The Transformers franchise is long-lived and has gone through several iterations. Some seemed based only on selling toys, not surprising since it’s a Hasbro property, while others seemed focused on telling a story. Transformers: Fall of Cybertron falls somewhere in the middle. It’s desperately trying to tell the tale of the last days of Cybertron, before it needs to be abandoned as a dead wasteland of a planet because of the long civil war between Optimus Prime’s forces and the Decepticons under Megatron’s sway. However, the game makers seem to have taken their cue from the Call of Duty franchise and instead of creating a Transformers experience akin to that in the cartoons and comics, with a balance of gun-play and awesome melee moves, they sort of just skipped the melee and opted for one lame attack.

Considering that the back story is that Megatron and Optimus were pals back in the day and Megatron was a gladiatorial master, it seems like there would have been more diverse combat, including some wicked close combat moves. Even the films managed to pull that off and actually show some rock ’em sock ’em robot fighting action. Even the animated cut scenes show hand-to-hand combat...

Then there’s Transformers Fall of Cybertron, which has all the gameplay mechanics of Call of Duty and none of say, Mortal Kombat. As you play through the game you take on the role of various popular Transformers like Bumblebee, Optimus, Jazz and Cliffjumper. You even take on some Decepticon roles including Megatron himself. But it’s all pretty much shooting with some platforming crammed in. Where’s the diversity of combat styles? Almost all of the characters play pretty much the same though with varying degrees of power. For example, Megatron, whose voice is astoundingly bland and unsuited to the role, can destroy most infantry Autobots in a single show when in cannon mode. Admittedly, he has always been a gun of some sort so it makes sense. Optimus on the other hand feels underpowered in the campaign and leads one to think, how could he ever hope to beat Megatron?