Welp, finished Transformers: War for Cybertron last week. I must say, I’m impressed. The game was good- not good for a liscense game, or good for Transformers, but genuinely good to the point my biggest gripes with it are just niggling fanboy issues. In particular, I liked the approach to campaign mode where they’re not just both doing the same missions in WHAT IF…? format. The Decepticon missions take place first, with the conquering of the planet, followed by the (longer) Autobot arc attempting to reclaim the planet. The only thing that really stinks is that for as awesome as the climax is, the actual ending falls pretty flat. It’s not a case where they’re clearing baiting for a sequel, it’s more like… “Yep. That sure happened. Now to wander around til we end up on Earth in the 80’s.”

The thing that surprised me most about the whole production is how much of the goofy feel of the 80’s cartoon managed to carry over. You have your episodic substance ex machina, DAAAAARK ENERGON which can seemingly do whatever evil thing is needed (it corrupts doors open and turns robots purple, mainly) and a chapter where your squad pretty much takes the existence of giant space slugs pretty much in stride.

No mermaid fountains though. Maybe in the sequel.