Transformers: War for Cybertron

War for Cybertron is played from a third-person perspective. Transformers are classified into four main categories: Leader, Soldier, Scientist, and Scout. Each character in the campaign is classified as one of these types, and their weaponry, abilities and vehicle form are largely influenced by their character class. Players can change between forms at will, and each form has unique abilities.

While in robot form characters can also collect different weapons, reminiscent of those found in first-person shooters. While in vehicle form each character can boost their speed.

War for Cybertron is set on the planet Cybertron, prior to the Transformers' contact with the planet Earth (70-65 million years ago), and is set in the series' Aligned continuity family. Robotic in nature, each Transformer has the ability to transform from their robot mode to an alternate form, usually a vehicle, such as a tank or jet. The Transformers are engaged in total civil war with one another, with two factions emerging: the Decepticons, a splinter group led by the powerful and ruthless Megatron, who seeks to conquer Cybertron to force a regime change, perceiving the current leadership as weak and corrupt; and the Autobots, who follow the command of Zeta Prime and seek to put an end to Megatron's revolution and restore peace and order to Cybertron. However, after Zeta Prime is killed in battle, an inexperienced leader named Optimus must take his place and lead the Autobots to victory before Megatron can corrupt the planet, itself a Transformer, with Dark Energon.

Both factions have their own campaign, each containing five chapters, and players may choose either to play through first. Chronologically, the Decepticon campaign takes place first, with the Autobot story directly following it.

War for Cybertron was announced December 16, 2009, and was released in North America on June 22, 2010, with the PAL region release following on June 25, 2010. It is powered by Unreal Engine 3. Physics for the game are handled using the Havok physics library. A demo was released on June 10, 2010, which allowed for players to play various multiplayer matches using two of the game's character classes.

Developer High Moon Studios designed the friendly AI so that as a player progresses through the story any accompanying characters will help the player, but still require the player to advance through the game. "The buddies don't advance the story for you. They get to the point to kinda show you where to go, but then they'll take up defensive positions and wait for you to progress the story" said Game Director Matt Tieger. "They're not finishing objectives for you, but they like to stay near you, they'll heal you if you get too wounded, they're pretty smart."

Critical reaction has been generally positive, with many reviews citing that War for Cybertron is an improvement over past Transformers games. Aggregate scores across all three platforms were fairly uniform. The PC version holds a score of 76.25% at GameRankings and 76/100 at Metacritic. The PlayStation 3 version has a 78.47% and 77/100 at the two aggregate sites, while the Xbox 360 version reports scores of 79.45% and 76/100. Individual review scores ranged from a score of 5 out of ten by Edge, to a 94% approval by Gaming Trend.

Reviewers praised the in-game voice acting. G4TV's Matt Kell noted that Peter Cullen's voice work as Optimus was "commanding and familiar", adding that the other actors "even do their best to replicate the voices of the original cartoon." Mike Nelson of Game Informer agreed and noted the game's excellent dialogue, stating "the script has all the overwrought melodrama you'd expect from giant talking robots." Several critics also gave high marks for War for Cybertron's multiplayer.