The war on Cybertron has reached a critical rubicon. The villainous Decepticon, Megatron, has discovered that some sort of stuffon called Dark Energon can turn the tide of… bacon. Then everything explodes for a while, and Starscream says a bunch of unsubtly treacherous precursors to an inevitable sequel.

Have you transformed into a chair? Get this – Transformers: War for Cybertron is actually a very, very decent game. I know, right, it’s like M Night Shyamalan just rewrote reality or something. I mean, it’s got all the bits and pieces of certain catastrophe – the Hasbro licence, Activision, Megatron turning into a tank instead of a Walther P38 – but this game has completely – WAIT FOR IT! –transformed my erstwhile expectation that it would obviously suck. 

The game plays out as two separate campaigns, Decepticons and Autobots, each clocking in around 4-5 hours, and it’s basically a whole lot of go-there, shoot-that through what looks like a bunch of leftover environment assets from Too Human. While both campaigns are ostensibly much the same sort of business, the Autobot campaign is significantly better – there’s somewhat more variety in the locations (i.e. more shades and arrangements of Unreal Engine 3-powered red, grey, and red-grey), and the set pieces and boss encounters are simply more exciting. But because both campaigns mostly involve robots turning into trucks and tanks and jets and other rad stuff, they both get an instant free pass to awesome.

On the subject of robots turning into trucks and tanks and jets and other rad stuff, though, the game gives players the totally Choose-Your-Own-Adventure option of picking one of three characters at the start of each chapter, each featuring its own loadout of weapons and abilities. It’s a little limited, maybe, since only two chapters let you go with fliers, for example, and some of the abilities are actually kinda rubbish, but it makes for some replayability. The game also features three-way online co-op, although – scandal! – no splitscreen options are available. 

What really makes Transformers: War for Cybertron work, however, is the gameplay. The controls are super tight, the gunplay is super solid, and transforming into a truck or tank or jet or other rad stuff at a click is just, well, super. Imagine Gears of War without a cover system, and that’s pretty much how Transformers: WFC plays. 

The game also includes competitive multiplayer and a Horde- / Nazi Zombies-style invasion mode called Escalation. I’d love to tell you all about that too (no, seriously, I would; Xbox Achievements, etc.), but unfortunately, thanks to Seacom breaking and ruining everything for everyone and my Gamerscore, I couldn’t connect to any games.

Elsewhere, it’s not all unicorns and Erasure dancefloor anthems, of course – I can’t work out why, for example, the designers went with an HP pickup scheme over regenerating HP. And before the otherwise entirely predictable comments of the tedious “LOL CONSOLE DUMB DOWN FTL” type commence, I’d ask that you support your very clever scientific observations with a 2000-word minimum mini-dissertation explaining exactly why, from an objective-oriented gameplay perspective, HP pickups are better than regenerating HP (please include references; spelling counts). Oh, you can’t. Moving on then, and there’s also just a little too much recycling of sets and props, as well as some grotty texture work here and there.

But these complaints don’t mean much at all, really. This isn’t just the definitive Transformers video game experience (which, given its competition, isn’t admittedly saying very much), it’s also loads of the fun stuff. If I weren’t a lazy person with better things to do (like sleeping), I’d have made this totally cool Flash tween of cash turning into a Transformers: WFC  box – but, like, as a hovercraft box or something – as my totally cool conclusion. But I’m a lazy person with better things to do (like sleeping).