Transformers: War for Cybertron - San Francisco hands-on Preview Event!

Wednesday night, Activation, High Moon Studios, and Hasbro put together an awesome hands-on Transformers: War for Cybertron game event in downtown San Francisco!

At this Transformers War for Cybertron hands on event, we all got a lot of hands on time with this extremely cool new game! If you haven’t already seen the 3 part coverage from our previous hands on experience of Transformers: War for Cybertron at High Moon Studios and our 19 minute long multimedia photo/video interview with the game designers make sure to check it out. We have already reported on general game play mechanics and single player campaign mode, so for this write up, we will focus on the two new game modes we got to try out! The two new game modes we got hands-on time with on Wednesday were the Co-Op Campaign Mode and the new multiplayer Escalation Mode.

Transformers: War for Cybertron - Hasbro Display

Co-Op Campaign Mode was a whole lot of fun especially with the use of the headsets to talk to our fellow players in-game. Assuming at first that one character could be killed off, we left one of our comrades behind while the other two pressed on. This did not bode well for any of us as we then found out that if even one of your fiends dies, you all have to start over. Anyone on your team can revive you back to one brick of life, while Ratchet or someone with the heal ray can heal you up to full life. Thankfully, there are check-points, so when you do die (or a team mate dies), you all get to restart from a relatively near by spot, particularly helpful when nearing the end of a level. Tigatron/Wolfang step aside because there will be no lone hunters in this mode. Looking out for only your self in Co-Op Campaign mode can be down right dangerous; it is important to save the ammo and health scattered throughout the worlds for you teammates who really need it, rather than simply whoever gets there first. We got to play a whole lot more of the story/campaign mode this event, and I was thoroughly impressed! The game play and mechanics, are absolutely fantastic, and the graphics/design work of not just the characters, but the worlds is stellar. Wow, was it a lot of fun. We were able to play an entire level, culminating in a three way team up to defeat non-other than Starscream. This game blows the servos off of the previously released Transformers Movie games and bests it by leaps and bounds. I can tell this game will retain a lot of replay value! It is such a giant heap of fun to play that the only problem is, you just won’t want to set it down.

Transformers: War for Cybertron - Console Screen Shots

Even if you’ve beaten the Autobot and Decepticon campaign modes, this game has a whole lot to offer! Its non-campaign multiplayer options include team play death match, protect/capture bases, and a new escalation mode. In Escalation mode you don’t get to ‘design your own Transformers’ because this mode allows you to play as all of the iconic characters in their intended color schemes. You and your team mates (more than just 3 of you, but we weren’t told exactly how many more), fight off wave after wave of (non-iconic) enemies, drones, techno bugs, holographic warriors, and even the big thugs. I’m impressed with the level of variation in the “drones” of this game, that is, non-iconic characters. It really doesn’t feel like you keep killing the same guys over and over again, except for the holographic warriors, but you’d expect that (they’re holograms) and they’re a lot of fun to kill anyway. The basic idea of this mode is to see how long you can live, or particularly, how many waves of ever smarter/stronger/faster/more destructive enemies you can ward off before dying. When you kill enemies you pick up chips of energon, which can be used to purchase, health, ammo, new weapons, or new areas of the level in which to fight. This mode was introduced to us as “teamwork or die,” however, in Escalation, only one of your team members needs to be alive to beat a wave of enemies, when a full wave has been beaten, everyone who has previously died comes back to life. One fun touch to this mode (as well as the campaign modes) is that when you ‘die’ you can actually turn and somewhat sloppily shoot surrounding enemies while laying on the ground ‘dead.’ Your team mates have a decent amount of time to come and revive you, but it gets shorter every time you use it. Based on how this mode is designed, it will likely be the most fun cooperative mode to play with a group of mixed skill level players because unlike co-op campaign mode, your team mates can’t hold you back, they can only help you get farther, assuming they’re still alive.

Transformers: War for Cybertron - Nintendo DS Screen shots