Transformers: Fall of Cybertron Review

[Jolly Co-operator]

I absolutely love this game. I bought this game purely because I'm a Transformers fan, and was expecting a slightly disappointing cash-in that would at the very least pander to my inner child. I've never been more happy to be wrong, because it turned out to be fantastic on all fronts

 

[NortherWolf]

Question; Should I get this game for PS3 or PC? I've got the first one for PS3 but Steam is tempting me to buy Fall from them ^^

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Question; Should I get this game for PS3 or PC? I've got the first one for PS3 but Steam is tempting me to buy Fall from them ^^

PS3 I would bet on more, I hear the PC one is having quite a few issues unfortunately. I have the Xbox one, so I cannot speak for either truly. Do a bit of research

 

[ExtraDebit]

My initial reaction was "stupid rail shooter", now that I have borrow and finished the game I'd say it's a stupid rail shooter and I can elaborate

This has got to be the most overrated game on the escapist, it's not a bad game but far far from great or the rating it got. To me it's worth 3.5 star the most, a for fans only game.

It tries to do a lot thus makes the gameplay feels fragmented and incohesive. The reviewer praise the game for it's variety and yes the game does *tries* to offer different mechanics of gameplay but did a mediocre job at all of them.

At it's core it's a rail shooter, point at things and press a button until it dies like billions of other rail shooters in the market. The only difference is that you can transform and that part feels stiff.

As a transformed vehicle it feels more like driving a box than driving a car, if you ever played a single racing game you will hate the vehicle controls.

It tries to offer other modes like melee combat with grimlock but it's extremely simplistic pressing only one button to attack and one to block, it doesn't even have any advance combos. Games like Dynasty warriors got better combat than this game.

My biggest disappointment with the game is that it overall just feels cheap and without depth, both in it's gameplay and story.

If you want a good transformer game, I'd recommend Transformer:armada for the ps2. It's a shame really, the human race haven't produce a single good transformer game since armada.

 

[Cabisco]

I want this game so badly, it's just generally different to what I have both gameplay wise and visually. It also helps that I love transformers and it's multiplayer was great fun on the demo.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Now I've played this and thought about it it's pretty terrible. And there will be spoilers in me telling you why.

Mechanically the game is poor. The shooting is pretty dull, enemy AI patterns for most bots are average, but the shotgunners are the ones that really show the problems. All they do is run at you hoping their hitpoints will hold out so they can blast you at close range. No attempt to use cover or do anything clever, they just suicide charge you. Trouble is, if you're playing on hard that works more often than not because they have buckets of HP and kill you in two hits. There's not really much strategy to dealing with them, you just have to wear down their stupid HP total.

It doesn't help that the weapons in the game are all but universally terrible. Most of them have such poor damage that they're not worth using at all, all but one of the heavy weapons are worthless due to either poor damage or too little ammo, heavy ammo is rare as a whole, and half of the normal weapons are too weedy to bother with, especially when you have to contend with giant hitpoint sinks. And then you get the Riot Cannon and none of the other weapons are worth using ever because it destroys everything all day,

But it's the narrative where things really fall apart. There are five major sections, but none of them mesh together and many of them don't make internal sense. The problem with pointing out the issues WFC has is that it has so many of them.

In the opening chapters we're introduced to Metroplex, a giant transformer suddenly appears from nowhere and the reaction to it is little better than Dull Surprise; "Hey, who's this dude" not "HOLY FUCKING SHIT a giant transformer how did we not know this guy was here and why has he been ignoring this war that has basically destroyed the planet!". Never mind the fact that you have to laser designate targets for Metroplex which he then walks over and punches. In one case you have to do this when he is literally standing closer to the thing you want him to punch than you are. Never mind the fact that Optimus is a totally dull character, he has no personal motivations at all and he eventually just lets the Decepticons walk away when he has most of their higher ranking members right there within easy squishing range.

Then we swap to Jazz and Cliffjumper, where at least there is some character interplay between the pair, but we suddenly shift gears from "we are fighting a last desperate stand to prepare the Ark for launch" to "let's raid some tombs guys". Trouble is, the tombs we're raiding of an ancient cybertronian race add nothing to the core conflict of this version of the continuity, it really doesn't matter to the story, it's only there for stupid fanservice because nerds expect it. Everything to do with the ancient society in this could, and probably should have been replaced by Shockwave just inventing space bridges rather than having to introduce elements that don't enhance the conflict we're supposed to care about.

Then we're treated to the Combaticons, who are one of the few non-stupid groups on Cybertron, it appears. This bit is actually fine, they have a mission, they do the mission, they act mostly like sensible professionals not raging idiots. This is probably the least problematic of the story elements on display, the Autobots want the energon to launch the Ark, the Decepticons want it to power space bridges to harvest other worlds.

Next up is Megatron, and here we have a real problem. Megatron's motivations in this story are, well, absent. He wants to stop the Autobots leaving because, well, he's a petulant five year old and wants everything his own way. His end goal, harvest energon from other worlds to restore Cybertron and reclaim her former glory would be far easier if he just let them leave. He has space bridges, they don't. They can spend thousands of years getting anywhere in realspace and he can already have been there a thousand years ago when they arrive. He literally ruins his own chances of success by throwing a colossal tantrum for no reason adequately explained in the games. (Sure, if you read the comics you find out about the history between him and Optimus that might make this a personal matter, but the games give you no reason to care, he's just in a snit because he's not getting his way). And whilst this gives them a perfect opportunity to explain Starscream (he betrays Megatron and tries to seize control because Megatron is clearly unstable and will doom them all with his personal emnity, Starscream is just even more of a colossal dick when he's in charge, and seems to just be betraying Megatron for the lulz.

Grimlock is pointless to the story, he's thrown in for fanservice but he doesn't do anything but phone Optimus and say "space bridges, yo", and Jazz and Cliffjumper could have done that.

And then the last level is really exciting and whiz bang in all respects and really represents what the game should have been all along, except for the final fight which is literally so scripted that you can advance to the next cutscene whilst getting up off your ass from being knocked over because the timer says it's cutscene time.

In short, Rent it at best, they've jumped too far down the fanboy rabbit hole, shit just happens in this game because fatnerds expect it to because that's what happens in Transformers. No attempt to be interesting or different, they've even forgotten the new elements that Aligned brought to the table, Dark Energon, the driving force of the whole first game, is now totally absent, Megatron's rebellion against the harsh caste based society of Cybertron, and Optimus' part in that rebellion is completely ignored in favour of the same shit we've seen over and over from the franchise.

 

[chuckdm]

Is it just me though, or is the visual design for many of the transformers and environments extremely cluttered and ugly? I mean it seems to take the worst aspects of visual design from both the Bayformers and the old Transformers and mash them together...

All the designs are G1 inspired, just modernized. Some features are taken from the Prime Series, and some from other of shows such as Armada, Energon and Cybertron, for example, Cliffjumpers head is inspired by his Prime character, Scattershot is taken from Cybertron, and Demolisher is taken from Armada. The only thing that relates to the films is Bee losing his voice, however that also relates to the Prime series

All of this, and also UE3 has a bad habit of looking cluttered no matter how you try to texture it better. Don't get me wrong, I freaking LOVE UE3 (offloads a LOT to the CPU so a mid-range GPU can easily outperform a high-end one) but admittedly the texturing does look very, very cluttered. Also, the entire planet is in the final days (or hours?) of a many-decades-long civil war. That has a tendency to leave a LOT of junk lying around. If the place was all spick-and-span I would expect to see someone try to jump-start the planet core despite the infection and stay there.

Oh and last, I concur - GAME. OF. THE. YEAR. (Only because Skyrim was last year and ME3 was great, but the ending, combined with the awesomeness of this, clearly knocks it off the podium.)

 

[chuckdm]

I cannot abide this...

Now I've played this and thought about it it's pretty terrible. And there will be spoilers in me telling you why.

Mechanically the game is poor. The shooting is pretty dull, enemy AI patterns for most bots are average, but the shotgunners are the ones that really show the problems. All they do is run at you hoping their hitpoints will hold out so they can blast you at close range. No attempt to use cover or do anything clever, they just suicide charge you. Trouble is, if you're playing on hard that works more often than not because they have buckets of HP and kill you in two hits. There's not really much strategy to dealing with them, you just have to wear down their stupid HP total.

So I take it you've never even HEARD OF the concept of "cover busters" eh? Yanno the crappy AI squad patterns you talk about later? This is one of them - using shotgunners, not to kill you, but to flush you from cover so their assault rifle and sniper friends can kill you without fear of return fire because your fire is focused on the shotgunners. This is how AI Tactics work - they each perform a function, and one enemy's suicide run is a decoy for another enemy's headshot against you.

It doesn't help that the weapons in the game are all but universally terrible. Most of them have such poor damage that they're not worth using at all, all but one of the heavy weapons are worthless due to either poor damage or too little ammo, heavy ammo is rare as a whole, and half of the normal weapons are too weedy to bother with, especially when you have to contend with giant hitpoint sinks. And then you get the Riot Cannon and none of the other weapons are worth using ever because it destroys everything all day,

Well let's see...hmm...there's the Riot Cannon that can either 1-hit or 2-hit everything in the game, and with the Planet Buster upgrade, it can 1-hit 10+ enemies with a single shot. Then there's the Rocket Launcher that tracks targets and has enough splash damage to kill them even behind cover. There's the (I forget the name on this one) Energon Syphon Gun that both does 1-shot kills AND full heals in every shot. And lest we forget, that pesky Scatterblaster (i.e. shotgun) that seems to be so incredibly effective when used against you, perhaps you might want to actually try it yourself?

Ammo is only a problem in this game if you avoid every single possible pickup and never, ever visit one of the Telemann terminals in the entire game. For only $500 - literally less than you collect in the 100% un-losable intro mission - you can unlock full, free reloads on ALL of your weapons every time you access the store. If you didn't get this (and the full, free repair upgrade) first, then the fault isn't the game that gives you ample ammo drops anyway, the fault is you.

But it's the narrative where things really fall apart. There are five major sections, but none of them mesh together and many of them don't make internal sense. The problem with pointing out the issues WFC has is that it has so many of them.

You are aware that this narrative wasn't written for a video game for the usual 17-25 market, but in fact was wriitten for 10-year-olds as a cartoon, right? Also, this isn't War for Cybertron, this is Fall of Cybertron, which might explain your confusion here because SOME (though not all) of your complaints were actually valid in the previous game. Weapons in WfC were generally weaker. I mean, I still had no trouble playing the entire campaign on the highest difficulty without dying a single time, but even if I had totally sucked, I admit the guns were underpowered before. They certainly aren't any more.

Back to the story, the lack of a certain level of common sense (i.e. that Metroplex was there all along) and the lack of swearing are pretty easily explained by the lack of a PG-13 rating. That said, I would also like to mention that, not only does Metroplex not appear on the Decepticons radar/plans/whatever, but as Perceptor himself says, even the Autobots were unaware of his presence. Combine this with the fact that Metroplex only awakened when Optimus Prime ORDERED him to do so, and since nobody new he was there to give said order to, it's pretty obvious why he wasn't awakened previously.

Then we swap to Jazz and Cliffjumper, where at least there is some character interplay between the pair, but we suddenly shift gears from "we are fighting a last desperate stand to prepare the Ark for launch" to "let's raid some tombs guys". Trouble is, the tombs we're raiding of an ancient cybertronian race add nothing to the core conflict of this version of the continuity, it really doesn't matter to the story, it's only there for stupid fanservice because nerds expect it. Everything to do with the ancient society in this could, and probably should have been replaced by Shockwave just inventing space bridges rather than having to introduce elements that don't enhance the conflict we're supposed to care about.

Once again, the fact that this is NOT THEIR SCRIPT to begin with (well...their script, but not their story, so they're forced to write within the confines of what there already is) comes into play here. Moreover, you have clearly missed the ENTIRE POINT of this ENTIRE MISSION, so I'll enlighten you a bit. All of the story leading up to this point (after the very first intro mission) is about Optimus trying to defend the Ark. Why is the leader who should be busy coordinating the evacuation bothering with defense? Because Grimlock abandoned his guard post, allowing the Decepticons to break through. (Also because everyone else is busy.) Thus, the section between Cliffjumper and Jazz is because they are trying to FIND GRIMLOCK. The fact that 30 seconds into this mission, you see Jazz confirming that a downed transport was used by Grimlock kinda gives this away Thus, this whole frolic through the Sea of Rust is intended to do one and only one simple thing: Find Grimlock. The fact that you end up actually doing so in the next mission also gives this away. Why you think this is intended to be an all-out brawl through the ruins is beyond me - the fact that you are playing a pair of stealth-oriented characters and you have to spend half the mission in tunnels to survive it (until you unlock the Riot Cannon and replay it, that is, heh) should dispel any notion that this is intended to be a brute-force style mission.

Then we're treated to the Combaticons, who are one of the few non-stupid groups on Cybertron, it appears. This bit is actually fine, they have a mission, they do the mission, they act mostly like sensible professionals not raging idiots. This is probably the least problematic of the story elements on display, the Autobots want the energon to launch the Ark, the Decepticons want it to power space bridges to harvest other worlds.

There was one space bridge. Uno. Singular. And it was in the other game, not this one. Here we have zero space bridges. Also, that one shut down when the core of the planet shut itself down - something neither Megatron nor anyone else can stop, hence the whole damn reason for exodus - the planet has already stopped producing Energon and the instant that all of the Energon that remains is used up, Transformers on both sides are gonna start dying. Think of it as oxygen, if that helps you any.

Next up is Megatron, and here we have a real problem. Megatron's motivations in this story are, well, absent. He wants to stop the Autobots leaving because, well, he's a petulant five year old and wants everything his own way. His end goal, harvest energon from other worlds to restore Cybertron and reclaim her former glory would be far easier if he just let them leave. He has space bridges, they don't. They can spend thousands of years getting anywhere in realspace and he can already have been there a thousand years ago when they arrive. He literally ruins his own chances of success by throwing a colossal tantrum for no reason adequately explained in the games. (Sure, if you read the comics you find out about the history between him and Optimus that might make this a personal matter, but the games give you no reason to care, he's just in a snit because he's not getting his way). And whilst this gives them a perfect opportunity to explain Starscream (he betrays Megatron and tries to seize control because Megatron is clearly unstable and will doom them all with his personal emnity, Starscream is just even more of a colossal dick when he's in charge, and seems to just be betraying Megatron for the lulz.

He is Megatron. He's an egomaniac. You are correct in your character assessment that he basically has the emotional maturity of a child and he gets pissy when people attempt to defy him. However, what's the difference between him and Hitler? Both egomaniacs, both want to rule the world, neither seems to either have or need any further justification for WHY they must have total control of everything to be happy. The fact that Megatron wants to own everything isn't a character flaw (at least not in a story-telling sense). It's what makes Megatron...well...Megatron. If he didn't have this mindless drive to rule every living thing, he would've sat down at a table and negotiated a peace. Not much of a story there. So yeah, this is all true (ok, mostly true, aside from the space bridge BS again) but what you're seeing as some sort of character flaw here, actually IS the character.

Grimlock is pointless to the story, he's thrown in for fanservice but he doesn't do anything but phone Optimus and say "space bridges, yo", and Jazz and Cliffjumper could have done that.

Oh, so when you say "space bridge" you mean those PORTALS that are NOT BRIDGES and that also consume MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF ENERGON TO ACTIVATE EVEN FOR AN HOUR on the planet that is OUT OF ENERGON TO POWER THEM? Those things? Ahh I see, now that we use the correct words to describe that the hell you're complaining about it makes a tiny fraction more sense!

Also...I agree. Grimlock was always a character that meant very little to me. Not saying I dislike him (though the barrel-tossing level was the one part of the entire game that ever felt monotonous to me, and it felt that way almost instantly.) But I have to agree, this did feel a little bit like fan service. That said, it's a video game based on a comic book. So, nevermind that gameplay - barrel-tossing aside - is totally awesome as Grimlock as well as a very nicely timed change of pace from awesome shooter to awesome melee. What is the inherent problem with fan service? What is WRONG with giving people what they want? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Yanno what's wrong? Game-breaking fan service. If you are going above and beyond and out of your way to make a few fans happy, and somehow making the game worse for everyone else, THEN fan service is a problem. As long as it plays equally well for everyone, fan service is freaking awesome.

And then the last level is really exciting and whiz bang in all respects and really represents what the game should have been all along, except for the final fight which is literally so scripted that you can advance to the next cutscene whilst getting up off your ass from being knocked over because the timer says it's cutscene time.

This is the only thing I agree with you about outright. The constant interrupts in the final battle between Optimus and Megatron were painful to me. However, it's hardly the kind of total mindfuck ending we got with ME3 or anything else lately. If my options are an epic ending that's just badly over-scripted, or else an incredibly shitty ending that's perfectly executed from a mechanics standpoint...I can strobe Left Mouse like crazy and be happy to do it.

In short, Rent it at best, they've jumped too far down the fanboy rabbit hole, shit just happens in this game because fatnerds expect it to because that's what happens in Transformers. No attempt to be interesting or different, they've even forgotten the new elements that Aligned brought to the table, Dark Energon, the driving force of the whole first game, is now totally absent, Megatron's rebellion against the harsh caste based society of Cybertron, and Optimus' part in that rebellion is completely ignored in favour of the same shit we've seen over and over from the franchise.

I can't speak to Aligned because - gasp - I am not really a huge Transformers fan. I only saw the first of Bay's movies (and only once) and I caught maybe half a season of the animated series as a child. That's it. Before War for Cybertron, I had literally zero knowledge of the origin story at all. Yet I still find the little Easter eggs to people who DO follow the series and DO know all the canon to be epic. As a not-really-a-fan myself, I found them to be nice nods that don't break mechanics or immersion, so I loved them.

As to Dark Energon, this couldn't be much more obvious. Ok, in the previous game, remember how the core of Cybertron was producing the regular, standard, non-dark variety? And temember how Megatron used a SPACE BRIDGE (yeah, like an actual space bridge) to funnel a tiny little amount of Dark Energon in an orbital space station directly into the core of the planet, so that the planet itself would produce more of it? And remember how the core was then forced to shut down in order to purge itself of all this? Yeah, that's why there's no more talk of Dark Energon - because the sole factory for it, the planet Cybertron itself, quit producing the stuff.

And last of all, I don't know anything about a caste society in this series, but I'll say this. If Megatron was ever supposed to be some sort of "freedom fighter" then someone somewhere did a horrible job portraying him as such. Megatron is all about Megatron and if you aren't with him, he blows your head off. There is literally nothing more to him, and there isn't supposed to be. He's the Bad Guy. He plays that role and plays it well. He doesn't NEED any deeper character development. Hell, if he had any, it'd be detrimental to his image anyway.

 

[chuckdm]

Question; Should I get this game for PS3 or PC? I've got the first one for PS3 but Steam is tempting me to buy Fall from them ^^

PS3 I would bet on more, I hear the PC one is having quite a few issues unfortunately. I have the Xbox one, so I cannot speak for either truly. Do a bit of research

I have the PC Version and it has no issues. Then again, I'm primarily a Linux user so my windows partition is XP x64 and thus prone to a LOT less problems than Windows 7, which seems to be the primary issue bug-wise.

I always advocate getting the PC version >>>IF<<< you have a decent system, i.e. something that will probably outperform your console. It's easier to patch if it doesn't work and also easier to mod. I know MANY friends who are very sorry they chose the 360 version of Deus Ex because they can't use the Burger Menu, for example, so even games not intended for mods can be modded after the fact much easier on a PC.

That said, the only real complaint from a PC standpoint that I have is that, just like WfC, this game does not have remappable controls - you simply have 6 presets to choose from. As someone who uses the arrow keys (along with Ctrl, Shift, and almost always "/" for Jump) this is exceedingly annoying. As it pertains to your question, just know that unlike most games, you're gonna be stuck with the preset controls, so if you really don't like them, you might find the PS3 version better on that front alone.

After all this is UE3. It looks 95% as good on a PS3 or 360 as it does on a PC anyway. You honestly don't see much difference until you get into something like Rage or Skyrim.

Just the same, BEST GAME THIS YEAR. I can't recommend this enough. I mean, unless Dishonored turns out to be one hell of a lot better than it's looking so far (because it's already good, just not THIS good) then this really should win Game of the Year everywhere.

 

[GloatingSwine]

So I take it you've never even HEARD OF the concept of "cover busters" eh? Yanno the crappy AI squad patterns you talk about later? This is one of them - using shotgunners, not to kill you, but to flush you from cover so their assault rifle and sniper friends can kill you without fear of return fire because your fire is focused on the shotgunners.

This would be close to an argument if the rest of the enemies weren't far more trivial threats than the shotgunners. Shotgunners don't act to flush you out of cover so that other shit can kill you, they exist to straight up murder you in the least interesting way possible. Nothing they can flush you into the path of is even nearly as threatening as they are (And I can't remember a single time a shotgun/sniper combo spawns, snipers mostly spawn on their own)

gGrenades are what flushes you out of cover so that other things can shoot you.

Well let's see...hmm...there's the Riot Cannon that can either 1-hit or 2-hit everything in the game, and with the Planet Buster upgrade, it can 1-hit 10+ enemies with a single shot.

If you devoted more time to reading than to neckbeard rage you'd notice that I mentioned how the riot cannon makes every other gun in the game irrelevant. This is not an example of good weapon balance, by the way...

Then there's the Rocket Launcher that tracks targets and has enough splash damage to kill them even behind cover. There's the (I forget the name on this one) Energon Syphon Gun that both does 1-shot kills AND full heals in every shot.

Both worthless on hard, heavy weapons are basically scrapmaker or nothing.

And lest we forget, that pesky Scatterblaster (i.e. shotgun) that seems to be so incredibly effective when used against you, perhaps you might want to actually try it yourself?

And not terribly effective when you get to use it, mostly because you have to get close to do so and that means you're gonna die.

Ammo is only a problem in this game if you avoid every single possible pickup and never, ever visit one of the Telemann terminals in the entire game.

Ammo for main weapons is fine, ammo for heavy weapons is pretty rare and they carry far too little of it (the Cyber Corruptor only gets four shots upgraded, and turning an enemy to your side isn't that useful)

You are aware that this narrative wasn't written for a video game for the usual 17-25 market, but in fact was wriitten for 10-year-olds as a cartoon, right?

No, the game was written for 35 year old fatnerds with a tragic obsession with a cartoon that was on when they were 10. Half the problem is shit happening for literally no reason other than "because that's what happens in Old Transformers".

Back to the story, the lack of a certain level of common sense (i.e. that Metroplex was there all along) and the lack of swearing are pretty easily explained by the lack of a PG-13 rating.

Man, are you so bad at inference that you thought my argument was "Derp they should swear more! My argument, for the logically challenged, was that the level of surprise displayed at the sudden appearance of a city sized transformer that literally no-one knew about at all was completely insufficient.

That said, I would also like to mention that, not only does Metroplex not appear on the Decepticons radar/plans/whatever, but as Perceptor himself says, even the Autobots were unaware of his presence.

This is precisely why his appearance merits more than the Dull Surprise[url] it is greeted with.

Moreover, you have clearly missed the ENTIRE POINT of this ENTIRE MISSION, so I'll enlighten you a bit. All of the story leading up to this point (after the very first intro mission) is about Optimus trying to defend the Ark. Why is the leader who should be busy coordinating the evacuation bothering with defense? Because Grimlock abandoned his guard post, allowing the Decepticons to break through. (Also because everyone else is busy.) Thus, the section between Cliffjumper and Jazz is because they are trying to FIND GRIMLOCK.

Which completely fails to excuse the fact that this is shitty pacing. If we had started the game with this mission and gradually built the pace up to the desperate defence of the Ark that would have been fine. (of course, then we would have to skip Megatron's effortless resurrection, and not even as Galvatron. I mean in some continuities all he has to do is come down with a nasty cough and he'll get back up as Galvatron, but that would actually be a good thing because it wouldn't render all dramatic tension irrelevant because we can just bolt people back together.)

The fact that 30 seconds into this mission, you see Jazz confirming that a downed transport was used by Grimlock kinda gives this away Thus, this whole frolic through the Sea of Rust is intended to do one and only one simple thing: Find Grimlock. The fact that you end up actually doing so in the next mission also gives this away.

Nitpick, you find Sludge, not Grimlock. Some of us were paying attention.

Why you think this is intended to be an all-out brawl through the ruins is beyond me

Equip a Riot Cannon and it is, see broken ass game mechanics . I know what it was intended to be, my point is that that was a bad design decision as a followup to the previous story, this type of thing would be OK in isolation, but after we've just been in the middle of a pitched battle with an unclear resolution (did all of the Decepticons retreat? A few more dropships or marauders in the wrong place could still have won the day even without the warp cannons, the Ark was literally on the edge.) it is not a good design decision to switch to this sort of story.

There was one space bridge. Uno. Singular. And it was in the other game, not this one. Here we have zero space bridges.

That giant tower Shockwave has been fucking around with? That's a space bridge. It's even called that in the audio logs and some of the main script.

He is Megatron. He's an egomaniac. You are correct in your character assessment that he basically has the emotional maturity of a child and he gets pissy when people attempt to defy him.

The problem is that this does not a compelling villain make. It was OK for 1980s cartoons when we had no expectations, but even other versions of Megatron have been more complex than that since. Including this one, in the backstory for the Aligned Continuity. Except this game doesn't want to do storytelling.

Oh, so when you say "space bridge" you mean those PORTALS that are NOT BRIDGES and that also consume MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF ENERGON TO ACTIVATE EVEN FOR AN HOUR on the planet that is OUT OF ENERGON TO POWER THEM? Those things? Ahh I see, now that we use the correct words describe that the hell you're complaining about it makes a tiny fraction more sense!

Protip, game calls them space bridges more than once. Also none of this excuses the inclusion of stupid Grimlock and his tedious barrel throwing. Also great melee? What planet are you from? The melee was average at best, since you only have one combo and limited ability to direct it because your character is so slow and clunky.

What is the inherent problem with fan service? What is WRONG with giving people what they want? Nothing.

What people want isn't necessarily what's good for them. This game is a clear example of why trying to please fanboys can be a terrible idea. It's the same problem as Spiderman 3 had, trying to include too much shit because the fans would want it not because it's an inherently good addition to the plot you're trying to convey.

The constant interrupts in the final battle between Optimus and Megatron were painful to me.

Once again, the point sails over your head. The problem isn't the cutscenes interrupting gameplay, the problem is that there is no gameplay, it literally does not matter if you are scoring hits on your opponent in this scene, survive long enough and the next cutscene kicks in. I literally won one section of the fight whilst in the middle of my standing up animation after being knocked over, it's that scripted.

[qupte]
As to Dark Energon, this couldn't be much more obvious. Ok, in the previous game, remember how the core of Cybertron was producing the regular, standard, non-dark variety? And temember how Megatron used a SPACE BRIDGE (yeah, like an actual space bridge) to funnel a tiny little amount of Dark Energon in an orbital space station directly into the core of the planet, so that the planet itself would produce more of it? And remember how the core was then forced to shut down in order to purge itself of all this? Yeah, that's why there's no more talk of Dark Energon - because the sole factory for it, the planet Cybertron itself, quit producing the stuff.[/quote]

And yet in Transformers Prime, which is supposed to be in the same continuity as these games, there is Dark Energon all over the place, and Megatron is using it to create his army of Transformer zombies.

And last of all, I don't know anything about a caste society in this series, but I'll say this. If Megatron was ever supposed to be some sort of "freedom fighter" then someone somewhere did a horrible job portraying him as such.

Yes, you're zeroing in on my point. High Moon did a terrible job of portraying these characters in ways that could have been interesting. They reference the Aligned backstory, but it gets even less of an airing than the normal shit transformers fans expect because actually making a story out of it would have been effort, and we can't have that.

 

[chuckdm]

I'm...not going through all this again. I just wanted to mention that, for someone who is non-stop complaining about how this-or-than is clearly fan service, you seem to have read most or all of the comic books, seen the TV show(s), and now played at least two of the games. You sure there isn't some flavor of self-hate going on here?

And "what's best for us" isn't why we play games. That's why we force ourselves to go on nature hikes and tent camping and other fruitless exercises just to remind us what trees and dirt are. People play video games because they are FUN, often knowing good and damn well that our relationships, jobs, school, etc. will suffer as a result. We deem it worth while because without a certain amount of fruitless, partially detrimental fun, people would all go postal before they hit 30. If you are playing a video game BECAUSE you want it to teach you some sort of life lesson then you're going it wrong.

That's all. Sorry I missed your mention of the Riot Cannon previously - it gave you your one single good counter point.