Transformers: War for Cybertron has been one of the favorite licensed games in recent memory for us. Especially after seeing what Michael Bay did to the film franchise, it was great to see people who had a true appreciation for the source material get their hands on it and get to play around with the world.
At Comic-Con, we spoke to the game’s director Matt Tieger and he walked us through the now recently released DLC content that was announced at the Con. Make sure to check out the full interview with Tieger for more of his insight into the game.
The first thing you notice when playing the new content is the great variety of additional character models and loadouts for the game’s Multiplayer and Escalation mode. Classic favorites like Jazz, Demolisher and Shockwave make their return to the Transformers universe that were previously only available as pre-order bonuses while never before seen Scattershot and Onslaught make their way to Cybertron.
As expected from the high values of this production team, all the models look beautiful and do a great job of separating themselves from the others already on the battlefield. It is easy to spot these new characters in online play, especially the uniquely shaped head of Shockwave. These new models do a great job of preventing games that feel like the final fight in Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen where Michael Bay’s horde of clone-like Decepticons cannot be told apart during the chaos.
Of the four new maps, the two featured in Escalation stand out the most. Forsaken, as mentioned in Tieger’s interview, features lakes of moving Energon which can be systematically removed to allow for more strategic troop positioning. It also provides an environmental hazard for players who aren’t paying attention.
District has a great set up as well where players never really feel safe. They are either vulnerable from some angle or they feel like an animal trapped in a corner. This can lead to some great freak out moments for squads of poorly communicating players where one runs off to save his own skin and abandons the rest of his team.
Havok and Fortress give great additions to the standard multiplayer modes. Both of them feel larger in scale than previous map and give unique vantage points for targeting from both vehicle and robot mode. Each also does a great job of standing out both visually and tactically from previous maps.
The Transformers: War for Cybertron Character and Map Pack is a must buy for those still playing the game online, especially those who are into the Escalation mode. The new maps and characters for that are alone worth the pack’s $9.99 (or 800 Microsoft point) cost. The maps added to the standard multiplayer end up feeling like a nice bonus on the Escalation content. If you don’t frequent the game’s multiplayer, however, this is one of the purchases you can let pass by as there is no new single player content added at this time.
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