More than meets the eye

by ERIK LEIJON

Sometimes it feels like the peripheral nonsense surrounding gaming has gone from cottage industry to whole enchilada. Sitting at my computer for hours watching E3 coverage, it occurred to me I was gushing over games and technology that’s months, if not years away, while plenty of un-played gems sit at my local gaming shop or rental store.

Ubisoft Montreal recently lost two of its biggest names, Clint Hocking and Patrice Desilets, and Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward has undergone a massive turnover, but it’s not as if any of these players or their games vanished off the face of the earth.

We need games like the gloriously action-packed Transformers: War for Cybertron (PS3, X360/Activision, High Moon) to remind us that beyond the lame games-as-art debate, this is a medium where entertainment rules, and perhaps there’s nothing as entertaining as a bunch of colour-coordinated robots shooting each other.

War for Cybertron is the best thing the insipid Transformer brand has ever associated itself with: no humans, no relevant storyline beyond reds vs. purples, plenty of cool robot sound effects and a moniker that pretty much describes all you need to know before jumping in. War for Cybertron is pure, perfect hedonistic gaming because it is the precise distillation of what you want from a third-person shooter.

Most comparable to Gears of War minus the cover system or an entirely third-person Unreal, the good guy Autobots and bad guy Decepticons are engaged in a long-running war for the supremacy of their home world, Cybertron. In the campaign mode, which like everything else here is fun solo but superior online, the game’s 10 chapters are split between Team Optimus and Team Megatron, navigating a planet that looks more like the inside of a giant, heavily damaged computer.

Each transformer is armed with a pair of guns, a special defensive ability, a special offensive power, grenades and the obligatory transform technique. The delightfully simple campaign can be played with two friends, and the heaviest intellectual lifting involves locating switches. Otherwise it consists of nice-looking, enemy-filled tunnels and tricky bosses with their own predictable patterns.

The War for Cybertron kicks it up a notch in its traditional multiplayer deathmatch that, granted, doesn’t do anything Gears of War hasn’t done already, but combines that title’s best qualities with unknown, customizable bots. Escalation pits two to four friends against waves of enemies, and players can use points gained from defeating foes to purchase weapons and health between shoot-outs.

War for Cybertron is all that and a bag of lug nuts. At the heart of the brand are the toys, and they don’t require a backstory, purpose or any depth. This title not only recognizes what makes these robots and their fans tick, but as an action game, it refuses to be anything more than meets the eye.

Cowboy comeback

If Red Dead Redemption has given you a taste for gaming in the Wild West, a vastly more simplistic but still rather amusing gunslinger exists in Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West (Steam/Paradox/Fatshark). It’s a third-person team-oriented multiplayer shooter with historically relevant takes on your traditional modes of play. For instance, a mode has one team trying to rob a bank vault with powder kegs, with the other team defending the loot. It’s also available on PlayStation Network, but the status of an XBox Live Arcade version appears to be in limbo.

Also, I’d like to devote more future column space to indie games or anything off the beaten path. If you’ve played a good indie game, know of a good place that aggregates them, or are working on one yourself, drop me an e-mail at erikleijon@gmail.com or Twitter me @eleijon.