Spotlight On - Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Do you like blowing up robots? High Moon Studios, developer of Transformers: War for Cybertron, sure does, and it's putting that passion to work in the upcoming Transformers: Dark of the Moon video game. This game will bridge the gap between the previous film, Revenge of the Fallen, and the upcoming summer action flick.

Our hands-off demonstration featured several snippets from the game's campaign mode, which will cycle between the Autobot and Decepticon's perspectives. The developer also made sure to highlight the new stealth force form, which we saw in action during the Ironhide mission segment. The Autobot was cruising through Detroit, which had been reduced to an urban war zone, on the prowl for those sneaky Decepticons. We could hear the voice of Optimus Prime telling us we needed to regain the human's trust and, above all else, be careful.

Apparently Ironhide didn't listen to these instructions very closely because in the next scene, he was trapped in a large crater surrounded by Decepticons. Here, we got to see the robot's three forms in action. The first, vehicle, was used to either escape from or drive up to an enemy. The second, stealth force, outfitted Ironhide's vehicle form with a bunch of guns, as well as let him lock on to and strafe around targets. This form was used primary at midrange as a way to soften up enemies until he could get up close. The final form, robot, worked best in melee combat and gave Ironhide access to his special abilities. These included the deadly grenade blossom, which sent out a half-dozen grenades that locked on to the remaining targets.

The combat looked flashy and fluid. From what we can tell, a lot of the characters, from Soundwave to Bumblebee seem to use similar tactics: Riding into an area, blowing up a whole mess of robots, and then riding on to the next. However, Starscream's segment did offer up something different in the form of aerial combat. His mission was to take down the massive Autobot cargo jet Stratosphere, which combined aerial combat and melee fighting on the hull of the massive aircraft.

High Moon Studios has always been faithful to its source material, and there's something to be said for the therapeutic qualities of mass robot slaughter. You can find Transformers: Dark of the Moon on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on June 14.