So I finished
Transformers: War for Cybertron last night in co-op with a friend and I have to recommend it here. It was 5$ on the last sale and it will probably be 5$ again on the upcoming Christmas sale. Here is why it blew me away:
-The co-op is great. The netcode was super solid and the scenarios are just a ton of fun to experience with a proper bro.
-The scale is spectacular. You travel through some massive areas without a single prerendered cutscene or load screen and the streaming is completely invisible (something that Quantum Conundrum completely failed at). The second to last level damn near brought a tear to my eye, but also made me bitter at Bioware from failing to match this space-based deliciousness in the Mass Effect series (also on UE3).
-The art is really consistent/pleasant. They keep the environments look fresh and varied and even though it is purely mechanical architecture, UE3 translates the style perfectly. They also make smart use of colorgrading.
-The gameplay also stays fresh and varied. The devs wisely mixed vehicle and ground combat in almost every level and the transition between the two feels really good. It's always a delight to drive or fly to some battle and drop out of the air while transitioning to the bipedal form.
-The writing and story is a lot of fun. Every possible robot-related pun is made and all the villains wear their hearts on their sleeves. I couldn't help but smile at everything Megatron/Star Scream said. Oh and each level starts with a little bit of text setting up the "episode." It's a great little touch that made each session feel like a weekly episode of the show.
Really the only issue we ran into was the final boss giving us a bit of trouble with certain attacks, but after a while we kinda perfected our method and nailed it. I feel pretty confident in saying we both had an incredible time with the game because we both agreed to play it again in co-op with a third friend who was asking if he should buy it haha.