Some of you probably noticed that Transformers: Battle for Cybertron was recently announced. I'll refrain from sharing the stickier manifestation of my excitement, but I do want to gush a la fanboy for a few paragraphs and talk about what I'm hoping for.

See, I like Transformers. It combines my love of robots with my love of combining robots. And sweet robot-on-robot violence. In fact, I could happily write a blog with nothing but the word 'robots' repeated until my keyboard runs out of ink, but instead, you get to take a look at my frail, half-baked dreams.



The first thing is tighter shooting than we saw in the movie tie-in games. There, combat was a mess. It didn't feel visceral, it felt loose. The promise of a Gears of War-style game entices me, teasing the idea of meaningful, intimate firefights. The essence of this suggestion, really, is make the shooting fun. Please, hold your applause.

When I said 'intimate' above, I meant that the combat should emphasize the presence of the opponent, rather than them simply existing around your general vicinity, but it also works for the idea of every enemy being important. Instead of opting for the usual throwaway foes, pit a group of recognizable characters against the player. Confrontations wouldn't be won by killing the enemy outright but by forcing them to retreat, regrouping to attack again at the next combat site. This is nothing more than a repaint of the usual victory conditions, but it inspires a sense of powerful, challenging opponents. As an example of this, Starscream, Thundercracker and Blitzwing could harry the player for a level or so, maybe broken up by appearances from other decepticons.



You know what Transformers do? That's right, they kick ass. They also transform, and it's important to not forget that. However, I don't think there's a big place for converting into a pickup truck in the middle of battle for the sake of popping wheelies. I'd prefer if the transformations were animations rather than tactical options. For instance, breaking into a Gears-style sprint would result in a switch to vehicle mode animation for its duration. There wouldn't be a need to transform and drive around with different controls, it would be an automated extension of the regular combat.

There's also a place for full-on vehicles levels, or at least levels with a vehicle emphasis. These could be anything from races (though I'm hesitant about that) to stages of nothing but destruction where you fly around as a jet and blow stuff up. I do maintain that the vehicle segments should be largely divorced from the traditional shooting for simplicity, though that idea could be scrapped if discontinuous control schemes were an issue.



There's so much more, of course. Cameos from any number of Transformers. A suitably mature storyline. No robo-testicles. Frankly, I probably haven't given any of these ideas enough thought and they'd be horrible in practice, but whatever else I can say, I hope for a good Transformers game.