Retro Review: Transformers: War for Cybertron & Fall of Cybertron Games

For a time I often wondered if we would ever get a Transformers game that would live up to the feeling of playing as your favorite bot on a console screen. Something that would capture the essence of what it would feel like to fight as a robot and immediately change to vehicle mode. I’m glad to report that High Moon Studios achieved that with their games Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron.

Not to be confused with the Netflix series with the same names. 

For both games, the campaign takes you through the perspective of both Autobots and Decepticons, letting you see the story unfold as you play through. For example, War for Cybertron’s campaign starts with Megatron seeking the power of Dark Energon to turn the tide of the civil war in his favor. The Autobot campaign lets you experience the aftermath and consequences of Megatron’s actions as the Autobots fight back and follow the ascendency of Orion Pax to Primehood. The campaigns also serve as tutorials for how each Autobot class plays, with levels tailored to flyers, speedsters, and heavy hitters. Some players have said this structure keeps you on a story track with limited versatility, which is understandable.

With more time and planning, the possibilities for an open-world Transformers game would be mouth-watering.

Of the two campaigns, Fall of Cybertron was the better one for me. The civil war is reaching its climax, with Cybertron’s resources ever dwindling, and both sides begin making heavy decisions and drastic changes. The introduction of the Dinobots for the Autobots is a highlight, as is my favorite element: the combiners in the form of the Combaticons and their ability to merge into Bruticus. Should it have been the Constructicons first? Perhaps, but the vicious nature of the Combaticons fits the darker and grittier tone, I think.

Playing as the big bruisers on both sides was pretty fun, especially rampaging as Bruticus. The story did culminate with each faction moving towards their starting points on earth. Apparently it’s supposed to be the prequel to the wonderful show Transformers Prime, but having partaken and enjoying both game and show, it’s a weak connection. 

The graphics have aged slightly, but they still hold up okay. But for the time they were pretty good. The character models had some wonderful animations, and moving parts making the robotic heroes feel alive, despite their metallic angles. The modding community has done what it could with adding updated textures. The gameplay is at least solid, and plays pretty well as a third person shooter. That being said, this game had one of my favorite versions of Trypticon. 

The combat had weight—heavy, mechanical, satisfying. As I said before, switching from bot to vehicle mid-battle feels so natural, especially when you’re playing a Scientist class like Starscream. Nothing beats the feeling of dumping your ordinance at a target, transforming and landing behind them to finish with your blasters and then take off again before the rest of the team wises up. However, that agility and speed has a trade off as they’re the most fragile class of the game. Yes, the Scientist class was like a support/healer, but man it felt good to dish out the pain.

Then you’ve got the leader class, like Optimus, and for the Decepticons, Soundwave (why not Megatron? I have no idea), who could support their team with buffs and barriers and debilitate enemies by jamming their alt modes. They were called Destroyers in Fall of Cybertron (FoC).

For the Soldier class, you’ve got the heavy hitters like Megatron and Warpath for the Autobots whose sole aim was to dish out heavy damage, kind of like the Heavy of Team Fortress. They were changed to Titans in FoC.

Finally, you have the Scouts like Bumblebee and Barricade who rely purely on speed, agility, and stealth. They strike fast and hard, also a glass cannon. They’re aptly called Infiltrators in FoC.

Online play, while not revolutionary, successfully turns the chaos into organized robo-chaos. You had your standard variations of kill based deathmatch, king of the hill, and territory capture modes. I spent many a fun evening in multiplayer, grinding out the cosmetics as that was how you could unlock the various skins for the player classes like Slipstream, Shockwave, Jazz, and Ultra Magnus, to name a few.  In FoC the skins were a bit more customizable, but I did prefer being able to look like my favorite bot.   As much as I had fun with it, my only gripe was you could only have up to 10 players at a time, 5 v 5. 

The voice cast nailed it—Peter Cullen’s return as Prime still made you want to follow him heroically into battle.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Fred Tatasciore, but I wish they did get Frank Welker to reprise Megatron. Mr. Tatasciore still did a tremendous job though, and his take on Megatron is definitely in my top 4 and motivated you during the campaign of Decepticon mayhem. 

Yes, there was a third game called Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark, but it was, uh, how should I put it? Rough. Story wise it takes place between these two games, and tries to bridge the Transformers Age of Extinction movie with the Cybertron games, but with such tactless and ham-fisted execution that it just screams “cash grab.” I will say it was cool to play as Bruticus again, but even that got repetitive and boring with poor level design. Ugh, it was just as bad as the cheap Transformers Prime video game.

If Michael Bay’s films gave you motion sickness and plot sickness, this game is the antidote: cinematic without being idiotic. These games were love letters to the franchise that came before, and they took elements that worked from the Bayverse, but leaned more towards the originals. For me, they came closest to what a Transformers movie made in modern times should have been. Despite my love of Transformers One, the team at High Moon Studios had a great thing here and it’s a shame that Hasbro let this fall to the wayside. With their desire to move more into the videogame space I would urge Hasbro once more to revive this great series with more modern elements and I have no doubt it would print money.

Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron were released on June 2010 and August 2012 respectively for Windows, Xbox One, and PS4. As a consolation, there are some YouTube channels that graciously uploaded the cutscenes for your viewing pleasure. Unfortunately, as of the writing of this article, both games no longer available as Activision lost its license with Hasbro, but if you can find a physical copies and have the system to play them, I do recommend you do.

Physical media is king. 

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