as if they modeled the robots out of action figures, and the animations for them are pretty similar. However, the transformation animations are really good, and actually the high point of the game's presentation.
It's also a little annoying how a lot of their in-game items/mechanics are hard to identify, visually. I had a really hard time finding and recognizing ammo throughout the game. The guns you can pick up and/or see the title of when you're standing next to them don't really fit their visual style, nor really say much about it's effectiveness, so you have to pick it up and experiment. Even their health packs are just floating cubes.. you have to stumble upon it and note your health rising (even though sometimes it doesn't) in order to figure out what it does. I honestly didn't even know it was an item you could pick up for a while.
Besides, if a game can't really identify very clearly if you're landing shots or dealing a lot of damage to your enemies, then it's hard to really engage yourself in it very far. Other games will show blood spatters, shields flickering, etc, but this game doesn't really have anything other than your reticule flashing when you hit somebody. You have to sort of keep firing until they're dead and then determine how many shots you think you hit in order to kill them.
Theatrics: 3.0
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
For all I know, this game's story was borrowed from an episode of the Transformers cartoon series. It makes very little sense, the characters don't do much other than jab back and forth at each other, and I honestly don't really know what the point of the story is at all. Along with several made up words that are overly typical, I just can't get excited about this game's story whatsoever. Maybe a Transformers fan would appreciate it a little more, but I'm not a Transformers fan so the story, characters and setting all seem like they were just thrown together.
Controls: 8.5
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
For the most part, the controls are actually very good. There are tutorials for learning the controls within the game but I figured them out very easily by just exploring around the controller and seeing what each button does.
The only complaints I have are with the flying controls, as they can often feel like you're towing a sack of elephants behind you, as well as the sensitivity on the controller. I set the sensitivity to max, and I still have trouble turning around or aiming quickly enough. It's even worse while zoomed. The two issues are kind of the same thing. It almost seems like this game was built for beginners or casual fans, so more advanced users are going to want more out of it's capability to aim, fire and react more quickly than the rest of the gaming population.
Replay Value: 3.0
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
I got bored with this game pretty quickly. At first it seemed cool, but it wasn't one of those games where I wanted to play it over basically any other game I own. I played just a bit of multiplayer and the survival mode. Both are stock and hard to get into. The multiplayer in particular felt like nothing you ever did was effective, and it also didn't feel like your suckage was due to being a new player. It was just hard to tell, even for me. So, I didn't sink a lot of time into it.
Overall, I bet I got about 7 hours of play time out of this game. That amount is quite mediocre nowadays, particularly considering it's a full-featured shooter. It just couldn't hold my attention.
Fun: 6.5
What were the most and least fun parts of the game? Overall, how much fun is the game?
This game isn't bad, but it's just not good enough to say I'd want to play it over most games within it's genre.
At least it had boss battles that were actually pretty fun, and that's something you can't say about a lot of games.
My Overall Rating: 5.9
Complexity Level: Fairly Low. I felt as though it's lack of complexity actually hurt it's score. It feels like this game has already been done about 15 times. It's easy to pick up, but doesn't offer more than "point and shoot at stuff".
Gameplay: 6.0
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
This game is basically just a standard shooter with a Transformer's theme. The gameplay really isn't anything very special or innovative. It has typical game modes, such as campaign, multiplayer and a survival mode.
The campaign is divided between the Decepticon campaign and the Autobot campaign. You play both, rather than one or the other.
Before each level you can choose to be one of 3 characters among your squad. Each of them sort of have a varying role, but typically it'll boil down to using the weapons you find around the map, and every character handles each weapon pretty much the same way, so it doesn't really make much of a difference which character you select.
The unique thing about this game compared to most/all shooters is that you can transform into a vehicle of some sort and get added mobility, and sometimes added firepower.
While the game is pretty typical, it's at least a nice change of pace from all of the military or low-tech shooters running around nowadays.
Presentation: 5.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
The game itself looks okay. It's not terrible, but I wouldn't call it a very pretty game. Everything is mechanical/industrial, and it can often look dirty and stale.
Their animations are sub-par. They look as if they modeled the robots out of action figures, and the animations for them are pretty similar. However, the transformation animations are really good, and actually the high point of the game's presentation.
It's also a little annoying how a lot of their in-game items/mechanics are hard to identify, visually. I had a really hard time finding and recognizing ammo throughout the game. The guns you can pick up and/or see the title of when you're standing next to them don't really fit their visual style, nor really say much about it's effectiveness, so you have to pick it up and experiment. Even their health packs are just floating cubes.. you have to stumble upon it and note your health rising (even though sometimes it doesn't) in order to figure out what it does. I honestly didn't even know it was an item you could pick up for a while.
Besides, if a game can't really identify very clearly if you're landing shots or dealing a lot of damage to your enemies, then it's hard to really engage yourself in it very far. Other games will show blood spatters, shields flickering, etc, but this game doesn't really have anything other than your reticule flashing when you hit somebody. You have to sort of keep firing until they're dead and then determine how many shots you think you hit in order to kill them.
Theatrics: 3.0
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
For all I know, this game's story was borrowed from an episode of the Transformers cartoon series. It makes very little sense, the characters don't do much other than jab back and forth at each other, and I honestly don't really know what the point of the story is at all. Along with several made up words that are overly typical, I just can't get excited about this game's story whatsoever. Maybe a Transformers fan would appreciate it a little more, but I'm not a Transformers fan so the story, characters and setting all seem like they were just thrown together.
Controls: 8.5
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
For the most part, the controls are actually very good. There are tutorials for learning the controls within the game but I figured them out very easily by just exploring around the controller and seeing what each button does.
The only complaints I have are with the flying controls, as they can often feel like you're towing a sack of elephants behind you, as well as the sensitivity on the controller. I set the sensitivity to max, and I still have trouble turning around or aiming quickly enough. It's even worse while zoomed. The two issues are kind of the same thing. It almost seems like this game was built for beginners or casual fans, so more advanced users are going to want more out of it's capability to aim, fire and react more quickly than the rest of the gaming population.
Replay Value: 3.0
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
I got bored with this game pretty quickly. At first it seemed cool, but it wasn't one of those games where I wanted to play it over basically any other game I own. I played just a bit of multiplayer and the survival mode. Both are stock and hard to get into. The multiplayer in particular felt like nothing you ever did was effective, and it also didn't feel like your suckage was due to being a new player. It was just hard to tell, even for me. So, I didn't sink a lot of time into it.
Overall, I bet I got about 7 hours of play time out of this game. That amount is quite mediocre nowadays, particularly considering it's a full-featured shooter. It just couldn't hold my attention.
Fun: 6.5
What were the most and least fun parts of the game? Overall, how much fun is the game?
This game isn't bad, but it's just not good enough to say I'd want to play it over most games within it's genre.
At least it had boss battles that were actually pretty fun, and that's something you can't say about a lot of games.
My Overall Rating: 5.9
Complexity Level: Fairly Low. I felt as though it's lack of complexity actually hurt it's score. It feels like this game has already been done about 15 times. It's easy to pick up, but doesn't offer more than "point and shoot at stuff".
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