Tencent, China’s biggest tech company (and the owner of Riot Games and Supercell), announced Transformers Online a couple of weeks back. With no mention if it is an internal-developed game, the Unreal Engine 4 team-based shooter quickly entered its first beta phase yesterday. An official game licensed from IP-owner Hasbro, I managed to sneak into the game and took a quick spin around.
Basically, Transformers Online has the gameplay system of most first-person shooters, while sporting the Spark System (similar to runes in League of Legends) and a cash shop which sells new bots for in-game currency or real cash. Do note that Chinese PC online games are notorious for their long beta test phases, which could go well over 12 months, hence features might change down the road.
For gameplay modes, the playable ones currently are really standard, including Team Deathmatch, Point Capture (resource capture), Blade Wars (melee), and AI bots. As mentioned in my previous posts about Transformers Online, both bots from Autobots and Decepticons are allowed in the same team, which really does away with the main storyline based on the epic battles between these 2 factions.
Each bot has its own unique gun and melee weapon, along with active skill. The active skill doubles up as the ultimate, since there are no normal skills which can be used, unlike the most recent team shooter, Overwatch. The vehicle mode does nothing much as well other than moving around, though some of the skills will require bots to be in their vehicle mode, such as Megatron.
This is just a very quick first look at Transformers Online, and I expect many changes and bug fixes to be made over the next few months, or even years, before Tencent launches the game. I am pretty sure it will never reach the overseas markets, similar to most IP-based games exclusive to the China region. I would really love to see a mode pitting 50 Autobots against 50 Decepticons though.
