By Alec Meer on July 24th, 2012 at 2:00 pm.
The eternal six-year-old in me is quite excited about Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, even though I am well aware I should have moved on to grown-up’s things by now. Well, someone make me a videogame about a cheese and wine party or paying the electricity bill and I guess I’ll play that too. First though, I wish to heed the call of the last of the Primes. Well, more specifically I want to play as Soundwave and Shockwave, but I suppose I can endure being the namby-pamby Autobots too. FOC has had a strange path to PC, having been initially denied to this platform after the devs admitted they didn’t have time to do it well (which was presumably the case for the perfunctory War For Cyberton PC port), before an additional studio, the venerable but little-known Mercenary Technology, was drafted in to make a dedicated PC edition of the robo-biff sequel. Concrete details on just what PC-specific improvements/features it’ll have are out, and it gives me hope that it might light our darkest hour.
Sez Gamespy, FOC PC will be Steamworksised (yes, That Guy In Comments, we know what you’re going to say already thanks), have ‘no DRM’ beyond Steam’s own, “enhanced textures, lighting, and shadows” and proper keyboard and mouse controls. Please remember to include an anisotropic filtering option folks. I’m amazed by how many games don’t do that, given the big fat visual improvement it can offer.
FOC PC’ll also launch day and date with the consolebox versions, that day and date being August 21. Less happily, it won’t have DX11 bells and whistles or any kind of modding/map-editing support. That latter is a terrible shame – given the ever-changing nature of the Transformers, it only makes sense to let people create their own bots and maps. Incompatible with the flogging of DLC, I suppose. Speaking of DLC, apparently PC is getting all of that too – unlike War On Cybertron, where I had to stare jealously from afar as consolekin had exclusive play-rights to Shockwave.
Interestingly, in the US it’ll be a download-only PC game. Publisher Activision (as in the sub-arm of Activision Blizzard, not the whole shebang) has been, arguably, the most resistant of the big boys to the digital slow revolution, with most of its money coming from COD boxed sales and the associated in-store promotion, so this is an interesting sign of forward-looking life. Does it imply a growing involvement with the latest PC renaissance, or just that they don’t want to spend money on a boxed version of FOC PC? Oh, I don’t really care about that, I’ve just too much inertia to end this post so I guess I’ll just stop right
24/07/2012 at 14:05 DanPryce says:
My name is That Guy In Comments, and I want you to know that I would have accepted ‘Steamworksed’, ‘Steamworked’ or ‘Steamworkerated’.
24/07/2012 at 14:12 Flukie says:
Viva la Steamworks DRM we can cheer for!
25/07/2012 at 06:48 pedrovay2003 says:
Let’s see… Steam requires you to be online in order to install a game, it forces you and ONLY you to be the one to play the game, it restricts any transferring abilities, you can’t back the game up without being online, you can’t restore the game without being online, you can’t play the game if it’s not 100% updated, the client must run in the background, and the Offline Mode is shoddy at best.
Yeah, I’m REALLY cheering for Steam DRM, i.e., just as pointless and broken as every other DRM scheme ever conceived.
25/07/2012 at 11:50 MadTinkerer says:
Quite a bit of that is BS, but I’m tired of rebutting every individual misconception of exactly what Steam can and can’t do offline, and which of those things you couldn’t do under any circumstances anyway. So congratulations: you’re not 100% wrong, you’re just mostly full of it.
24/07/2012 at 14:13 NightShift says:
Where did the MMO version by Jagex disappear? Anyway, this is going on pc, that’s the Prime reason why I’m happy.
24/07/2012 at 14:26 Vagrant says:
I hope they’re willing to roll out the updates to fix any bugs.
24/07/2012 at 14:54 Was Neurotic says:
They could transform the game.
24/07/2012 at 15:00 Surlywombat says:
I’m quite Jazz-ed about it.
24/07/2012 at 15:29 HermitUK says:
Really looking forward to this. If they mess the port up I may Starscream.
24/07/2012 at 16:06 fyro11 says:
This could all be a great big Decepticon. The news is turning me tron though.
24/07/2012 at 17:10 ThinkAndGrowWitcher says:
A feeling in my belly says this’ll be great, but I’ve read Megatron’g before.
24/07/2012 at 15:01 tikey says:
I hope the game doesn’t end up filled with auto-aim-bots.
24/07/2012 at 14:19 falkflyer says:
“Well, someone make me a videogame about a cheese and wine party or paying the electricity bill and I guess I’ll play that too.” They have that game Alec, it’s called The Sims. It’s pretty average.
24/07/2012 at 14:25 Guvornator says:
+1
Also there’s Facade – watch a couple fall apart in front of your eyes -FOR FREE. Or just just dick about for 10 mins and then get asked to leave, like I did…
24/07/2012 at 18:19 Phantoon says:
Or act like an idiot, constantly ask if they want you to order a pizza, and fix the relationship.
Oh, or say “Melon” or “Maria”. Get booted instantly. If you’re not in the main room, Trip will push you through a wall to make you leave.
24/07/2012 at 19:01 Dances to Podcasts says:
Dinner Date!
24/07/2012 at 14:31 phelix says:
Like it’s been pointed out a thousand times, Alec, it’s not a PC renaissance, it’s the consoles falling behind. We’ll be abandoned once again when the next generation of consoles comes out. Developers like consoles, and so do publishers.
24/07/2012 at 14:48 John Connor says:
Roman era, height of science and civilization. Rome collapses, dark ages follow. Through the medieval and then the Renaissance.
PC’s era, then seventh gen consoles steal PC’s thunder. Dark ages follow. Age of ubisoft DRM and then… Renaissance.
24/07/2012 at 14:52 magnus says:
Sad, but true.
24/07/2012 at 14:47 alundra says:
Liar!!! If you were a 6 year old in your heart you would know that the original series is the only one there is, the rest is just a pale reflection.
You *are* a 6 year old.
24/07/2012 at 14:55 cliffski says:
“Well, someone make me a videogame about a cheese and wine party or paying the electricity bill and I guess I’ll play that too”
Ahem…
Kudos 2 actually has cheese and wine parties as a social activity, although I can’t recall whether the electricity bill is modelled or not.
Just sayin…
24/07/2012 at 14:56 Was Neurotic says:
I’ll say again, Alec, you can’t dismiss the cartoons and just hold the Marvel UK comics up as the One True Way. Yes, Furman is a god, but there are many more like him in the pantheon, including those that blessed us with the cartoons.
24/07/2012 at 15:38 Alec Meer says:
The cartoons are rubbish though
24/07/2012 at 15:47 EPICTHEFAIL says:
Which is just about the same level of heresy as saying that Bayformers is acceptable, let alone average or good.
24/07/2012 at 15:55 Alec Meer says:
Those are also rubbish
24/07/2012 at 16:56 MonkeyMonster says:
The film however is more than entertaining :D
24/07/2012 at 19:44 HothMonster says:
This one? That one is awesome, it had the touch .
24/07/2012 at 23:05 Was Neurotic says:
Ya, Bayformers are The Suck. TM was great, but then so was all the G1 stuff. Well, a lot of it anyway. The Takara stuff that followed it was insaaaaaane though. In all the good ways.
24/07/2012 at 23:28 mondomau says:
Your mum is rubbish!
Actually – fire away at the Bay versions, but if you diss the original animated movie, I’m going to break into your house and do a poo in your dishwasher.
24/07/2012 at 15:11 Didero says:
I can not think of a reason to do this ever.
Liking grown-up stuff too is well and good, but never at the expense of liking more kid-oriented stuff as well.
My Lego city will be a bustling metropolis.
24/07/2012 at 15:40 Yuri says:
That screenshot actually looks… crisp and colorful…
The first game didn’t look like that and was filled with Unreal-specific bloom.
I’m hoping it’ll be more like the screenshot.
24/07/2012 at 16:22 zebramatt says:
The animated movie of the 80s is one of the single greatest moments in cinema.
24/07/2012 at 19:10 tikey says:
You’ve got the touch
24/07/2012 at 17:52 Khymus says:
This game having both Grimlock (and the Dinobots!) and Metroplex more than makes up for the shoddy port of the first game.
However, if they find some BS reason for Bumblebee to lose the ability to speak, I’ll be quite irate. Seriously, that was annoying in the Bay films, and I hate they carried it over to Prime.
24/07/2012 at 22:27 Kirjava says:
Sorry to say Khymus, mute Bumblebee is in. Ratchet even makes a point of mentioning wearily that it’s happened again in the first level (of which there’s a demo video of somewhere online…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ2oWKGOcxQ
Sorry, my XHTML’s not what is used to be.
24/07/2012 at 22:55 Khymus says:
… Oh poo. At least this is handled better than the Bay movies and Prime.
24/07/2012 at 23:07 Was Neurotic says:
I’m pretty sure there’s a cut-scene in WFC that shows Megatron crushing his throat, although this wouldn’t really make sense. No, I must have seen it in -ohhh, yeah, it was in a recent Prime episode. Eh, he speaks, he doesn’t speak, so what? He didn’t say a lot in the original cartoons anyway.
24/07/2012 at 22:33 a_coathanger says:
WFC wasnt a bad game, it just had issues, but as the first real transformers game, i’d say it did well even as a port, props to high-moon for at least telling pc gamers it’s a port, most won’t say it. Also props to high-moon for attempting the port even if they had earlier chosen not to port.
24/07/2012 at 23:09 Was Neurotic says:
I dunno mate, the Armada-based Melbourne House PS2 game from 2004 would probably be called that by most. It was pretty damn amazing for what it was.
24/07/2012 at 23:19 Dominic White says:
I vastly preferred that one to Fall of Cybertron. Mainly because the characters had weight and inertia when in robot form, and because the vehicle forms were genuinely fast and powerful. Power-sliding through a dozen smaller enemies as Optimus was fantastic.
It also handled difficulty settings in the most awesome way – it added more enemies. Where you might find 4 enemies on Easy, you’d find 12 on Hard. Made explosive weapons way more fun.
25/07/2012 at 19:17 a_coathanger says:
Fair enough, i didn’t know about that one, I had an Xbox.