There is much enthusiasm around the internet about the upcoming Transformers War for Cybertron game being released.  As hard as I try, I just can’t share in this excitement.  I’m blaming the excitement of others on the otherwise complete lack of Transformers material currently otherwise available.  The problem with the Movies is that they aren’t very good and they come as a two hour experience then that’s it.  This is completely opposite of a Cartoon Series experience where there could be 2-3 or more seasons of 12-24 episodes.  Basically, new content being pushed to fans over the course of a couple of years.

The video game unfortunately falls into the same vein as the movie.  It’ll be flashy and new for maybe a week then what?  We all get to wait for Transformers: Prime to come out.

Maybe.

I only say Maybe because Transformers: Prime is going to be on Hasbro’s new channel, so there isn’t any guarantee that your cable provider will carry it.  At least by now Cartoon Network is more or less everywhere, if they’d have stuck with CN you’re pretty much guaranteed to get the show.

Back to the game however.  I imagine it’ll have even less sustaining power than the movie.  Hasbro seems dedicated to giving us some toys out of it but it’s almost as if they are falling prey to the same issue the fans have.  There just isn’t anything else to produce toys of.  There are only so many Mudflap Repaints the toy market can handle.

It also won’t help that the game will suck.  Yeah, it’s lame to proclaim suckage before something is even released but let’s just point out that there has never been a really good Transformers game ever.  In fact there’s barely been any that fall under the category of “decent”.  For the most part Transformers games sit proudly in that range between “Mediocre” and “Kind of Crummy”.

I blame the lack of true cannon fodder.  Transformers games are more or less required to be Action Games.  Action Games require repetitious mindless drones to be destroyed in mass.  The previous games have all created drones to fight but the idea of drones just doesn’t sit well in the world of Transformers.  Why would some robots be full of personality and have names while there are hundreds of others with the name “Decepticon Fighter Drone” who do nothing but run to their deaths wielding crappy weapons.  Sure, we can’t all be Optimus Prime but we can at least warrant say, a Ramjet or a Grapple.

It’s comes off as if humans had perfected cloning and used that power to make a pack of slaves to do all of the heavy lifting for society.  These slaves don’t get names or have rights to anything.  Meanwhile there’s like 100 or so actual people who make a difference in the world and have control of everything.  Hey look, Cybertron is a Socialist society!