Aim! Shoot!! Duck!!!

Transformers War For Cybertron PC

Having finished the campaign & played some multiplayer, I think it’s time for me to give my final thoughts on this superb game. Continuing from my initial impressions, I have to say I wasn’t disappointed with the rest of the game. But of course, nothing is perfect.

The Good

- The story of the game. For G1 fans, this is what you’ve been waiting for, to be there on Cybertron, before the Great War brought the Transformers crashing down to earth.

- Non stop action. Ok let me make this clear first. This is a 3rd person action game. The best way to describe it is Gears of Wars but with Transformers & no cover system.  But transforming into alternate mode is not a gimmick, instead it’s something useful when dealing with bosses, namely, dodging the bosses annoying attacks. The non stop action doesn’t let up & makes you wanna keep going to see what happens next.

- A campaign mode that can be played co-op with other players. Makes the whole team game in the game more real. But it’s with it’s faults which I will get to later.

- Very enjoyable Escalation multiplayer mode. It’s basically a mode where you & a group of players face wave after wave of ever more powerful enemies. As fun as playing the Marines & defending against waves of Aliens. It’s the same concept.

- Great voice acting & dialogue. Hearing Peter Cullen as Optimus really sends chills down my spine. The rest of the crew does a great job as well & the humour is always entertaining.

- Very climatic & jaw dropping boss fights. Well, granted it’s really the last bosses that are the ones that are amazing. Namely Omega Supreme & Trypticon. Trypticon is a very very tough cookie to beat & you might find yourself cursing the game because of it.

The Bad

- This is an action game folks, so it’s as simple as that. No experience system, non upgradeable weapons. You basically can carry only 2 weapons at any time & the only strategy you ever need is to maybe pick the right weapons to battle.

- It feels too much like a console port. Even though this game runs on Unreal Engine 3, the console origins can’t be more glaring. Very limited options menu. Can’t configure controls at all. Yeah, you read that correctly. No gamepad support. Worse of all, no text chatting support!!! I mean, this is a PC game for crying out loud!!!

- Unbalanced multiplayer mode. Newbies will be whacked to kingdom come if high level players are around in this game, sadly. And I’m one of the newbies that got that rude shock. It’s almost impossible to play against higher level players, be prepared to die a lot when you start out in multiplayer. This only applies to multiplayer, not Escalation mode.

- Online co-op mode that could have been better. Why? Because when any of the players die, you all get kicked back to the last savepoint. No respawn system. This gets very annoying when fighting bosses where one wrong step by a teammate means a restart of the boss fight. This is made worse by the non existent chat system. I gave up playing this when I reached the boss near the end of the Decepticons campaign.

- Should have a more fleshed out ending. Honestly, the ending feels a bit cut short to me. Oh well, it was great while it lasted.

- Too few maps for multiplayer & Escalation mode. But that’s going to change soon with the soon to be released DLC.

The Verdict

Play the campaign, enjoy it. Then go try Escalation mode. Honestly, it’s worth it!

Finally a Transformers based game arrives that impresses me enough to write my thoughts on. Transformers: War for Cybertron is not based on the movie or cartoon but instead tells the story that have never been told before. The war on Cybertron that started it all. This part of the Transformers mythology has never been fleshed out much, perhaps maybe in short parts here & there in the cartoon & movie, but that’s all I can remember. The game centers on the end part of the war, but covers stuff like Megatron’s reasoning for the war, Starscream’s defection to the Decepticons, how Optimus meet Bumblebee & Optimus becoming a Prime. But do keep in mind, the Transformers universe itself have a lot of different storyline depending on which series you follow, this one sticks more to the original Generation 1 cartoon.

Transformers War For Cybertron PC

When starting off the game, you can choose to start the Decepticons or the Autobots campaign but the storyline is set that the Decepticons campaign should be played first. Starting the Autobots campain first might leave you a bit confused as to what have happened. On initial play, the game didn’t really strike me as impressive, but from chapter 3 onwards the game picks up the pace & draws me in. From then on, I couldn’t stop playing & just had to see what happens next. This is helped by the added humour in the conversations happening at the same time.

Bumblebee & Optimus

When playing the campaign, you’re always in a 3 robot team, you choose which one of the 3 when starting a chapter & will use that same one till you finish the chapter. You can also choose to play the campaign with CPU controlled team mates or online with other people. I haven’t tried playing the campaign online yet with other people but if your teammates are CPU controlled they don’t sustain damage or die so no need to worry about them. I’ll try it online after I finish the campaign.

Megatron & Soundwave

The game runs pretty well on my gaming rig which is almost 3 years old now. I’m running it at 1600×900 resolution with details set on high on a AMD X2 5000+ processor, 4GB DDR2 800Mhz RAM & Nvidia 8800GT video card. Sounds pretty dated right? Haha. Sure there are slowdowns in some crazy sections but 95% of the time it’s smooth & that’s what matters most. Graphics wise, it’s quite intense in the sense that there’s so much happening in the background. There’s a war going on after all. But no it’s not Crysis so don’t expect any groundbreaking graphics here. The environments are a mix of corridors, hallways, huge rooms & some open space. In end part for the Decepticons campaign you have to face off Omega Supreme & you’re running for your lives until you can find something to damage Omega Supreme with. Now that was quite intense!

I Am Omega Supreme. Mission - Terminate Megatron.

I’ve finished the Decepticons campaign & have to say, I was left breathless at the end of the battle with Omega Supreme. I’m now a quarter through the Autobots campaign & all I can say is, I wanna rip me some Decepticons!!! To Transformers fans out there, you owe it to yourself to play this game. Purge your memory of all the old crap Transformers games you’ve played. The ultimate one is here, NOW. Available on the PC, Xbox 360 & PS3. The Wii & Nintendo DS editions are different games so I can’t comment on those. Credits for the screenshots used in this post goes to IGN. You can check out the IGN PC review of the game here.

I ran into Borderlinx on Citibank website one day, promoting the ability to do online shopping in USA by providing you with a local USA address to send your items to. This perked my interest to check it out as I thought this is a neat service to have. When I first checked it out sometime last year, it was still very new & the website didn’t have much info. Apart from creating an account, I didn’t bother to do much more. That was until one day I received an email notification from them regarding their new ‘Total Cost Calculator‘ tool in their website. This happened around the same time I started to check out BigBadToyStore. Call it a coincidence. I compared the shipping cost using their ‘Total Cost Calculator‘ tool with BigBadToyStore international shipping & it seemed at that time, Borderlinx didn’t cost a lot more, like maybe around RM40 to RM50 more when converted. Unfortunately, the ‘Total Cost Calculator‘ tool didn’t really make it clear how shipping cost is calculated nor did I have a clue as to why there was a section in the tool to enter the dimensions of the package. It’s like, how would I know how big the packaging would be? So I ignored it & proceeded to try out using Borderlinx. This is where the ‘nightmare’ begins.

Borderlinx Total Cost Calculator

Basically how Borderlinx works is that it provides you with a local USA address to send your stuff to. This is of great help when online shopping sites only ship to USA addresses & don’t do international shipping. Their service has since been updated to offer a UK local address as well to do online shopping in UK. So you pay for local shipping from the online merchant to Borderlinx, then ship it back when you are ready. Sounds great right? So I waited for my item to arrive in Borderlinx, and when it did & I checked the cost of shipping it back, I was floored. From just being an extra RM40 to RM50, the shipping cost is now a staggering RM100 extra. I instantly used their very useful online chat to find out more. Here I found out 2 things:

1) Volumetric weight vs Dead weight. Volumetric weight is the amount of space a package requires while Dead weight is the actual weight of the package. Shipping is charged based one whichever value is bigger. So if your box is big but it’s light, you’ll get charged for the space of the big box.

2) Items can only be kept in Borderlinx for 30 free of charge, after that, it’s shipped & your credit card automatically charged.

I have to say, I was shocked. Shocked because I knew, no matter what I’m stuck with Borderlinx & will have to pay that amount to ship it back, whether I liked it or not. Worse, I had to do it in 30 days max. During that time, these particulars weren’t clearly mentioned in the website & the support staff apologised for it. I even asked the support staff how could I know how big the package would be in the first place? He conceded that I wouldn’t be able to know. That’s OK, lesson learned, I thanked the support staff & waited as long as I could before I hit the ‘Ship It’ button.

The day finally came when I had to hit the ‘Ship It’ button. Luckily, the exchange rate for USD to RM went down so I saved a measly RM5 on shipping. So I clicked the ‘Ship It’ button, hoped to see my package arrive in a week time & be a happy guy. Too bad lady luck completely deserted me. A week after I shipped the item, I got a call from the local DHL office, informing me my package has arrived, BUT I needed to settle customs tax before I could  get my item. How much was I charged? Tax + administrative charges = RM100++. At this point, I’ll be honest, I was PISSED & really wanted to ‘kill’ someone/something.  I couldn’t believe my luck. But I decided,  I was going to find out how did they calculated the tax & get it reduced. After a few days talking to DHL & customs, it turns out it was calculated based on some odd shipping charge DHL was giving customs. After clarifying & providing proof of the shipping charge I paid to customs, DHL finally informed me my item has been released from customs FREE of tax! Wow! Thank heavens! Finally it’s settled, after a week being stuck in customs & DHL.

By now, you must be thinking, this is a damning review of Borderlinx & I would never use it again. It almost reached that point. But it didn’t because of the great support staff. I chatted with 3 different support staff & had email exchange with 2 more. They all answered my queries well, even though they couldn’t exactly give me a better solution, they at least helped by clarifying everything. I’ve noticed after my conversations with them, the website was updated with more detailed information, like for eg, clarifying volumetric weight & a detailed section about tax & duty. It’s even mentioned in the tax & duty section that tax & duty is now prepaid with shipment & your item SHOULD NOT be held in customs. I’ll hold them on that.

So would I use Borderlinx again? Maybe, because it can clear customs faster & will most likely arrive when compared to using international parcel. I got an email from the support staff thanking me for my feedback & rest assured that my feedback would be channeled to higher management so that the service will be improved. That email kind of made me feel, OK, at least my relentlessness paid off.