Game Review - Fall of Cybertron

[griffin]

Finished all the Campaign tophies (except hard & normal trophies - I played the last chapter on "hard" setting, but it didn't unlock the hard trophy, so looks like it didn't have the same glitch as WFC... teaches me to try cheating )
Hard setting is just about right, as it was suitably frustrating for a couple sections, but with persistence, it was possible to work out a strategy to get past it.

So I a quick try of Escalation before taking a little break... and damn, it's a lot harder than WFC... and with FOC you have to reach wave 15 4 times to get the 4 trophies (WFC was just once).
I tried it out as a single player (which it allows for), but doesn't look like one would get far, like it was easy to in WFC. Wave 3 was as far as I could get, before I kept getting over-run by the tougher "shot gunners".

A lot less places to take cover, and a lot more attackers in the first wave than in WFC. I'm guessing that a strategy would require people grouping together to cover each others' backs.
Not sure where the "extra teamwork requirement" comes into this one, as unlocking things didn't seem any different to WFC.

I miss having two special abilities, especially cloaking (to give time to relocate and/or refresh). This version of Escalation will instead require people to learn to master the four different types of robot & abilities, as it was easy to select preferred abilities/modes in WFC.

I've already been reading people saying that they've completed all achievements already... and looking at the leaderboards on PS3 Multiplayer & Escalation, some people have already spent 2-4 DAYS (50+ hours) of play time online, after only about 10 (24 hour) days of it being released. That's a lot of time committed to a single element of a single game.

[1AZRAEL1]

Yea some of the levels are difficult on hard, I had to change my strategy of "running in guns blazing" to a more tactical "take pot shots and run away" Cliffs level where you have defend the bomb was quite difficult to do on Hard as well I might add.

I played a bit of online the other day, and I get annihilated by people with higher ranks on their characters. Maybe I'm just crap

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I was customising my characters the other day and I think part of the issue with online is that when you start, with your imited weapons and upgrades, you are at quite a disadvantage until you can power up a bit.

I can see why, but it's off-putting when you are new. A crap at online like me...

[kup]

Just finished the game! I enjoyed it very much with the biggest game design flaw being that it was way too short at about 8 hours or so.

Before I post more detailed views on the game itself, I will do a 'Pros & Cons' from what I have seen in the PS3 Demo and full PC game for people who are still deciding on a platform.

Good:

- PC has much richer colors and sharper graphics. It runs a lot smoother and it is a lot easier to notice details - To me, this is a huge point in favor of the PC.

- Mouse&Keyboard. Sorry Console guys, but controllers suck when it comes to free float aiming. Since I have now dedicated several hours to shooters on the PS3, I have become used to handling the controller and become reasonably good at it but I still think it sucks when compared to the mouse.

Cons:

- Pre-rendered Cutscenes are glitchy when it comes to audio on PC. You will notice the volume going down and if you have 5.1 speakers, speech audio will not center properly by coming out from side speakers. However it isn't as bad as it sounds as the 'game' rendered cut-scenes work great and so does the rest of the game.

- Main Menu is not animated but a static picture of Cybertron. (unfortunately this is a 'preview' for something worse )

- The credits are not animated but a slide show of pics! - This to me is the biggest crime when it comes to the PC release. There is no reason for them to have done this! The PC is the superior platform when it comes to hardware and was clearly able to handle every other rendered and pre-rendered cutscene in the game but they couldn't add animated credits?

Overall - I believe that the PC version gives you the best gaming experience. It has noticeably superior graphics with no 'in-game' glitches like slowdowns in combat (although in some parts it did pause for half a second when it transitioned from one level to the next as it loaded).

In game sound on the PC is also very good taking good use of all speakers although I did feel that the action muddled the music but this was true with the PS3 too.

As mentioned, the worse things with the PC game is that the audio goes a bit low in cut-scenes and doesn't seem to come out from the right speakers and that the credits are not animated. However none of these takes much away from your enjoyment of the game itself and what's better certainly outweighs the bad by a lot.

[griffin]

The credits for the PS3 version (at the end of the game) had animations of characters running around, doing "amusing" things.
I guess they had to skimp a bit on the PC version to get it out in time.

[kup]

The credits for the PS3 version (at the end of the game) had animations of characters running around, doing "amusing" things.
I guess they had to skimp a bit on the PC version to get it out in time.

That seems like the more probably reason but still doesn't make much sense as it is not in-game rendered and more like a movie being played. It doesn't take much coding to play a movie.

I do wish that this gets fixed up in a future patch but I doubt it.

I really enjoyed the game and it is a vast improvement on WFC. There are a few things that could have been done better but it was really good that gameplay variations were considered to explore the character's special abilities as well as their personalities.

I will celebrate by opening my Generations Cliffjumper

I had kept him MISB unsure if I wanted to keep him or sell him as he didn't appear in WFC and I was afraid of the character being 'changed' in FOC in an attempt to shoe-horn him into Prime. Thankfully it was just the head and even so, it still somewhat seems more G1 than Prime.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

It is shorter than WFc isn't it? I managed to crank through it in the first week of having it, which is almost unheard of for me. I don't recall finishing WFC for a fair while after I had it.