When you buy an FPS, or a shooter in general, and this goes for me
especially, you expect one thing out of everything else. Fast paced
action. That is exactly what you do NOT get with "War for Cybertron".
This game suffers from a myriad of design flaws, not to mention the very
poor design choices they used. Even old PSX platformers and shooters
had more ammo drops than this game cares to throw at you. In fact, in
this game, something often occurs that I have not seen for quite a
while, the fact you can get stuck because you run out of ammo, and you
can't kill enemies up on higher places than you.
With no chance of playing this game on single player, anybody expecting a
no-online experience will be unable to play this due to how badly the
game was developed. Even the multiplayer suffers from bad net code and
poor calibration, as I was unable to join a friend of mine at all, and
he could never join me, thus effectively ruining all hopes of a
teamwork-oriented coop with my friend.
Let's get straight to the problems this game suffers from, problems that
kill it in it's entirety, and destroy all value it could possibly have.
Transformers was something kids watched in 1985, but around 1986, it
quickly lost it's flair and was beat out by much better shows that were
out at the time like "Mobile Suit Gundam", and "Voltron".
With that out of the way, allow me to discuss the gameplay.
It's another third person shooter, but upon first playing, I realized it
was going to be "That" type of FPS. One where your health bar is
meaningless, enemies deal out more punishment than you can, the enemies
always know where you are, there is no cover, and you barely have any
damage to deal against the enemies. Even if you did, the ammunition for
your weapons is extremely limited, and your AI partners can NOT do ANY
damage, and rarely, if ever, do enemies target them.
There are many hard to find crates in the levels. Thankfully, ammo
pickups restore all of your weapons to full, even your vehicle. However,
that brings it to another problem.
There are often too many enemies, and if you are playing alone, you have
no chance of victory. Perhaps not even on Easy difficulty, but I have
no patience to go through another of this game's monotonous stages
again.
When I finally went out and rented this game (I can't imagine anyone not
getting angry if they spent money on this), I wanted to jump straight
into coop with a friend who had the game already.
Needless to say, we couldn't.
After searching the internet with Google, I found nothing. No matter
what we tried, we could never get a game started, and I was stuck with
working with random people online. My friend and I have played games
such as Resident Evil 5, Lost Planet 2, and other small games together.
There is no problem with console online, only the game's online is
poorly made.
So while I was waiting, I thought I'd get my first taste of the game and
started a single-player on Medium difficulty, on the first episode in
the game.
I was disappointed.
All you get from the start is an Assault Rifle that doesn't do, if any,
much damage. Not only that, ammo runs out extremely quick, and even on
other shooters similar to this like Resistance: Fall of Man, I was
shocked an appalled to see how fast my ammo counter dropped in this
game.
Only on the first four enemies, and I had already lost half of my full
ammo count, I was just stunned by how much it took just to destroy four
wall-mounted turrets. When I moved on, I found a grenade launcher, but
even that weapon was less-than stellar. Before that weapon, though, you
have your first encounter with enemy robots, and it was just ridiculous.
Your AI partners don't do jack. You can't refill your ammo because there
are barely any crates, and no teammate can provide ammo. Even if your
AI partner had a healing gun, they would never use it on you. Plus, they
can't even revive you if you die like in Coop.
The only kind of "Loadout" you get is by picking your character. The
only things that change are vehicle and special ability at the most,
really. There is no diversity except for the Scientist and Leader,
because they can only pick up one other gun, as they have on already
attached to them they can never get rid of.
The room was pure hell, because only I was being targeted. Then I
discovered the magic of vehicle form, and tried sticking to using only
that. However, I realized that even ammo in your vehicle form was
extremely limited, and I ended up wasting it all right there, but that
should have been OK, a beginner's mistake, happens all the time right?
Actually, no. Unless you know what's going to happen, and know how to
deal with it, this game will keep cheating and beating you unfairly. In
fact, it probably can't even be considered that due to the shocking
number of missteps they took when they designed combat.
It's annoying to have to deal with unbalanced enemies on even the normal
difficulty, but I tried pushing forward past this room, and came the
room where I found something that killed this game, and made me realize
how much it's made for online only.
I ran out of ammo for both of my guns in the room, and there was one
enemy on a high place, impossible to reach with melee (Which is risky
even if you sneak up on people, they just know where you are),
and...nothing.
My AI partners do no damage. I have no ammo, no grenades. Even if I had
grenades, they're completely useless, all of them. So, it was
impossible. There was no way to kill him, and he just kept raining
destruction on me and my immortal partners. This should NEVER happen in a
shooter. EVER. Or ANY game for that matter.
I couldn't believe it. I played the game as what I assumed was proper up
to that point, but as one person, it was completely impossible to win,
even on the very first areas in the very first level. I would have taken
the game and destroyed it right there, but I realized I had rented it
and could do no such thing, unfortunately.
When I finally got a coop game, I then realized more numerous mistakes the developers had made in this game.
When a person dies in coop, it sends everyone back to the last
checkpoint. The host cannot kick anybody, so it's easily griefable and
ruin-able.
After finally getting someone else on my team, I finally continued, I
was finally getting somewhere. Except, that wasn't necessarily a good
thing. The further I made it into this train wreck disaster, the more I
just wanted to quit. It was putting me to sleep with how boring it was.
I have never gotten sleepy at the controls at a game for a very long
time, and I'm surprised it's come back to me. It just shows how bad this
product is.
Remember what I said about reviving in coop? Well, they even managed to
screw that up. Sure, you can, but it never gives you a warning indicator
of any kind when a partner goes down. Not only that, they aren't
untouchable while they go down, so an enemy can still blow them up and
end the game right there again.
All revives are accidental. You have to look in the direction of someone
who's gone down, you'll see an insignia over them. That insignia really
doesn't specify anything, it's just covering them. So when you approach
them, then you will see what it actually means, to revive. There is no
other way to know this, unless the person down has a mic to yell for
help.
Every area is designed poorly. It's almost sad. The excessive use of
bloom and shininess in this game makes it even harder to figure out what
you're supposed to jump on to move on. Someone, sometimes me, was
always getting left behind because they couldn't figure out what to jump
on.
The level design is, if I wanted to rate it on a C through S system,
would be a D. On a scale of 1-10, it would be 1. It is that bad.
Not only does it give you no indication of where to go, secret boxes are
also put in bad places akin to what "Star Wars: Jedi Outcast" did. Even
if you knew where to go, getting there is impossible, and really, there
is no cover system, you can't fight effectively in this game at all.
It's like rock-em sock-em robots. Seriously. You basically trade shots
and damage with the enemy, the only thing that keeps the AI from totally
flooring you is that they aren't human and don't fire all the time.
Sometimes they just stand there and do nothing (Lost Planet 2)
With a completely useless health bar, it only takes a few shots to die.
Sometimes you'll just take damage and you won't even know what it's
from. Simple puzzles that should be made easy are made completely
redundant and overtly hard because of how fast you die. There are also
bouts of platforming in this game...
Platforming and any type of jumping puzzle should be ILLEGAL in a shooter.
Though, honestly, it's very easy to do the jumping in this game, the
fact they send flying enemies that can endlessly carpet bomb you makes
it almost impossible. They will constantly drop tons of bombs and then
start pelting you from very far away with tiny machine guns that slowly
eat your health away.
In the very first level, this was new to me, I found an extremely bad
place that should be used as an example of why the developers of this
game are impotent.
There was a jumping area just after another room that was nearly
impossible to climb out of, and a rocket launcher that could lock on to
vehicles. Ok. So then the jet enemies start coming out and I try using
the new weapon on them.
Aaaaaand, no. It failed hard, and the team died about 30 times before I
said screw it and just ran all the way through. The rockets were
useless, and the enemies just respawned anyway. And they kept carpet
bombing over. and over. and OVER again. I was on the edge of throwing my
controller, but I wasn't going to give this game that pleasure, it had
already violated my PS3 with it being in the disc drive.
Keep in mind, this is all on Normal difficulty.
There isn't much else to say about it. I quit after Episode Two, as this
game was quickly growing like a tumor on me, so while it was benign I
stopped it.
And here's another thing you should never have to do in a shooter is
rely on scoped weapons to win. As a good sniper in games, I usually aim
for these, but I like to use machine guns and shotguns just like anybody
else. Only problem is, you can't do that. The shotgun which is supposed
to stun enemies doesn't do that, and barely does any damage to boot,
even at close range. Wow.
So imagine my surprise when I FINALLY got that sniper rifle in Episode
Two. All I did was hang back, like I did near the end of Resistance, and
just shoot things in the head. It was the only way I could win without
being completely floored due to the cheating AI. Even then it was only a
50-50 chance of getting through unscathed. Let's not forget the rarity
of ammo.
After that, lots of scoped weapons appeared, making the game slightly
easier. Too bad, like always, ammo is ridiculously hard to keep and
obtain. The game literally forces you to stay BACK from the action and
not go charging in and having fun. You have to exploit the AI and cheat
just to get past what should be cannon fodder enemies. From a game where
you'd expect tons of explosions, you're shafted on that, there are
barely any. Grenades have no kick to them, and rocket launchers, it's
like watching neighborhood teenagers set off firecrackers.
In other words, it's unfulfilling.
But like I said, you should NEVER have to rely on one gun just to
survive, that isn't fair, it certainly isn't fun, and it shows only how
little the developers know on making shooters.
Oh, and making head shots in this game is like a man trying to stick his
phallus into a cheerio. Apparently giant robots have humongous bodies,
but pea-sized heads. That's...right...whatever.
Let's wrap this up with a quick rundown on the graphics and the sound, and the story.
The graphics in this game are mostly pre-render, at least when you're
looking at backdrops and such. It's all very plain, very boring, only a
slight step up from Gears of War. Model designs are simply awful, and
the game is unusually dark or unusually light almost all the time. At
some point, you actually enter a sepia-toned area, which just makes me
scratch my head. There is an excessive use of bloom and a lot of haze
and fog to hide low-res textures. There is nothing really special or
out-standing about these graphics.
The sound effects are mostly poor and drowned out by the fact there is
more going on than it seems. The only sound the kept original and kept
for the sake of the show was the effect when you actually transformed
into a vehicle, but nothing else is really out there.
Not to mention the music is as silent as most games released.
There is one other thing you should never come to expect in shooters.
Story. For Transformers, the focus of this game ended up being placed
solely on that, and I just didn't care about it, and have no idea why
anyone else would either. All you get is poorly-acted diatribes and a
performance worthy of a thousand facepalms. Megatron is constantly
berating others with his superiority complex the entire time while you
play, distracting you from the action and I don't even want to see what
kind of teddy-bear complex Optimus Prime probably has.
In last writing, this game has very poor value, and it is very broken.
Not only is there a contrived reliance on multi-player to even continue
in the first, easiest level, the multi player isn't even correctly made.
They couldn't even keep that working, which is sad.
Even if they had made this game with some semblance of decency, it still
is nothing more than a Gears of War ripoff. The way you move around,
it's all very similar to that game, but it is without a doubt that this
game is far more boring than Gears is. At least in Gears you have a
chainsaw and better violence levels. In Transformers, you get nothing
but a kick to the groin and a handful of sand thrown into your eyes.
