For a franchise as huge as Transformers, it surprises me how few video games there are for the brand. Really, both Transformers and G.I. Joe are severely lacking in the video game medium, despite how ubiquitous those brands have been for half a century or more. There were a handful of 1980s Transformers titles, and then despite a couple of Beast Wars (shout out to Beast Wars!) games in the 1990s, we didn't see another proper Transformers game until the early 2000s. There were also a handful of mediocre Transformers titles that were adaptations of the Michael Bay films. Then finally in 2010, after so many underwhelming games, we received a wholly original game, and a legitimate stone cold classic in Transformers: War for Cybertron.
Transformers: War for Cybertron was developed by High Moon Studios, which has since been sucked into the nightmarish slop factory of Call of Duty development teams. High Moon worked alongside Hasbro to write the story and adapt the characters. The studio's artists conceived and fleshed out redesigns for every Transformer that appeared in the story. They also intentionally decided to set the story on Cybertron, and during the civil war between the two Transformer factions, as they felt it was a relatively unexplored era to tell a new story in. There was a clear passion behind this project, going all the way back to the very beginning of its conception. This wasn't just some slapped together licensed product. The director of the game, Matt Tieger, was even quoted as saying "I want to make the game I've been waiting 25 years to play." In doing so, he and his team made the game that we've all been waiting to play, and still, over 15 years later, the finest iteration of Transformers that we've ever seen in the video game medium.
War for Cybertron is a third-person shooter game, and plays at least tangentially like Gears of War or Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. One of the coolest elements of the game is that there are two campaigns: one for either faction. There are four different character classes: Leader, Soldier, Scientist and Scout. Each of these classes has their own abilities and vehicle forms. Myriad weapons can be found out in the world as you're working through the campaign. Also similar to Space Marine, you have a squad of three total bots, including the player. The two accompanying Transformers can be controlled by other players in online co-op, or if you don't have anyone to play with, the bots will be AI controlled. I remember convincing a couple of friends to pick this game up with me in high school and we played through the campaigns together and had so much fun with it.
Where the excellent gameplay really got to shine was in the competitive multiplayer. The brilliantly realized mechanics translated so well into PvP matches. With Activision serving as the publisher for War for Cybertron, they designed a lot of the abilities, upgrades and leveling systems in a similar way to a Call of Duty title, which was a great move, because Call of Duty was seriously in a golden era at this time, with perfectly designed, enjoyable mechanics in basically every game.
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| Image Credit: Idle Hands |
In multiplayer, you created your own Transformer, which was something most of us Transformers fans had been dreaming of for decades. You could customize various elements of their robot and vehicle forms, and pick from the four different classes that appeared in the campaigns. Then there were a handful of game modes to dive into, with classics like Deathmatch, Conquest or King of the Hill on the table. There was also an awesome Gear of War Horde mode style match that you could play, where you play as various Transformers from the campaigns and battle against endless waves of enemies. Between these myriad game modes, there were so many great options to drop into in multiplayer with your friends.
High Moon got the chance to develop a few Transformers titles, including an acclaimed sequel to this game called Fall of Cybertron. Their inspired, passionate approach to developing Transformers games makes them something of royalty for us fans of the franchise. You could feel it from the moment you started the game that this wasn't just your average tie-in game. Like I said at the top, High Moon was unfortunately dragged into the enormous Call of Duty development machine, and they're not developing anything else anymore. Given how poorly received Call of Duty is nowadays, this especially stings because there are so many incredibly talented teams that Activision has just funneled onto that treadmill.
The other major problem with the current status of War for Cybertron and its sequel, is that they are completely unavailable on modern platforms. There is an ongoing struggle with the Transformer IP and the video game adaptations running into licensing issues a few years after release. There have been so many different Transformers video games that have vanished off storefronts because of licensing problems, and I find it incredibly annoying and almost unprofessional that these games are just left abandoned because the licensing can't be worked out ahead of time. Some of these games that get pulled from storefronts were only available for a couple of years, like the beloved Transformers: Devastation, before the licensing rights fell apart. Just a few weeks ago, a tactics game, Transformers: Battlegrounds, was delisted for the same exact reason.
We obviously don't have a right to video games, it's not like they have to be available to us in perpetuity, but it seems reasonable for Hasbro to just workout some sort of long-term deal with these games so that they can stay available. I think War for Cybertron would be a smash hit if it got remastered and made available again. I long to be in those multiplayer lobbies again. Please Hasbro, work this mess out so we can play these wonderful games again. The people deserve to know what High Moon was capable of before becoming a Call of Duty support studio.
If you enjoyed learning about this game and other semi-forgotten games from the past, I have an article series called Run It Back, where the focus is on underrated, currently unavailable video games that I think deserve a second look.
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