Review by: Brandon "By Primus!" Cackowski-Schnell

The folks at High Moon Studios must either be the biggest Transformers fans to walk the planet or they have some seriously strong research chops as their use of the Transformers license is not only the best video game usage to date but also hits all of the right moments and character interactions for fans of the original cartoon. Unfortunately the rest of the game doesn't hold up to the same high standards with too many questionable design decisions and cheap deaths to hang with today's top of the line 3rd person shooters. Even with these problems though, the use of the license is enough to elevate the game past its shortcomings and provide an entertaining Cybertronian adventure.

Set before the war between the Autobots and Decepticons spilled over to our planet, the game's story mode is split up into two campaigns each consisting of five levels. In the first part you command Megatron's forces as he works to corrupt Cybertron with Dark Energon and transform the planet into a cosmic juggernaut which he'll use to take over the galaxy. Nice to see that beings advanced enough to develop full body transformations into more advantageous forms are not immune to the Dark Cosmic Mcguffins. The second part of the story has Optimus Prime and his scrappy band of Autobots fighting to restore Cybertron to its non-corrupted state and keep their planet from becoming a giant, marauding weapon.

The story is well done and hits all of the right character beats you'd expect to see in a game based on the original cartoon. Peter Cullen returns as Optimus Prime, as do several other voice actors making you feel like you’re back in your house on Saturday morning, hoping that your parents don't wake up only to find you eating Cocoa Puffs in the family room. Other character moments and nods to the cartoon abound such as Warpath and Ironhide's banter, Soundwave making energon cubes out of his chest and Starscream's constant cowardice and grousing about how much better things would be under his command. There are points in the story that contradict what transpires in the cartoon, made all the more irritating by Hasbro's recent decision to consider this story canon for what happened on Cybertron prior to the Transformers reaching Earth, but these are minor nitpicks and they in no way prevent you from enjoying the story.

Combat is handled in the third person and in both campaigns you'll have plenty of enemies to go up against, although disappointingly they're the same across both campaigns, only with different color schemes. During each chapter you can pick one of three preselected characters with the other slots filled in with either AI partners or real live humans via co-op. Unfortunately your AI companions are useful only for drawing enemy fire away from you and not much more as their weapons are completely ineffective against your enemies despite being the same guns you carry. On the plus side, the AI partners never get downed and never need ammo, which is important as the game enforces its wildly different difficulty swings by making ammo drops nonexistent in places.