Cybertron Falls


The latest Transformers title, Fall of Cybertron continues the war that leads to the Autobots and Decepticons leaving their homeworld and heading to Earth.

High Moon Studios has taken what they learned about Transformers from their past games and made a few notable improvements. One such improvement is how smoothly characters can change between their different forms. While before, it wasn’t a difficult task to switch modes, now it is much more fluid and its easy to create combo attacks that flow between these modes.

One example of this was when we played as Starscream. Here, we were able to start attacking an enemy on a different platform with long-ranged attacks while in robot mode, then switch into jet mode and continue the attack while flying towards the enemy. Once at the other platform, we switched back to robot mode to finish off the enemy.

Another impressive aspect to Fall of Cybertron is that the levels seem to have a much wider and grander design. This is especially true for levels where you play a flying character where being confined to a single plane or corridor just don’t feel right.

Actually, the developers at High Moon said that they’ve taken a good bit of time to make each level feel appropriate for the different Transformers, since each character has a different feel. One of the new characters for Fall of Cybertron is Grimlock, and since he is a close-quarters brawler type character, many of his levels keep you in the middle of the action. Meanwhile Optimus Prime, especially while controlling the city-sized Transformer, Metroplex, are on a bigger scale that will require you to have Metroplex fire upon buildings and enemy forces. Because of that, those levels are on the streets of Cybertron instead of inside some building.

High Moon seems to be really excited about Grimlock, especially since Hasbro has given the go-ahead to reveal the dinobot’s origin story and finally explain what a dinosaur-based robot is doing on a planet like Cybertron. Unlike the other Transformers, Grimlock can’t actually change whenever he wants. He has to earn the ability by causing damage to fill up a meter. Once transformed, his powerful attacks and flamethrower can make short work of any enemies in range.

As for Metroplex, I found his gameplay to be really interesting. You don’t control the large Transformer directly. Instead, you play as Optimus and you guide the big guy towards targets. In a manner that might seem more appropriate in a Call of Duty game, Optimus paints targets for Metroplex to focus on, all the while taking on enemies of his own on the street level.

While a PC version of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron is not in the works, you will be able to pick up the latest Transformers game on the PS3 and Xbox 360 on August 28th, 2012. Check out the trailer below for a glimpse.