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So the only thing that we really know about the upcoming pre-Earth Transformers game, “War for Cybertron”, is that it will play like “Gears of War”. But what if you’ve never played Gears of War?  Don’t worry, I’ve played it to death, and it’s a lot of fun.  Take a look at some of the game play footage from early in the game:

Be sure to boost it up to 480 dpi for some higher res goodness, like you would see it on a PC (I played at 1200 dpi, so it was sweet).  Pretty much everything that you can do is outlined here in this short clip.  It’s fairly simple, but here are the main game mechanics demonstrated:

• Running vs Walking: Running eats up stamina and you can’t do it for long. And you can’t shoot while you run, because you’re kind of ducked down.
• Taking Cover: You can hide behind almost anything. While you’re under cover, the enemies are advancing, but you can pop up and aim (which zooms in on targets) or just blind fire around cover (low chance to hit).
• Tuck And Roll: You can dive forward, back, or side to side. It helps you evade gunfire or get to cover quickly.
• Health: Your health bar is the red Gear that appears around the targeting reticule. The redder it gets, the more dead you are. Ducking behind cover will make it go away so that you can fight some more.
• Weapons: You have three to chose from any given time, so carry the ones that suit your play style or the mission objectives. You can also fling grenades to kill enemies or crush their emergence holes. In this video, the player plugs the holes quickly, but up to six enemies come out if you don’t.
• Reloading: Ammo burns quickly, so you have to constantly pick up more when you find it (or from dead enemies). Also, you have to replace your clip quickly when your weapon runs out.
• Chainsaw Bayonet: That enemy get too close?  You can always melee fight with your chainsaw!

There’s a lot to love here.  The backgrounds are beautiful, and it really looks like you’re making your way through the ruined husk of a modern city.  The cut scenes flow fluidly in and out of the action, giving everything a movie quality.  The pacing is frenetic, and it only lets up when you hit a save point.  And then there is the blood, yes there’s a lot of it, especially if you enjoy chainsaw dancing.

I also dig the chatter.  Enemies throw taunts at you, and your AI-controlled squadmates taunt back.  Your buddies tell you where the enemies are coming from (“To your left!”) and sometimes call for help.  When you can take a breath, they talk about their lives before the war.  This really brings out the personalities of your team mates, making the story more interesting.

So, now that you’re up to speed, imagine this same concept with Transformers on Cybertron.  We’ve already seen footage of Bumblebee taking cover behind steel slabs that pop out of the ground (cover on demand?).  Converting to vehicle mode might be similar to running, fast but lacking an ability to return fire.  Each playable character will have two special abilities, which might equate to the limited number of weapons available to the Gears.

I can see the similarities here, which could be awesome when coupled with the established personalities and abilities of the core set of Transformers.  If Cybertron is rendered nearly as nicely as the locations in Gears of War, we could be in for a real treat.  Imaging small teams of Autobots, mowing down waves of enemy drones through the ruins of metal cities that go up for miles.  Or melee fighting with energon axes and glowing maces.  I see the potential.

The only downside is for people who enjoy first-person shooters, open-ended game play, or role playing aspects.  There’s none of that here.  You’re on a rail, stopping every so often to kill things and possibly watch a cut scene to advance the story.  One of the things that I liked best about the Transformers Armada game was the ability to backtrack to previous locations for new items and adjust your weapons/skills in inventory accordingly.  Despite the limitations, I played all the way through Gears about five times.

This is all speculative, however.  The game designers merely mentioned that the game would play like Gears of War, and we’ve only seen one trailer for the game.  But a lot of this does make sense, when seen in light of existing Gears footage.  This really makes me anxious to play this game.  It might be too derivative to the Best Game Ever, but it just might be the Best Transformers Game Ever.  I’ll hold my opinions until I see the online play.  Let me fight against player-controlled Decepticons!

The new NEST Global Alliance figures have a promotional item associated with them: Recon Ravage. But you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get one. First you buy the Bumblebee/Soundwave set to get the “Mission Guide” booklet, which has spots to attach two additional stickers from other figures. The stickers are buried inside specially reinforced packaging, so it would be very hard to cheat (not that I would).

Recon Ravage is a repaint of Movie Ravage with red and chrome highlights. It’s a nice deco, but not an homage or movie accurate. I’m not a huge fan of this mold, since it has no real vehicle mode, but it’s a limited edition Ravage so I’m drawn to it. The cool thing is that it’s the first Transformers mail-away promotion in decades. I remember sending off for the Omnibots when I was little. It was a thrill to get something rare in the mail, especially at that age.

I can see why we haven’t seen many mail-away promotions in the US though. The logistics of managing all of the entries and sending out all of the figures individually would be daunting. Hasbro mitigated this by outsourcing to another company. Another problem would be the short run of figures. It costs more to produce limited run figures, as we have seen with Botcon exclusives. Recon Ravage will be mass released abroad however, so it’s only limited in the US.

I’m surprised that Hasbro didn’t go the digital route. Every booklet filled out by hand will need to be entered by hand into the fulfillment system to be processed. If they had used unique number codes on each package, then people could have entered their own data online. This might have been open to cheating though, but unique codes have been used in computer software registration for a long time (and there is a lot of software pirating).

The figure should arrive in six to eight weeks. I’m tempted to get another one to keep in the package, since mail-away packaging tends to be minimal when compared to retail packaging. However, it might be easier to just wait and pick up the Canadian retail release on eBay later than to buy another NEST Alliance two-pack for the booklet. I’m sure this won’t be the last Ravage repaint though, since this is a popular character with the G1 crowd.

One of the time honored traditions of Transformers figures is the repaint.  Some people won’t collect repaints unless they’re another character entirely.  Some not at all, no matter how many identical Seekers  are produced.  I love’em.  If I already own one figure of a certain mold, I also want to own every redeco or remold of that figure.  I just like to see them side-by-side and study the contrast.

The problem that I have with repaints is when the new deco is almost identical to the older deco.  For example, I’m fine if they paint Optimus Prime purple and call him “evil”.  I think that’s cool.  I’ll buy it.  But don’t try to sell me another yellow Bumblebee with a silver stripe instead of a black stripe.  It’s not much of a repaint if you can barely tell them apart at first glance.  Such is the case with Activators Battlefield Bumblebee.

I’ve talked about my love of the Activators line before: they’re small, easy to transform, and cheap enough to collect any repaint that Hasbro cares to make.  Animated Starscream got two repaints from this line: Thundercracker and Dirge.  Both completely different color schemes and different characters.  The deluxe-sized Bumblebee got a really nice gold and brown Prowl-like repaint with Elite Guard Bumblebee, so we know that good decos are out there.

Bumblebee got a nice white deco in Patrol Bumblebee, but followed with another yellow combination with Battlefield Bumblebee.  What?!  After the pack-in figure with True Colors Shockwave got no repaint at all, this was just adding insult to injury.  There was potential here!  Maybe give him flames on the side and call him Team Rodimus Bumblebee?  Or they could have surprised us with a Japanese Animated-inspired metallic yellow deco.

Derrick Wyatt designed a number of characters with the same structure as Bumblebee for Animated, so Hasbro had many options for repaints with this mold: a blue one named Glyph (bonus for using a female Transformer), or a green one name Wasp, or a beige one named Bumper, or an homage to any of the G1 Throttlebots.  I’m just wondering how another yellow Bumblebee got the green light.

Target and Mars Candy teamed up to do a promotional item for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  I sent in my receipts a couple of weeks ago and I got two M&M candy dispensers in the mail over the weekend!  The dispensers are pretty neat.  Each stands about a foot tall, which is bigger than I thought it would be.  They’re made of plastic, but seem sturdy enough.  Not sure how long these would last if I actually used them though.

There’s a knob on the front that looks like it could accept a quarter, but I don’t see how that would work since there’s nowhere for coins to go.  I guess it’s just for show. The knob still turns without any payment, however, and it then deposits M&Ms into the return chute . The downside is that there’s nothing to block the chute, so you better have your hand ready to catch them! The M&Ms in the picture are actually a paper insert (no real candy in there yet).

Monstructor is one of the hardest combiner sets to complete from the US releases of the Generation 1 line.  Each Micromaster robot came with a Pretender shell, a combiner part and other assorted weaponry.  So when I finally got a set, the first thing that I did was pair it with Fisher Price toys shaped like dinosaurs.  Putting the two concepts together, we get “Monstructor Babies“.

You can practically hear the “Muppet Babies” theme song, can’t you?  Aiden had a set of “Little People” dinosaurs that came with a Baby Dinoland play set, and I thought that they looked a lot like the rubbery shells for Monstructor.  Replacing the scary-looking monster shells with cutesie baby dinos made a pretty funny picture.  I defy you to look at Scowl’s hair and not laugh!

The fearsome Decepticon Monster Pretenders had to wait a long time for their outer shells to mature.  In the meantime, they made due with infantile Baby shells.  Thus brings us to the tales of… Monstructor Babies!

I originally posted this to Flickr a while back, and it’s gotten a lot of traffic there.  The next few weeks brought regular installments of “Monstructor Mondays“, when I would post a new Monster Pretender.  I had half-expected to return to the Monstructor Babies concept and do some photo comics for them, but who has the time for that?  Maybe later, when the kids are older!

I do a lot of Transformers shopping at Target.  There’s one right around the corner from my house, so it’s easier to get to than the nearest Wal-Mart, and they usually keep a good stock of figures.  Transformers sold very well over Christmas, but I was surprised to see that my Target wouldn’t restock afterward.  Two weeks later, surprise gave way to aggravation.  Three weeks later,  aggravation gave way to righteous fury.  Put some new stock on your damn empty shelves already!

I guess that they were holding out for the annual inventory check, which was last weekend.  Then at last, I found stacks and stacks of Transformers cases of all sizes at Target.  It had been weeks since there was anything on the shelves, and my obsessive-compulsive side took over.  I ripped off the tape on the nearest box and peeked inside.  NEW ANIMATED TOYS!  I tried again.  NEW ROBOT HEROES!  Before I could stop myself, I had opened four cases…  And then I got caught.

A clerk rounded the bend and sternly told me that I was not allowed to open the boxes.  I explained, happily, that I already had, and look what I found!  I asked if I could keep them, and she said that as long as I had already taken them out of the case, then I might as well take them.  Big smile.  Like she was going to take them away or something!  But I was pretty sure that there were more cases in the back, still waiting to be looted by me.  I would be patient, for now…

So I came back later on in the evening and found that all of the Transformers deluxe figures were restocked.  I couldn’t decide which ones to get, so I got ALL of them.  I picked up Hound (with Ravage), Cyclonus, Smokescreen (Prowl repaint), Cheetor, Dinobot, Starscream (Classics repaint), Animated Blurr, Animated Swindle, and Blazing Lockdown.  I was so happy that Target finally replenished the supply that I forgave them for making me wait over a month for my fix.

I was taking a photo of “Armada Airazor” for my daily Flickr posts, when it occurred to me how rare a figure like this is.  This version of Airazor was a repaint of “Transmetal Airrazor” from the “Beast Wars” line, only the mold had been retooled slightly, adding two posts to allow Mini-cons to attach to the wings.  Hasbro is well known for repainting figures from older toy lines to include them in the current line, but only rarely is there a change made in the mold itself.

Mold changes (specifically, head changes) are what make Botcon exclusive figures so great.  They’re not just repaints, as something extra has been added.  Previous examples of this were relegated to the Takara series, such as “Runamuck” and “Longrack” in their “Galaxy Force” line (although these were released in the US later).  So the few retools that showed up in the Armada line were a big deal at the time.  I like a good repaint, but I will hunt down a retool until it is mine (oh, yes).

The point was to make old Beast Wars figures work with the Mini-con gimmick.  All Armada toys had Mini-cons, and it was a good choice to pack a repainted Mini-con in with the figure.  But what about figures from other previous lines?  “Robots in Disguise” was full of potential retool candidates.  The “Rail Racer” gestalt absolutely begs for Mini-cons on its arms and shoulders.  And how cool would it be to load half a dozen Mini-cons on “Fire Convoy“?  Although Fire Convoy was repainted in yellow later, no retooling was done.

Speaking of Robots in Disguise, why not retool the “Spy Changers” to allow for a Mini-con port?  These things, originally released as Go-Bots in the G2 line, were already repainted to death by the time Armada came out.  But a simple Mini-con port on the underside of the vehicle mode could have sparked new life into them.  They wouldn’t fit in exactly with the rest of the Mini-cons, but they would look good combined with other Robots in Disguise retools, such as the above-mentioned Fire Convoy.

Although new molds are nice, if Hasbro intends to flesh out future toy lines with older figures, it would be preferable to see more retooling.  We’re already seeing this in the Animated line with the “Cliffjumper” repaint of Bumblebee (he’s got a new head), so I applaud them for this.  But if older figures start popping up in, say, the “Universe” line (cough, Blaster, cough), then some new parts would be appreciated.  Change the head, or tack on a Mini-con post or two.  People would hate repaints less, I’m sure.

Hasbro announced a brand new mold for a classic “Generation 1″ character, “Cyclonus“.  This is part of their plans to release new figures for many of the original characters for the 25th Anniversary of the franchise.  Better still, this new Cyclonus figure would have a “Targetmaster” partner, making him an homage to the very rare Targetmaster Cyclonus (1987).  This was pretty exciting news by itself, but then the Hasbro representatives showed the audience at Botcon what it would look like.

Jaws dropped and cheers erupted.  The new Cyclonus had the great vehicle mode that the old Cyclonus sported, but the robot mode was better in every way.  He had full articulation and an excellent paint scheme, yet the figure stayed very true to the original. Unfortunately, fans failed to understand that they were looking at a hand-painted prototype that had yet to pass through plausibility testing.

When the Hasbro designers create a new figure, they go through several test versions.  The new design starts off as clay or a simple mockup, then goes on to prototype modeling, and then that mold (or a copy of it) is hand-painted for approvals.  The test model is then checked for plausibility to see how much it would cost to build versus how much it would be sold for.  A single paint application can cost two cents per toy, which adds up considerably when hundreds of thousands are produced.

Apparently, the paint applications for Cyclonus shown at Botcon were too expensive for mass production.  Changes would be required to get this figure out to stores.  The shiny purple paint was replaced with matte purple paint, and the silver paint was eschewed for grey plastic.  Dark blue paint applications on the wrists and weapon were pulled completely.  Finally, the red and fuscia highlights were replaced with a reddish brown color.  This is what a cost-effective figure looks like.

Were we cheated?  No, the Cyclonus figure is still a great mold.  It’s not as pretty as we were hoping (and were led to believe) that it would be, but we should have know better.  Plenty of leaked images of upcoming figures are not final models and are subject to change before release.  I’d still like to pick up a Universe Cyclonus when they’re released, and I’m sure there will be people who repaint their figure by hand to its former glory.

At the last Botcon, Hasbro announced a whole slew of new homage figures to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Transformers, to be released under the Universe moniker.  Not only would more G1 characters be receiving new, updated designs (as in the Classics series), but characters from all Transformers lines would also be getting updates.  The fan base was very excited.  Recently, a new repaint for the Universe line was announced: Hasbro would be repainting Cyberton Scourge (“Flame Convoy”, in Japan) as “Robots In Disguise” Bruticus.

“Predacon Bruticus” seems like an odd choice of characters to pay homage to, since that figure wasn’t very well received by fans or collectors.  At the time, Takara had just thrown Transformers fans a colossal bone with the return of realistic vehicular alternative modes: “Car Robots” featured robots that turned into models of real-life cars, as opposed to animals.   The Beast Machines series was trying to introduce vehicles, in the way of “Vehicons“, but there was little fan support for these futuristic styles (I’m one of the few that liked them).

Bruticus was meant to be an addition to the eclectic Maximal lineup on Beast Machines, but the series died before he could be released.  However, Hasbro managed to shoe-horn him into the next line, “Robots in Disguise” (RiD), which was basically the Car Robots line from Japan repackaged into English packages.  Bruticus didn’t appear on the television show and had a strange form in both modes.  Worse, he used up a name from Generation 1, so the actual repaint of G1 Bruticus for the RiD line was instead named “Ruination”.

As for the new paint scheme, I’m not sure if I like it.  Was RiD Bruticus originally supposed to have a similar paint application?  He was styled in red, yellow and black, after the original G1 Predacon combiners (orange and gold would have been a given, but blue works).  He may have actually had more paint on him in pre-production stages, but those were probably nixed for cost reasons (in order to retain the complexity of the mold).  To be honest, RiD Bruticus would have looked great with some gold and dark blue highlights on him, as one of the biggest complaints leveled against him was a lack of paint applications.

I really liked RiD Bruticus though.  What’s not to like?  He’s an armored, three-headed dog with bat wings on his head.  He’s got spikes and saw blades everywhere.  And he’s mysterious.  I mean, why do his back legs turn into a second pair of arms, complete with flip-up weapons?  Why does he have a broken chain on his leg?  Why does his robot mode have three faces?  What was supposed to go under the flip-up panel on his chest?  It’s clear that this figure never quite reached his potential, but I’d like to know what was the original plan for this guy.

There was a recurring mystical theme with the Maximals in the Beast Machines line.  There was a unicorn, a griffon, a dragon, and even a lion.  The inclusion of Cerberus would have been natural.  Toss in a personality conflict, one persona for each beast head, which would correspond in turn to each robot face, and you’ve got an interesting story.  Maybe he was supposed to be a quadruple-changer, with each robot face having a slightly different robot mode?  This would explain the extra set of arms.  We’ll never know, I guess.

McDonalds has picked up the Transformers promotion this time around. I had mentioned to Chrissy that the new Happy Meal toys were out, and she filed it into her unlimited memory.  We were out shopping today when she casually suggested that we swing by the McDonalds.  I’m thinking that it’s almost lunch time, but I don’t really care for McDonalds (the meat is all cow lips and eyeballs).  More precisely, you don’t say no when an extremely pregnant women tells you what food she wants.

We found the nearest McDonalds (you never have to go far for one of these). We walked in, with Aiden in tow, and Chrissy orders a Happy Meal with four chicken nuggets.  Aiden loves the chicken nuggets. Then she orders four cheeseburger Happy Meals.  She looks at me and says, “What do you want?” Thinking that she must be damn hungry, I say that I’d like a Big Mac meal.  She says, “No, you’re getting a Happy Meal too.  How about a cheeseburger?”

I agree reluctantly, but then it occurs to me that she’s buying an entire set of Transformers Happy Meal toys.  I’m a little slow on the uptake.  But she not only has a mind like a steel trap, she’s very good to me (she doesn’t like McDonalds, either).  I got Optimus, Ratchet, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream and Lugnut.  The figures themselves are about what you’d expect from a Happy Meal, but the simple design fits in well with the Transformers Animated theme for most of them.  Not a bad set, as themed meal freebies go.