That’s right High Moon Studios’ Fall of Cybertron, which is due to hit stores later this month, has a demo available to Xbox 360 and PS3 users right now. Having grown up on the mythos of Transformers I knew Cybertron had fallen and that in part is brought the war to earth [Watch Transformers 1980’s series, G1, if you are not familiar]. For this reason I worry a little about the story, but still I’ve been looking forward to this title for some time. Now let’s get to the game at hand, err, controller and see what we should expect from the full retail version.
I’ve been playing the demo on the Xbox 360 and the graphics have improved since War for Cybertron. Gameplay is much in the same, with a new ability for us that I will discuss momentarily. As the they did in War for Cybertron they continue to stay true to the origins and familiar designs of the bots and cons we know. The soundtrack available on the demo did a great job of pumping me up.
We get to play parts to two missions. One involving Bumblebee and the other being Vortex. It’s not much gameplay for the campaign side, but just enough to wet our appetite. What they seemingly intended to show was the controls and gameplay of robot, car type vehicle, and aerial vehicle. All move with ease as they should and you can customize the controller layout in the options. A quick note about the controller layout options is that Grimlock has his own controller options in said menu. Playing through the missions with Bumblebee and Vortex was fun and still challenging, though the default difficulty is set to normal. Graphics and sound mixed well to create a strong ambience that drew me into the game, and when that sections abruptly ended it was almost a shock back to reality. Well, almost.
The one thing that stood out was the ability to switch the hand that holds your weapon in robot mode. This is a game changer! I know can flip left to right on the fly, mid game to better aim or use cover more effectively. Let’s say your moving right along a wall of cover, you’ll want the weapon in the right hand and vice versa. This made things even more fun and it carries over into multiplayer.
Multiplayer, as I reported from Comic Con, is still epically awesome. It feels right changing between modes and moving about. Combat is natural and more fluid than the War for Cybertron. In fact I think overall the gameplay in multiplayer and single player is moving at a faster speed and the game responds quicker. Just a few modes of multiplayer are available to try, but still very fun. The customization options have also gotten some work, but I’ll admit I didn’t spend much time there- I just wanted back in the action.
All in all the demo is worth downloading. It’s also a good way to keep yourself occupied until the 21st of this month of August when it’s released to retail. Go have some fun and let us know what you think.