Autobots, Roll Out!
| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PC | 8.00 |
| Overall | 8.00 |
|
As someone who grew up watching Transformers as a kid, its a real pleasure to be able to actually PLAY as all my favorite characters all these years later in a high quality 3rd-person Shooter. I know there's been quite a few games based on the franchise over the last few years, but apparently none of them are even close to War For Cybertron's quality. This game obviously had a great deal of love poured into it, and Activision obviously gave High Moon Studios enough time to create a great game. And they did just that. The game that this is most easily comparable to (& was such a joy to find this being the case) was another 3rd-person Shooter based on Robots from back in 2003; a little sleeper hit known as Metal Arms: Glitch In The System from Swingin' Ape Studios. That studio ended up getting swallowed by Blizzard to make Starcraft Ghost and were then subsequently never heard of again, but it almost feels like they live on through this game, as the gameplay mechanics are very similar. The game is split into two Campaigns; the Decepticon campaign & the Autobot campaign, both of which are accessible from the get go and both of which offer some great moments. Each chapter, or level, is pretty long and takes a good amount of time to go through. At 10 levels in all, the game takes around 10 to 15 hours to complete, and also has co-op and multi-player modes, as well as its own version of Gears' Horde Mode, called Escalation. This all adds up to a good amount of content. Gameplay is split between on-foot & aerial combat, both of which play fantastically. In fact, the missions where you can go from ground based combat to aerial on the fly are probably my favorite missions in the game, especially when you can take on a boss fight in this way. Ground combat plays much like the aformentioned Metal Arms, from a 3rd-person, slightly off to the side behind the back perspective. You can zoom in on targets, perform special moves, run, jump, and more. And its all very smooth. Aerial combat gives the game a Star Fox kind of feel, and the way you can make your fighters blast around the environment, or hover completely still , is pretty great. Weaponry in the game ranges from your basic machine gun, to snipers and grenade launcher style weapons. You can pick up new guns as you play through the levels, which comes in handy as some are better than others for certain enemies, especially bosses. Speaking of boss fights, that was one of the game's pleasant surprises...the bosses here sometimes rival Metroid Prime or God Of War in their epicness. There's just nothing like taking on a giant screen filling creature that makes you & your companions look like ants. Graphically, the game is solid, but not anything jaw dropping at this point. It looks like your typical Unreal Engine game from 3 years ago, just with cooler characters and environments. Sound is also solid, and the quality voice work brings these decades old characters to life. Anyone who loves Transformers, loved Metal Arms, loves 3rd-person action games, or anything in between should really look into this game. There's a lot to like here, and you could do much worse in the genre than this gem. |
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Posted by edgecrusher Thu, 05 Jul 2012 12:15:36
Recently Spotted:
robio (5m)
This game is over 10 hours? How does the shooting hold up for so long.