The other day, I decided to bite a bullet and check out War for Cybertron after years of having intrigue, but never planning on it since this game, like most licensed properties, finds itself stranded without a remaster or any legal way to play them aside buying someone's used copy off eBay. Growing up, my only experience with the series was those mindless Shia LeBouf explosionfests by Michael Bay, so to say I'm rather casual in my toy robots that turn into cars field of knowledge. Mild familiarity with G1 has me blown away by the style, the cartoony aesthetic with a darker edge, that's some good eatin' for me right there. It manages to work superbly.
War for Cybertron is pretty kickass, to put it lightly. While a pretty standard third person shooter at its core, the gameplay loop is fun and there's enough fun set pieces to take my mind off the oft tedious level design and so-so graphics. It looks pretty, given it's an Unreal Engine game, but the environments are samey. One could argue given it's a robot planet, of course the environments wouldn't look anything special, but they do start to have some cool ideas towards the end. The penultimate Autobot level sees you within the belly of a massive Decepticon, which admit it, that's pretty killer.
Can't tell you about the online mode or Escalation, but the latter seems to be a horde/zombies mode from what I've gathered, and I absolutely would've wasted time had that been working. While not a huge fan of those kinds of modes, they are something I would enjoy from time to time in Halo, booting up a Firefight map with my little brother and blasting away hordes of Covenant.
Recently, there were listings on the Xbox store spotted for its sequel, Fall of Cybertron, and it has me wondering what might be in store. I can't wait to give the sequel a shake, as War is a promising, if standard shooter with some tedious graphics and level design, but a baller story and great visual style for the characters.