So Wednesday’s usual XBox Live update comes and goes, and I found it to be lacking. So imagine my delight when I fire up the old 360 and find that a demo for the new Transformers game went up today! A multiplayer demo, no less!
To be honest, the demo’s options are kind of sparse, even for a demo for a game that isn’t supposed to be out until later this month. Only two classes, the Scout and the Soldier, were playable, and there are only two playable game modes: Your run-of-the-mill deathmatch and a land-grab style multiplayer game, so the demo isn’t exactly setting the world on fire with its originality. Still, I was very pleased with what the demo had to offer.
The multiplayer gameplay is very similar to what you’d find from other class-based shooter offerings, and anyone who’s ever played those games will find themselves very much at home. You swap weapons and can pick up new ones left by fallen foes, find additional shields and health, toss grenades, and circle strafe and jump around like an idiot until you or the other guy dies. Naturally, what makes this game unique is that your character can, ahem, transform from their humanoid robot form to a vehicle mode (Scouts are cars, Soldiers are literal tanks, and the unplayable Scientists and Leaders are planes and trucks, respectively). Transforming is done by pressing the left analog stick, and control in vehicle mode is very intuitive and the characters in the demo handle almost exactly as they do in their humanoid forms, although they are faster and more agile in their vehicle forms (I imagine that, in the full version, flying around in the Scientist’s vehicle form will prove to be a different story), so to the game’s credit, the vehicle modes are integrated into the core gameplay very well.
With far too little customization options to get a feel for how the classes develop as you gain experience in the game’s multiplayer, it’s tough to accurately gauge whether or not War for Cybertron has the chops to stand up to the heavy hitters of the team-based shooter genre, but it’s looking like, if you’re a big Transformers fan, there’s finally going to be a good, if derivative, video game addition to the venerable franchise.