The combination of a sequel to Transformers: War for Cybertron with the promise of improvements on all of the game's elements along with the addition of playable Dinobots was an easy formula embraced by High Moon Studios and publisher Activision to earn hype and excitment.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron was unveiled last fall during the Spike VGAs with a thrilling and emotional cinematic trailer that proved to fans that a cool Transformers movie doesn't need any human characters to sell itself... or even our planet Earth - something that was later teased in the game's second official trailer.

As for gameplay, we've not seen too much but that changes today with our first legitimate look at this game's poster boy, Grimlock, in action, showcasing his new and unique move-set. The Transformers: Fall of Cybertron gameplay video is narrated by game director Matt Tieger who describes the character's unique playstyle and mechanics:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbto6gJGLG8

The melee-focused Grimlock plays as if he's a character from Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning or Warhammer 40K: Space Marine and the resulting arcade-focused gameplay works to liven up the Cybertronian aesthetic employed in the latest Transformers game. It's especially cool when he transformers into his Dinobot T-rex form and unleashes the heat.

While this glimpse at gameplay certainly looks enticing, especially for us classic TF fans, we remain cautiously optimistic for a variety of reasons. The first of which is the obvious fact that the last Transformers game from High Moon Studios was garbarge (the Dark of the Moon movie tie-in) and there hasn't been much development time between their three Transformers games, despite having different teams working on each.

The other concern is that gameplay can be repetitive if most of it is spent on players solo-ing through armies of nameless run-of-the-mill fodder like the Insecticons here. And by solo-ing, we mean the sequel has dropped co-op gameplay from the campaign this time around.

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Using an Energon sword and shield is awesome if we're not doing the same swinging motions over and over and over again, grinding through forgetful battles and enemies - and that was a re-occurring problem of this game's predecessor, Fall of Cybertron.

We can say for sure though that these character types will add a wildly different dynamic to the game's multiplayer this time around and we're excited at the potential.

Grimlock and Optimus are all kinds of bad-ass and we hope there's a cool story to be told in this universe, along with satisfying gameplay - we at Game Rant are already looking ahead to further sequels.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron releases August 28, 2012 on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

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Follow Rob on Twitter @rob_keyes for more on Transformers.

Source: Examiner