Transformers: War for Cybertron tells the tale of the battle for the shape-shifting robots’ home planet via an Unreal 3-engined Third Person Shooter before they ever made their journey to Earth. The single-player mode is split into two separate campaigns. The first instalment (both chronologically and by default, although they can be played in either order) sees you controlling the evil power-hungry Megatron and his Decepticon hordes on a quest to harness an incredibly powerful and dangerous source of energy known as “Dark Energon” in order to destroy the Autobots’ home and take control of the entire planet. The other campaign puts you in control of the all-round nice-guy Autobots and follows the rise to prominence and promotion to Prime of their new leader, Optimus. The actual story is cheesy nonsense, although the fact it’s apparently considered canon might be an attraction to real hardcore Transformers fans. In fairness, it makes more sense than Revenge of the Fallen and is in keeping with the ‘80s cartoon…

As the story is set long before their first encounters with humans, none of the Transformers’ vehicle states bear any resemblance to any recognisable make or model. Instead, Starscream and the other flying Transformers turn into generic futuristic jets; Bumblebee is a futuristic yellow car, closer to his original VW Beetle self than his movie Camaro; Megatron is a generic tank rather than a ludicrously large Luger; Soundwave is an angry-looking car instead of a tape deck (although he does still eject smaller minions from his chest plate), and Optimus looks like a huge racing lawnmower. All the main characters’ robot forms will be instantly recognisable to even casual fans as most of them look like mildly tweaked versions of the original 1980s G1 toys, but quite why they ever need to transform into a car, surely the worst possible disguise on a planet where everyone is a giant robot, is never explained…

It’s just as well the scriptwriters were on top form for this one, because without the Transformers characters, the actual game would be pretty underwhelming. For starters although you can transform at any time, there are very few times when it actually behoves you to do so. You’re occasionally forced into it to jump a gap or travel from one place to another a bit faster, but more often than not you’ll just run around as a giant robot. The main reason you’ll want to stick as a robot is that there’s an incredible shortage of ammo in the game; all weapons except the jet’s machine guns have limited ammo, with Megatron’s primary robot weapon only carrying 20 shots and his Tank gun only carrying 10. Instead of making ammo drop from defeated enemies, it’s only found at pre-set locations which are stupidly few and far between. In robot form, you can swap one of your two weapons (but not your primary weapon, that’s built-in to your robotic body) for a new one found lying about, using the ammo from that instead, but you can’t swap your vehicle weapons, so when you use your 10 shots as transformed Megatron-tank you’re stuck with an empty breach. This also means that rather than being able to make a tactical choice in your weapon swaps, keeping one long range weapon and one for close-up work for example, you’re frequently forced to swap with whatever you can find if you want to keep shooting. The situation isn’t quite as bad in the Autobot campaign, since all the Autobots carry assault rifles, which carry hundreds rather than a mere handful of rounds at once. Not only does the ammo mechanic make no sense within the Transformers universe (when did you ever see any of them scratch around for a couple more rounds mid-battle?), it really wrecks the gameplay. Your companions are always moaning about their weapons overheating (to explain their unlimited ammo), and that might have been one way around the ammo issue more in keeping with the franchise. So near, and yet so far…

The environments themselves are extremely repetitive; the whole game is set on Cybertron, which is basically one enormous machine, so there are no fields, trees, houses or even caves, just endless purple neon lit corridors. There are occasional breaks in the tedium of purple corridors. The first two missions of the Decepticon campaign and the last two of the Autobots’ actually look great, if a little busy at times. Starscream’s flying sections are actually fun and occasionally spectacular, but soon interrupted by some odd design choices. For example, there’s a section where you zoom down a Death Star-style trench, but just as you’re getting into it and starting to enjoy yourself, you have to stop and deal with some of those annoying snipers. Later, just when you’re really starting to get the hang of flying and enjoying the freedom of movement it offers, you’re shut into a tiny room with an invisible and forced to dodge huge pink rotating laser beams that you can’t see very well because of the fixed camera position. Each time you die and restart here, you’re forced to watch the same lengthy cutscene because the checkpoint occurs directly before rather than after it, a common problem throughout the game. Not only that, but you always restart the checkpoint with the health you had when you got there, with your health bar divided into four parts and not automatically recharging more than the last quarter you lost. If you had trouble getting past a section the first time with only a quarter of your health, you’re not going to find it much easier the next 15 or 20 times. Occasionally one of your sidekicks will heal you, but this seems totally random and more often than not they’ll just run off leaving you standing there like an idiot if you try and hold out for them to do it (in co-op a player can carry a health gun which naturally, has a limited number of uses). Another example of ill-considered design is the way that after defeating the heavy machine gun carrying enemies and taking their hard-won weapons, the level layout often forces you to immediately transform to continue, making you drop the most fun weapon in the game before you even get chance to use it!

At regular points in both campaigns you’ll have to fight a boss battle, and while these do break up the repetitive nature of the campaign, they quickly devolve into some of the most tedious bits of the game. Every boss just covers the whole area with incoming fire which you have to dodge every now and then while continually shooting them through several cycles and multiple stages, all of which are basically the same. The battle with Autobot leader Zeta Prime, who seems to be at least as much of a power-mad megalomaniac as Megatron himself, is perhaps the most disappointing as he never gets personally involved, just sending waves of weak clones at you while trying to stomp you with colossal steam hammers. The battle with Omega Supreme is certainly the most mind-numbingly dull consisting of at least 20 minutes of driving round him in a circle, picking up respawning ammo and health (and therefore never being in any actual danger) while pumping thousands of rounds into his massive metal heart. The final battle of the Autobot campaign is the only one that’s remotely challenging and it is stupendously frustrating and infuriatingly difficult, in line with the rollercoaster ride of difficulty level throughout the game. This level combines everything wrong with the game: it’s multi-stage, so you’re likely to start the second stage checkpoint with almost no ammo or health; it has several attacks that are seemingly undodgeable in an area with no cover, so the only way to survive is to constantly move during his firing phases; if you get caught making a turn or run into one of your AI companions (who are invulnerable and just stand in the open blasting at him, regardless of his weak points), you die in a second, oh, and just to make matters worse, in the few seconds you do get to attack in between his bombardments, you’re assaulted by millions of robotic spiders, so you can’t concentrate on the boss or you get killed by them instead! Honestly, this level might actually be impossible without another human controlling at least one of your companions. With a friend it actually gets entertainingly annoying; it’s so ridiculous it’s almost funny.

Overall, it might be the best Transformers game released so far, which is probably worth a couple more points on the score to hardcore fans, but that’s mainly because the rest have been pretty awful. High Moon has made great use of the licence though, with the characters and their interactions really lifting an otherwise very average game, with dim-witted enemies and very repetitive scenery, not to mention an absurd lack of ammo. Without the licence and the well written and recognisable characters the game would be instantly forgettable and have warranted a lower score. Hopefully any sequel will be set on Earth and provide a much-needed sense of scale and some Rampage-style city destroying action while eliminating any excuse for there to be Transformer fusion cannon ammo crates lying around…