Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

A decent and long campaign and good multiplayer and coop modes. Fall of Cybertron might not be excellent, but it's the typical game that ensures a good time for fans.

If you've got a fondness for Hasbro's brand, High Moon Studios does not disappoint. If you played with a Transformer as a child and haven't revisited your inner 8-year-old in a few years, Fall of Cybertron will more than suffice. The latest title in the franchise won't disappoint and will provide plenty of childish, stupid fun, but it's not about to set the robotic world on fire.

High Moon's love for the subject matter clearly shines through, so it's a shame that Fall of Cybertron stumbles in a few areas. Transformers fans will still have a blast with the game, but underneath the chrome chassis this is just another compentent shooter. Fall of Cybertron falls short of finally doing the Transformers universe justice, but although it may be faint praise, it is definitely the best Transformers game yet.

Fall of Cybertron's multiplayer component also benefits from High Moon's sincere approach to the source material, always enabling those giddy moments in which you and your teammates leap into the air, transform and blast off to the next objective.

High Moon is really starting to find form and do the franchise justice. And despite the game's flaws, fans will surely find Fall Of Cybertron to be the best reflection of their beloved robots in disguise in many a year. Too bad they couldn't get Grimlock right, though.

A good action game with some really inspired moments. The campaign now is less open-world but better-crafted. The greatest and biggest loss in this game is the co-op mode, but the multiplayer is still very addictive, especially now with all the unlockables.

It's not as long as War for Cybertron, but it is more varied and more visually stimulating. Yet in leaving behind its predecessor's problems, it gained some of its own, sacrificing thrilling action in favor of noninteractive spectacle.

Fall of Cybertron has a lot of what made the original game so great, but it suffers from generation loss, relinquishing a portion of its quality in the cloning process. The decision to give players more of the same is made less palatable by the fact that its story is nowhere near as engaging and the multiplayer has not expanded in any way -- and even been scaled back in the case of Escalation.

The story campaign entertains and the multiplayer modes entice you to come back after the credits roll, but the out-of-place melee segments, polish issues, and dropped features from the first game make it fall short.

Still, Hollywood likes things that go boom and look good doing so, much like Michael Bay's Transformers movies. The game industry operates much the same way, but the best games within it also introduce a fresh experience, something Transformers: Fall of Cybertron fails to do. Yes, Grimlock and the Combaticons are new, but for all practical purposes they're just multimedia window dressing on an otherwise evolutionary, not revolutionary, title.

This new Transformers Game may look like your typical third person shooter, but it still is a love letter to the original animated series, just refreshed a little bit to try and attract newcomers.

A game that improves upon the developer's past work. But it's still a pretty lackluster shooter that doesn't perk up until the end, and it's only truly suited for people who are fiending for a Transformers game.